Late-Night Hosts Skewer Trump for Saying He’d Have “Run in There” During School Shooting

Late-night hosts across the dial teed off on President Donald Trump’s comments Monday that even if he didn’t have a weapon, he would have run into Stoneman Douglas High School while a gunman was attacking in order to protect students. Trump made the comment to governors meeting at the White House to discuss school safety.

“I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon,” Trump said after criticizing local authorities for, in his opinion, not acting quickly enough during the shooting. 

The president also made comments that slightly walked back his previous proposition to “arm” school teachers, saying, “I don’t want teachers to have guns. I want highly trained people that have a natural talent, like hitting a baseball or hitting a golf ball or putting.”

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After reading Trump’s comments, NBC’s Late Night host Seth Meyers introduced a new portion of his program: “This brings us to a new segment entitled, ‘It slowly dawns on Seth that this man is our president.’ “

Later, in his “Closer Look” segment, Meyers said he didn’t “believe Trump would run anywhere, let alone into a school shooting.” Meyers said Trump is “not exactly Liam Neeson,” and if he was in the Taken film series they would have had to change the name to My Daughter’s Gone, Let’s Move On.

Over on the Late Show, host Stephen Colbert similarly noted, “At this point I go to bed every night believing there is nothing [Trump] could say or do that would possibly surprise me — then the sun comes up.”

Addressing Trump’s comments about arming teachers, Colbert said, “Everybody knows shooting a gun is a natural talent. Not everybody’s got it. You have to be born with at least one finger, and sometimes it’s the only way out of the neighborhood, playing ‘gun ball.’ You guys know gun ball? You give one guy a gun and then you shoot him.”

On Trump’s comments that he’d “run in there,” Colbert pointed out Trump’s “five deferments” from the Vietnam War. “What are you going to do, run in there and stab them with your bone spurs?” Colbert asked.

On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah tried to play devil’s advocate. “To be fair,” he said, “if Donald Trump ran into a school during a shooting, I do believe he would stop the shooting. Imagine you’re a school shooter and Donald Trump appears in the hallway. How distracting would that be?” Noah then launched into an impersonation of the president, saying, “‘That’s right, it’s me, Donald Trump. I don’t have a gun, but what I do have is an amazing electoral college victory.’ … Then, like eight minutes later, the police show up and Trump is still talking.”