Trump Rages Over NBC’s Seth Meyers Contract Renewal Rumor
Donald Trump lashes out at NBC over Seth Meyers’ contract—despite the extension being publicly announced in 2024.
New York, August 27 EST: Donald Trump’s late-night fixation has surfaced once again, and this time it carries the whiff of something more than just celebrity grudge. At 1:56 a.m. Wednesday, the former president lit up Truth Social with a screed against NBC and Seth Meyers, railing against what he called a “sick rumor” that the network had extended Meyers’ Late Night contract.
The problem, of course, is that there was no rumor. NBC locked Meyers in through 2028 back in May 2024. The deal was public, widely reported, and never in dispute. Trump’s middle-of-the-night post was less a revelation than a reminder of the information ecosystem he occupies one where perception, grievance, and performative outrage often matter more than fact.
Trump’s Long Memory for Slights
This is not simply about a comedian’s contract. Trump’s animus toward Meyers is rooted in history. Political observers have long pointed to the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when both President Barack Obama and Meyers roasted Trump to his face. That night, as the cameras caught Trump grim and unsmiling, a new narrative of humiliation took hold one Trump himself has never forgiven.
In the years since, Meyers has kept Trump in his sights through monologues and “A Closer Look” segments that dissected the chaos of his presidency. Trump, for his part, has weaponized his platform to belittle the very comedians who mock him, lumping Meyers alongside Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon in a category he paints as washed-up and talentless.
Seen in this light, Trump’s 1:56 a.m. blast was less about NBC’s business decision than about reasserting dominance in a cultural arena where he no longer holds sway.
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The Politics of Late Night
Late-night television once served as a soft-focus cultural glue, where politicians popped in for light banter and goodwill. But in the Trump era, it hardened into an arena of opposition, where monologues doubled as nightly indictments of the president’s conduct.
For Trump, who prizes control over his public image, late-night comedy has been especially galling. He has accused networks of conspiring against him, celebrated rumors of Colbert’s downfall, and speculated gleefully about cancellations that never came. Yet the reality is starker while viewership has fragmented in the streaming era, NBC and its peers see stability in established hosts, betting on continuity over volatility.
As Lorne Michaels, the arbiter of NBC’s late-night universe, made clear earlier this year, both Fallon and Meyers are locked in. The network sees them not as ratings juggernauts, but as reliable brands. In a fractured market, reliability is its own form of power.
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A Telling Misstep
The irony is that Trump’s attack only underscored his distance from the facts. By calling Meyers’ renewal a “sick rumor,” he inadvertently reminded audiences that his outrage machine often churns without grounding. The contract wasn’t whispered about in backrooms; it was announced with press releases in May 2024.
That error may seem trivial, but in politics, timing and perception matter. Trump’s political career has been defined by an ability to bend narratives to his will, often by moving faster than fact-checkers. But here, he stumbled. He lashed out at a network deal that had long since been settled, and in doing so, ceded the upper hand to the very media voices he meant to diminish.
What It Reveals About Trump Now
At 79, Trump remains locked in battle not just with political rivals but with the culture industry that made him famous. His late-night obsession is not an oddity but a window into his broader approach to power the personal is political, and personal slights demand political retaliation.
This approach has carried him through decades of tabloid wars, business feuds, and political campaigns. Yet it also leaves him vulnerable. When the target of his fury is a contract renewal from 15 months ago, it risks signaling detachment a leader raging at ghosts while his adversaries move forward.
The Likely Outcome
For NBC, nothing changes. Meyers’ job is secure, his contract binding. If anything, Trump’s rant will likely hand the comedian fresh material for his nightly segments. For Trump, the post becomes another entry in a long ledger of late-night grievances one that keeps the spotlight trained, if only briefly, on a man who craves it.
The larger takeaway is not about Meyers at all. It is about Trump’s relationship to culture and information a politics defined less by strategy than by reflex, less by policy than by personal vendetta. He once mastered that dynamic, turning outrage into oxygen. Whether it still works in 2025 is a different question.
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A political science PhD who jumped the academic ship to cover real-time governance, Olivia is the East Coast's sharpest watchdog. She dissects power plays in Trenton and D.C. without bias or apology.
