Seth Meyers: America’s Accidental Export of Sanity in a Trade War of Absurdity
Seth Meyers: The Last American Comedian the World Still Lets In
When the planet’s diplomats gather at 3 a.m. for another emergency session about tariffs, treaties, or whatever fresh apocalypse the algorithm has served up that day, the one thing they can still agree on is that the U.S. has at least one export that hasn’t (yet) been slapped with retaliatory duties: Late Night with Seth Meyers. In a trade war of escalating absurdities, Meyers has improbably become a form of cultural contraband—smuggled across borders on YouTube rips, subtitled in twelve languages, and dissected in Berlin bars where patrons argue whether “A Closer Look” counts as journalism or merely advanced eye-rolling.
The joke, of course, is that Meyers himself never planned to be geopolitically relevant. He started as another improv kid from New Hampshire who accidentally fell into Weekend Update and discovered that reading the news with a smirk was the only viable career path left for people who can spell “irony” correctly. Now, from his Rockefeller Center bunker, he nightly translates the slow-motion car crash of American democracy into punch lines the rest of the planet can use as coping mechanisms. If NATO ever collapses, expect the alliance’s final communiqué to be a Meyers monologue with a laugh track dubbed in French.
Globally, the appeal is simple: Meyers is the rare American who admits, on camera, that the empire is wearing no clothes—and then points out the emperor is trying to sell those invisible garments as NFTs. In Seoul stock-exchange break rooms, traders cue up his riffs on crypto scams as a palate cleanser after watching their own government pretend blockchain is a national-security imperative. In Lagos, university debate clubs binge “A Closer Look” the way previous generations studied Marx, except the manifesto now comes with better graphics and a running gag about Rudy Giuliani melting on live television.
Europe, meanwhile, treats Meyers like a satirical Schengen zone: freely crossing borders because nobody wants to claim exclusive ownership of someone roasting the British Prime Minister while also reminding Germany it still hasn’t finished that airport. The EU parliament even screened his Brexit segments during a mandatory “democratic resilience” workshop, which is Brussels-speak for “group therapy after realizing Nigel Farage will haunt your dreams forever.”
The darker truth is that Meyers resonates precisely because the rest of the world recognizes its own dysfunction refracted through American spectacle. When he mocks U.S. senators staging performative stunts, a Japanese viewer nods knowingly about Diet members who cosplay as fighter pilots for campaign ads. When he skewers tech billionaires cos-playing space explorers, Chilean lithium miners watching on bootleg satellite dishes mutter, “At least our robber barons stay on the ground.” The laughter is international, but the anxiety is local everywhere.
Still, there are limits to this soft-power goodwill. Meyers’ recent joke about the World Cup being “a festival of bribery interrupted by football” reportedly required a delicate clarification from U.S. Soccer after Qatar’s embassy threatened to replace every Diet Coke in Doha with warm Pepsi. And when he quipped that the International Criminal Court should hold its next session in Mar-a-Lago’s banquet hall, the Hague politely noted it already has adequate catering, thank you very much.
Yet even the pushback proves the point: in an era when global leadership rotates between sclerotic summits and influencer livestreams, satire is the last multilateral institution still functioning. The U.N. issues sternly worded press releases; Meyers issues punch lines that arrive faster and, depressingly, age better. Until the world figures out how to tariff sarcasm, Seth Meyers remains a rare duty-free import: distilled American chaos, bottled for export, best served with a chaser of existential dread. Drink responsibly—your borders can’t keep the hangover out.
