Seth Meyers on Trump and Musk: ‘They’re trying to rip you off’
Late-night hosts took aim at Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s too-close relationship and how one is clearly in control of the other.On Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about how voters have been most concerned about grocery prices yet Trump has been “easily distracted by silly stuff” and placed his attention elsewhere.This week saw him elected chair of the Kennedy Center, which led to Meyers joking that the next round of honors would include “Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood and Big Mouth Billy Bass”.It’s meant that he’s had less time to help Musk in his project of “dismantling the government”.Meyers joked that it’s “fun sometimes to pretend bad things might be good things”.
In audio from a call about the Kennedy Center, Trump said he was going to make it “hot” again like he had also made the presidency,“You didn’t make the presidency hot unless you mean hot like a low-grade fever,” he said,Another “frivolous distraction Trump is obsessed with” concerns him renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has led to Associated Press journalists being banned from official press events as they refuse to obey,“At least give people like a week to process it!” Meyers said,He also said that “we should stop waiting for tech companies to be part of the pushback” with both Google and Apple following the change on official maps.
Meyers played a clip of Trump trying to explain Musk’s dismantling, which was a ramble about magnets, tractors and planes.“Every time Trump speaks I feel like a guy who started season two of Severance without watching season one,” he said.He said they want to avoid talking about what’s really happening as “the reality of what they’re doing is unpopular and illegal” and Musk essentially wants “direct control of the government” by taking over the regulatory group that would otherwise be able to stop his business practices.He said that there is “a lot of bad stuff happening right now” and “they’re trying to rip you off and they hope you’ll be distracted by all the nonsense going through Trump’s head”.On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host spoke about the nationwide shortage of eggs with grocery stores hiking prices and limiting the number of eggs customers can purchase.
He said that regular eggs are now “more valuable than Faberge”.For Valentine’s Day, he joked that Trump has “got a little something for his sugar vladdy” after a call with Vladimir Putin in which the Russian dictator was given essentially everything he wanted out of the negotiation.Kimmel said it is “honestly amazing the guy only bankrupted three casinos” while saying that “if you attack and murder our allies, it will make no difference at all”.Trump’s rambling explanation led Kimmel to say that we are “one weird press conference away from Trump saying he wants to move Ukraine to Gaza”.Then, “as if we don’t have enough to worry about”, Kimmel said that “measles and wide-leg jeans are back”, joking about Kendrick Lamar’s outfit choice at the Super Bowl.
He reassured us that “Bobby Brainworm is on the job” to fix measles with the outspoken anti-vax crusader confirmed as the new head of health and human services,In a press conference, Robert F Kennedy Jr said that God sent him Trump,“Next God is gonna send us diphtheria,” Kimmel joked,The clip saw Kennedy engage in “triple-A ass kissing”, which Kimmel said would have aroused Trump,“Melania couldn’t turn him on like that the first night they met,” he joked.
Three water companies appeal against Ofwat’s ‘unacceptable’ curb on bill rises
Three water companies have asked the UK’s competition watchdog to allow them to raise bills even higher than they have been allowed over the next five years, as one chief executive said the industry regulator’s recent ruling was “unacceptable”.Southern Water, Anglian Water and South East Water said on Tuesday that they had asked Ofwat, the water regulator for England and Wales, to refer its ruling on their business plans for 2025 to 2030 to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).Southern – which also announced plans to raise £900m of new equity – had already been allowed a 53% increase to average bills for its 4.7 million customers over the next five years in a December ruling by Ofwat.The Southern Water chief executive, Lawrence Gosden, said that settlement “would not enable us to deliver the environmental and performance improvements and new infrastructure that our customers and communities rightly expect”
UK pay growth rises 6% despite job loss warnings after Reeves’s budget
UK workers’ pay grew sharply in the final quarter of last year and unemployment remained unchanged despite warnings from business that Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget would lead to job losses.Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show annual growth in total average weekly earnings rose by 6% in the three months to the end of December, up from 5.6% for the November period and above a 5.9% forecast made by City economists.Regular pay, excluding bonuses, accelerated from 5
Lessons for Elon Musk from the original Doge | Brief letters
As Elon Musk’s unelected “Doge” troops slash and burn US federal departments (Elon Musk appears with Trump and tries to claim ‘Doge’ team is transparent, 12 February), it is ironic to note that the Doges of ancient Venice were always elected, and by a process that was designed to avoid wealthy families taking too much power.John JacobsAlton, Hampshire I agree with your correspondents about the difficulty of hearing the lyrics in musicals (Letters, 13 February), but there’s little mention of the problem in cinemas, where conversations are drowned out by background music. In the recent film about Bob Dylan, Timothée Chalamet perfectly captured the musician’s mumble. What words he actually said remain A Complete Unknown.Joanna RimmerNewcastle upon Tyne Re the letters on analogue photography (14 February), there is a good compromise
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review: still the superphone to beat
The Ultra is Samsung’s largest and greatest phone and is packed to the gills with the very latest technology, which means more artificial intelligence than ever before.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The Galaxy S25 Ultra is at the front of the line of a new wave of Android phones that promise to basically do everything for you
New franchise owners in the Hundred pushing for IPL-style auction next year
The Hundred could introduce an Indian Premier League-style open auction next year with the new investors who have bought stakes in the eight franchises pushing for unlimited budgets to attract the best players in the world.Under the existing regulations the Hundred player draft operates on the basis of franchises taking turns to pick players at a number of set salary levels controlled by the England and Wales Cricket Board, rather than entering an open bidding war. While the Hundred salary pot has increased by 25% this season, with the highest men’s contract worth £200,000 and the best-paid women earning £65,000, there is a strong feeling among the new owners that it is insufficient.Jos Buttler and Jofra Archer will both be paid more as individuals by their IPL teams this year than the entire playing budget of a men’s Hundred franchise. With a maximum budget of £1
The Breakdown | ‘Clubs are going to disappear’: grassroots rugby crying for help in Six Nations’ shadow
The community game’s feedback for the Bills, Sweeney and Beaumont, makes for painful reading as RFU hits the road in week of Calcutta CupYou may have noticed that the sports pages are less, well, sporty than they once were. There is rather more chance of reading stern-faced stories about Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the Glazers or Manchester City’s latest legal dispute than, say, the muddy winter joys of grassroots rugby union. It is the way of the modern world and, anyway, England playing Scotland in the Six Nations this Saturday is a bigger deal, right?Well, yes and no. If you are counting the beans inside the Rugby Football Union’s offices in Twickenham there is barely a contest. The Six Nations annually bankrolls the rest of the domestic game: it is the commercial goose that lays the golden Gilbert‑shaped eggs
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