Donald Trump once again claimed this week that migrants coming to the U.S. are coming from “prisons” and “insane asylums,” but Seth Meyers thinks he’s figured out why Trump believes the latter. According to the NBC host, it comes down to homophones.
During his conversation with Elon Musk live-streamed with many difficulties on X this week, Trump said that migrants are coming “from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums.” And initially, Meyers had a different guess as to why Trump was saying that.
“Oh, they’re coming from insane asylums? How would you know?” the host asked before putting on his Trump impression to answer.
“They’re coming from insane asylums and I would know because so did I,” he mimicked. “A lot of those people coming across the border, I met them at the break room at Bellevue. They were my buds. I remember one of them said ‘When I get out of here, I’m gonna sneak across the border.’ And I said ‘That’s cool, I’m gonna run for president.’”
Speaking a touch more seriously, Meyers had a larger theory on why Trump latched onto the idea of asylums.
“Trump definitely thinks they’re coming from insane asylums because he heard they were seeking asylum, and inside his smooth little chug-a-lug brain, he doesn’t have room for the idea that a word can mean two things,” Meyers said.
You can watch Seth Meyers’ full “A Closer Look” segment in the video above.
