On Wednesday night, Montana seized the national spotlight with some startling news: Greg Gianforte, a candidate for Congress, had just assaulted reporter Ben Jacobs from The Guardian. When Jacobs asked the G.O.P. candidate about health care, Gianforte reportedly body slammed the journalist, breaking his glasses. None of this stopped him from getting elected anyway; his victory was announced Thursday night, once all of late night’s comedians had finished taping. Still, Seth Meyers had time to dig into Gianforte on Late Night Thursday, even though he wasn’t yet aware of the candidate’s victory.
To Meyers, Gianforte’s actions make a pretty damning statement about the Republicans’ health-care bill: Gianforte’s response to a question about it, the host quipped, “was to give the reporter a preexisting condition.”
Gianforte’s camp released a statement Wednesday night, soon after the incident, accusing Jacobs of “asking badgering questions,” refusing to lower his microphone, and apparently declining to leave when asked. In other words, the statement seems to describe a reporter doing his job. As Meyers noted, if Gianforte wants a long career in politics, he might need to get used to being asked questions: “You understand that’s the job, right? You can’t become a veterinarian and then be like, ‘You’re never going to believe this: some guy walks in my office and hands me a sick cat. So I broke a fucking chair over his head.’”
But the problems with Gianforte run deeper than just this one incident. In Meyers’s view, Gianforte has a penchant for “saying dumb things that cause controversy. Like his truly absurd views on retirement.” Cue audio of Gianforte saying that “there’s nothing in the Bible that talks about retirement.” Per Gianforte’s argument, Noah built the arc at age 600: “He wasn’t, like, cashing social security checks. He wasn’t hanging out. He was working. Right? So I think we have an obligation to work.”
“So Gianforte wants to raise the retirement age from 65 to 600. And then you get to go on one cruise, and that’s it,” Meyers joked.)
