Seth Meyers Eulogizes Rex Tillerson, “a 14-Year-Old Bloodhound on his Third Mint Julep”
[embedded content] Tuesday was not great for Rex Tillerson. The former secretary of state was fired..
Tuesday was not great for Rex Tillerson. The former secretary of state was fired from his post via tweet, and soon afterward, Donald Trump also fired Tillerson’s spokesman, Steve Goldstein. The unceremonious ouster actually led some late-night comedians to conjure up a modicum of pity for Tillerson—emphasis on modicum. As Seth Meyers explained on Late Night, he has sympathy for the Tillersons and Gary Cohns of the world—“but in the same way I feel sympathy when someone gets attacked by a gorilla at the zoo. In that my first thought is, ‘Oh, that’s horrible,’ and my second thought is, ‘Why’d you go into the fucking gorilla cage?’”
Still, Meyers admits, Tillerson’s firing was pretty harsh. “Even when you get fired from Domino’s, the manager takes you into that crappy little office and tells you to your face. Tweets are for finding out which band is in town, or which airline was mean to Chrissy Teigen.”
To be clear, Meyers is not saying Tillerson was a great, or even a good, secretary of state. By his evaluation, Tillerson “had the energy of a 14-year-old bloodhound on his third mint julep; he always looked like he was walking through a fart cloud.” Still, if we’re on a firing spree, Meyers suggests there were better candidates to go first—like, say, Betsy DeVos.
Meanwhile, the Late Show team gave Tillerson a special send-off: a brief compendium of Stephen Colbert’s best insults from his tenure as secretary of state. Highlights described the onetime Exxon C.E.O. as someone with a “farmhand porn name,” a “prison guard who didn’t see you get stabbed,” and a “football coach being forced to teach sex ed.”
During his monologue Tuesday night, Colbert noted that the strange part about Tillerson’s firing is basically everything about it—but especially Trump’s use of the word “congratulations” at the end of the tweet announcing his dismissal. (The tweet also announced Mike Pompeo’s appointment as Tillerson’s replacement, as well as Gina Haspel as Pompeo’s replacement as director of the C.I.A.)
“Congratulations, Rex,” Colbert said. “You’ve won an all-expense-paid trip to beautiful Get the Fuck Out of Here. As a parting gift, we got you this beautiful door, which we hope does not hit you on the ass.”
As for Trump’s assertion that “Rex will be much happier now” following his dismissal? “Every word in that sentence is what you say to a child when their dog has been put down.”
On The Daily Show,Trevor Noah bid his own farewell to Tillerson, the “human Grumpy Cat.” Given all the departures the White House has seen lately, Noah added, “working for the White House is basically like being in a Saw movie: you show up, you get tortured for a while, and then you get killed off.”
And like his fellow late-night hosts, Noah couldn’t believe Trump would fire a member of his Cabinet via public tweet: “at least slide into his DMs!”
Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Laura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com. She was formerly an editorial assistant at Slate and lives in Brooklyn.
