UPDATE: In his appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Joe Biden quipped about his age, but the host pressed him on it.
“All jokes aside, according to recent polling, this is a real concern for American voters,” Meyers noted.
“Number one, you got to take a look at the other guy, he’s about as old as I am,” the president responded. “But he can’t remember his wife’s name.”
Biden was referring to Donald Trump’s reference to wife Melania as “Mercedes” in a recent speech.
“Number two, it’s about how old your ideas are,” Biden said. “Look, I mean, this is a guy who wants to take us back. He wants to take us back on Roe v. Wade. He wants to take us back on a whole range of issues.”
Biden also slammed Trump’s recent comments that he would let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO country that does not pay its security obligations.
“How in God’s name? The idea that the President of the United States is inviting Vladimir Putin to invade Eastern, Western countries?” Biden said.
Biden said that there is “a path forward, with difficulty” in the Israel-Hamas war.
“Ramadan’s coming up, and there’s been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out,” Biden said.
“I think that if we get that temporary ceasefire, we’re going to be able to move in a direction where we can change the dynamic,” he said.
Biden told reporters after taping the “Late Night” appearance that he hoped that a cease-fire can take effect by the end of this weekend.
PREVIOUSLY: “It’s good to be back. Why haven’t you invited me earlier?” President Joe Biden told Seth Meyers after walking onstage Monday as one of his guests as Late Night With Seth Meyers marked its 10th anniversary.
NBC released a clip from tonight’s Late Night hat explains the setup: Before the president came out onstage, Meyers had shown Amy Poehler a shot from the first show in 2014, when she and Biden also were guests. Meyers then said that he couldn’t get Biden for today’s show, only to have Poehler summon the president to the stage.
C-SPAN also had footage of Biden and Meyers later getting ice cream, with the president ordering mint chip. Biden said he hopes that there will be a ceasefire in Gaza by next Monday.
“My national security adviser tells me that we are close. We’re not done yet,” Biden said.
PREVIOUSLY: President Joe Biden is taping an interview Monday with Seth Meyers for Meyers’ NBC late-night show.
This will be Biden’s latest late-night appearance since taking office. As president, he previously appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, as well as on The Daily Show. He also did an interview with Stephen Colbert when he was president-elect.
Biden has been in New York for what was described as a campaign meeting, but few details were provided. Amy Poehler also is a guest on Meyers’ show, which is marking its 10th anniversary tonight.
As vice president, Biden was on the first episode. The president and Meyers also visited an ice cream parlor near 30 Rock.
Biden is continuing a tradition started by Barack Obama of appearing on late-night shows as a way of reaching audiences via a more relaxed and friendlier environment than a Sunday show or news conference. In 2009, Obama became the first sitting president to make an in-studio appearance on a late-night talk show when he visited The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Donald Trump skipped that tradition, as he was so often the butt of late-night comics’ jokes. But Trump did host Saturday Night Live in 2015, as he was in the midst of the presidential campaign.
The White House has long said it wanted the president to try to reach the public in non-traditional ways, something that is likely to accelerate as the general election kicks into high gear. Biden did, however, skip the tradition of sitting down with the Super Bowl host network for a pre-game interview, in this case CBS. But he did debut on TikTok later that day.
