Martin McDonagh | with Republicans Say Trump Era Is Over & MAGA Is Dead After Blowout, Vance Blames Iran War: A Closer Look

0:02President Trump said in an interview today he is not planning on replacing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after this week's Republican losses in the midterms and added, quote, I have every intention to keep him. So there you have it. Hegseth is out.

0:22From 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, please enjoy this podcast edition of Late night with Seth Meyers. On today's show, Seth chats with filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonough. But first, a closer look.

0:40Republicans are furiously backpedaling away from Donald Trump and the MAGA movement after what Republicans themselves are calling a tsunami and an extinction-level event in the midterms. Trump, meanwhile, is coping the only way he knows how, by talking about construction. For more on this, it's time for a closer look.

1:00I don't have to tell you guys, it's been a long 10 years since Trump was first elected. A lot has changed. This is what I looked like back in November 2016, and here's what I look like now without my makeup on. I even sound like him in the morning until I do my vocal exercises. Rubber, baby, monkey bonkers. Rubber, baby, monkey bonkers. And you can see how much Trump has changed In his demeanor He's gone from an angry crusading outsider Sweeping into power Atop an unprecedented political coalition To depressed old man Answering bummer questions about impeachment At a construction site Are you concerned about it?

1:42Not even a little bit I think it would destroy I think it would destroy the Democrat Party If they did that Because impeachment for no reason What for having a successful country Our country is more successful now than at any time in it's history. Watch the beam go up.

2:01What? Watch the beam go up? Where? What's it gonna do? Also, you know what's bad? They didn't even stop work while he was talking. Clang! Also, I love the way he just wanders off. I thought he might be defiant in the face of a blue wave, and instead he's like a substitute teacher with a hangover. Shouldn't we be studying for our history final? No, no, I don't. I don't think so. Let's just watch the Odyssey.

2:38Another thing that's changed in the Republican Party, as you might recall, Trump was supposedly a blue-collar billionaire who was transforming the GOP from a party of rich guys and country clubs into a party of the forgotten working class. We are a pro-America, populist party rooted in conservative principle with Donald Trump as our leader. Through the leadership of President Trump, the Republican Party has become a multi-ethnic working class party. He's put together the multi-ethnic working class coalition, and it's a majority of the country. We're in favor of an America first economic policy, an America first foreign policy, and that means doing what's good for the American worker.

3:13Now, you might say, what would a real estate magnate know about the plight of American workers? But you've obviously forgotten that this is a man who has had all the jobs, from McDonald's employee to garbage man to cowboy. Let me say, that is a great look. You look like you own a strip club in Amarillo. You could argue the only workers who have actually benefited from Trump's second term are the ones who do rush jobs on reflecting pool renovations. Can you imagine being the owner of a pool resurfacing company when Trump got re-elected? Honey, you're never gonna believe it. Our dream's finally coming true.

3:46You always say that, Frankie. I mean it this time. Trump's going to put us on the map. Frank's discount pool line is back in the game. And when Trump... You always say that! I like these two. We got to write these guys into more stuff. There's a lot. Frankie and his wife, I think, are going to keep... keep bearing fruit.

4:17Don't do a bad job on the reflecting pool. Lincoln's my favorite president. You don't got to worry about nothing, doll.

4:29Don't use the liner with all the tiny rips. There's only a few rips. We're going to blame it on vandals. And when Trump swept back into power in 2024, against all odds. Republicans claim that he was the true voice of the people and that he basically could do anything he wanted. The American people spoke loud and clear on Tuesday. They gave this president and Republicans a mandate. They know that Donald Trump's got a great mandate. Donald Trump has a mandate now. He has a clear mandate. We've got a mandate from the American people. The American people's voices were heard. There's a mandate. Make no mistake, Donald Trump has a massive mandate.

5:09So proud of himself. He's a massive mandate. What's up with these guys and their thinly veiled euphemisms? I mean, at least give Trump credit. He dropped the double entendres and just said what he was thinking. He's such a fine man, John Hughes, that is, as the senator. So I'm studying him. And I made the mistake of saying... that I started off by studying his ass. I just wanted to say...

5:38And then I looked at his feet, and they were massive. Then I looked at his hands, see these hands? He said, nice hands. They're fine. He had fingers like sausages. I'm sorry. It did all seem very positive, right? Until the sausage fingers. Do ladies like sausage fingers, or do you just like sausages? And you should see him with his shirt off. He's got a six-pack of Jimmy Dean sausage patties. But you heard Jesse Watters. That was two years ago. Trump had a massive mandate. And now? The American people, young men, white Americans, said screw you to Donald Trump, said screw you to the Republican Party.

6:20That's a problem that the Republicans have. And the people are saying, yo, yo, you screwed up. Do something about it. Can't sugarcoat it. Republicans got spanked. That's right.

6:39They got spanked on their tight little asses. I'll admit, when I was watching the results on Tuesday and I saw Republicans getting a nasty little spanking on their hot, muscular butts, yeah, I'll admit it. I had a... Massive mandate. The point is, Republicans in the media claim the party had been remade, that Trump had a majority of the country, and that politics had changed forever. but now they're singing a very different tune. Big picture, the Trump era is over. We just witnessed the end of the Trump era as we know it. This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans. MAGA is dead.

7:15MAGA is now officially dead. We are in a post-MAGA era. This unique coalition that the president was able to assemble in 2024, we lost all of them. I think the MAGA movement is frankly over. How are they going to reinvent themselves to move past the Trump era? I think MAGA is dead. The Trump era is now over. Like, she's not just a lame duck. She's a eunuch. He's a eunuch? Oh, no, wait, does that mean his massive mandate fell off? He's going to have to replace it with one of his... Sausages.

7:50And now Republicans who spent years as loyal foot soldiers for Trump are suddenly backing away from him and hoping you just forget all that MAGA business. Something has just come in. I just want to hold it up here, okay, because it's a couple of pages. It's just happened. I want to share parts of it. This is from J.D. Vance, okay, the vice president, just said this about Republicans' catastrophic midterm loss. He says, the reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so.

8:20But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. You know, whatever you think of the vice president, you got to give him some credit. He sat down, took the time to write a thoughtful reflection on the political landscape and his party's failings, and we should applaud him for that. In fact, I've written a lengthy and nuanced response. I hope you will bear with me here. Let's see. No one's... ...buying it. You're like, sir... You're like a guy partying in the streets of New York with a brand-new Knicks jersey over your old Spurs one. You don't get to be against the war now, eight months later, now that it's clear everyone else hates it, especially since you spent all of that time supporting it.

9:10What the president said consistently going back to 2015, and I agreed with him, is that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. And I trust President Trump to get the job done. We've been quite successful up to this point. Gas, frankly, could have been much, much higher. I promise you that Donald Trump is not going to let Iran become a forever war. Fundamentally, the military objectives of the United States have been completed. Have you won the war with Iran? Yes, we have. So long as they don't have a nuclear weapon, that's what we're focused on. That's what the president, frankly, has already accomplished.

9:41We have shown an ability to do something amazing for our national security. If Donald Trump were elected the supreme leader of Iran, the Democrats would still say that the United States had lost this. I don't know. I think if Donald Trump was elected the supreme leader of Iran, Democrats would be pretty psyched. And just FYI, just FYI, Donald, I don't think your shtick is going to play the same in Tehran. Strong butts and sausage fingers. Going to be a real non-starter with the Ayatollah. Now, Vance didn't just spend months enthusiastically defending the war. He specifically went out of his way to say that Trump was uniquely qualified to execute the war and that all the goals had been achieved.

10:19In fact, the guy who is now blaming the war is the same guy who said just two months ago it wasn't even a war. Will this war be over by the time of the midterm elections? Well, Caitlin, again, I don't... I wouldn't call it a war. Caitlin, I wouldn't call it a war, but that's because I'm lying to you. And look, what I'd say to you is I'm a liar. Lying's my only skill, and I'm not even good at it. You know I'm lying. I know I'm lying. Everyone knows I'm lying. You see it's the smirk. Dead giveaway, and two months from now, when we get our asses kicked in the midterms, I'm going to admit I was lying, but I'm also going to lie while admitting I'm lying because my whole thing is lying, even when you stare directly into my eyes, which, to be clear, do not have eyeliner on them, which is a lie, because, again, I'm a liar.

10:57In fact, I'm wearing a shade of eyeliner for liars called Liar Liner. So Vance and the rest of the GOP are backpedaling away from Trump and the war as quickly as they can. But Trump, for his part, seems undeterred. Vice President Vance says the reason Republicans lost last night was the war in Iran. Well, I think it's largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term. And probably that's probably it's true. But at the same time, if I had it to do again, I'd have to do it again. It's just insane that the president lives at a construction site now. He's like some Hamptons weirdo whose house has fallen down around him while he gives tours and goes on long rambling tangents.

11:38he's President Gray Gardens. He's like some sort of itinerant drifter just riding the rails with a bindle looking for work. They say a man can make a decent wage building ballrooms. If he keeps going to this rate, he's going to start doing all its press conferences while sitting on a steel girder. Trump was also asked if he thought Vance would run for president in 2028, and had a very weird, very low-energy response. Have you spoken to Vice President Vance? Yeah. I'm speaking to him about a lot of things. But, I mean, we'll see what happens. Everybody, you don't know who's talking about running.

12:20You can have people running. You can have a lot of people, maybe a lot of people running. Maybe nobody's going to run. Maybe he won't run. I don't know who's going to run. I think the fuel crisis is so real that the president is running out of gas. What do you mean nobody's gonna run? So we just won't have a president? I mean, I know he's depressed, but he's just gone full nihilist. Maybe nobody's gonna run. Maybe we won't have a president, you know? Who cares anyway? Politics is stupid. This job sucks.

13:03Look at the beam. It's actually one of the nicest things about this blue wave. In 2020, Trump was still angry and defiant and desperate to cling to power any way he could, but this time he got trounced so bad, he can't even pretend to get upset. I bet Rudy called him after the midterms like, I'm ready to go, boss. Just tell me where to find the votes. And he was like, no, that's okay. Do you want to just come over and order a pizza? You sure, boss? This doesn't sound like you. Yeah, come on. Just come over. Look at dry while watch the beam. So Trump doesn't seem to be putting much thought into what comes next, whether it's impeachment or who runs in 2028.

13:42But what about the Democrats? This was a historic victory for the party. What's your takeaway, guys? Give us something to be excited about. This is not a partisan moment. This is a patriotic one. This is not a blue moment or a red moment. It's a red, white, and blue moment because America has won tonight. The president, the Republicans rather, then the Republicans embraced Trump, the worst president ever. Republicans made a choice and followed Trump over the cliff. Well, Republicans had a choice of following Trump over the cliff and the American people reduced the red brick wall to a pile of bricks.

14:39You guys are killing the vibe The f*** are you talking about? The red brick wall is a pile of bricks? Guys, please, from now on, just let the young people talk Like Tallarico or Ossoff or Andrews or El Saeed

14:58You guys are like when the Price Waterhouse guys come out to do their spiel at the Oscars. Get out of here! Give us the best picture already! Two years ago, it seems like Trump had cemented a permanent realignment in politics, and MAGA would rule forever. Now look how much has changed. Republicans are declaring the party nearly extinct, the MAGA movement dead, and the Trump era over. I got to say, it's exciting. Almost as exciting as getting... ...spanked. This has been A Closer Look.

15:36Welcome back, everybody. Our guest is an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, playwright, and director behind films like The Banshees of Inesherin, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and In Bruges. His latest, Wild Horse 9, will be in theaters this Friday, November 6th. Please welcome back to the show my friend Martin McDonough, everybody!

16:00Hello, friends. How are you? Great. How are you? I'm great. And mostly I'm great because I get very excited when there's a new Martin McDonough film out. And I saw it and I loved it. And congratulations. Thank you very much. It doesn't happen very often, as you know. One of your films doesn't happen every often. I mean, I always love them. I always love them. Apart from that one we don't talk about. You do. You have one you don't like to talk about. We won't talk about it. I had John Malkovich, one of your stars, here last night. And he's so fantastic in the film. And he is someone, and we've talked a little bit about this, he can be a little intimidating.

16:36And yet, once you get past, actually, that, he's very sweet in real life. Were you intimidated by him? He has this veneer. Before I'd met him, we did a Zoom to talk about the movie. and I was terrified of even clicking on and seeing him there. But I guess because of Con Air or In the Line of Fire, equating a character he's played as a psychopath. He's a pretty good psychopath. But no, you've met him a few times. He's like the most erudite, gentlest, kindest soul. I don't know why I was scared to offer him a part in a really cool movie. But we'd gone on like A House on Fire. He knew so much about the subject matter.

17:21He knew so much about, you know, Chile in 73 and the conspiracy theories from, you know, November 63. Yes. So he's just a gent and a great... Apart from being a great actor, just a great guy. And you had tried to work with him before. Yeah, I think I offered a play to him and a movie that wasn't very good. So, like, he's always working. He's always doing something around the globe, so it didn't quite work out, but I was thrilled that he was able to do this. These are CIA agents, him and Sam Rockwell. It takes place in Easter Island, 1973, excuse me. You had visited the Easter Islands just as a tourist.

18:05Yes, 15 years ago, I went to Easter Island, Rapa Nui, as they prefer for it to be known. In the hope, this was like a couple of years after Bruges came out, So kind of in the hope that it would be as characterful a place to shoot as Bruges was. And it was. And the Moai were spectacular and gentle and spiritual and all that stuff. And the island was sort of perfect. So in the 15 years since, I was trying to write different versions of a story, usually with like two guys. It was a father and son at one point. It was a couple of actors at another point. But it wasn't until I started thinking about the Chile aspect.

18:47Rapa Nui is a dependency of Chile. And think about what the CIA did in Chile in 1973 when they overturned a democratically elected government and allowed in a bunch of fascists. Which I'd been fascinated by since my teens when I first heard about it in a song about a clash, weirdly. That's when all the story kind of came together. So it's interesting Like you calling it Rapa Nui Obviously that's what they prefer to call it You had to get permission to shoot here Who is in charge of saying you can shoot a movie there Because first of all it does seem like An insane place to shoot a movie Just based on the logistics of how long it takes to get there The logistics are crazy Do people tell you like Martin this is a bad idea shoot it somewhere else?

19:34I think I'm one of those directors He doesn't listen anymore I've gotten so into my own That uh I also let me say like there is a genius about it Because I you know like you know obviously we know Like you can always shoot something for something else You know like except for this Yeah I don't kind of don't like that Like if they'd said you can't shoot In Bruges I'd have Scrapped the whole thing And if they'd said I couldn't make this there It would have been the same story But so we met with Because it's like five hours flying time from Santiago even which is the closest place to it. And I think it's the inhabited island that's furthest away from any other place in the world.

20:14Great idea to shoot a movie there. So we had to bring all the cameras, the crew had to come from Chile, and the cars, the period cars, everything had to be shipped in, and that takes like five, six weeks. Not my area, not my issue, but it all came in. They were so happy when they overheard you saying that. That's the kind of director I've become. But we did have to kind of... We had, like, period cars in the first few days of shooting, but we had to scrap that because we couldn't see the boats. There was, like, you know, tide issues or whatever. So we changed it to some interior rooms for the first few days, and then the cars arrived.

20:55But has another film been shot there? There was one made in the mid-'90s, which is a sort of historical kind of epic. but this is the first since then. But, you know, obviously, did you have to, like, though, show a script? Be like, we're going to come, we're going to shoot at this place that is obviously incredibly well protected. Absolutely. So we spoke to the council that runs Rapa Nui. It's sort of semi-autonomous from Chile, but not quite. But they're the people to... It's the locals you have to speak to and convince to be allowed to shoot there. So we gave them the script. we sort of told them exactly what we were trying to do, which was to show the island as beautifully as it is and to respect the Moai and, you know, treat them with honor and all of that.

21:46So, but it was a mutual thing. I mean, we wanted them to know that we weren't, we were completely respectful. And they wanted us to know that they're, you know, spiritual monuments, You have to stay like a meter away from them at all times There can't be a big camera crew around them So once we kind of cleared all those hurdles We always had an archaeologist with us from the council And it just worked out beautifully When they heard it was you, were they like Oh my god, we love all your movies but one They actually liked that one Which made me want to shoot there even more We got a lot more to talk about We'll be right back with Martin McDonough

22:30We're back with Marvin McDonough from Wild Horse Nine. This is... Look, I know, you know, I have so much respect for your writing, and I know you put great care into word choice, and yet I did hear that this is the most you've let your actors sort of play with the script, maybe improvise a little. Yeah, yeah, I'm usually very pedantic about, like, every comma and every pause, et cetera. Still kind of am. But this, I did have a feeling, and I just spoke with Sam Rockwell about this like maybe a few years ago that this has the possibilities of being much more improvisational. So we did go along that route.

23:07We kind of hit every line that was in the script anyway. But they're like Sam and John particularly. They're like the perfect jazz musicians. So they knew the tune. We'd done it a few times. And then they could riff. I'd say there's probably at least one line of improv from Sam in every scene, I think. We, John and I were sort of applauding what a good eating actor Sam is. And you really, you tested it in this film. I don't think there's a single scene where he's not also eating. You'd think I did, but he added a lot more scenes that didn't have, I swear to God. Really? There's like an egg roll.

23:48There's like the breakfast scene. I didn't ask him to chop up a banana onto his Rice Krispies. So he's not just improvising dialogue. He was improvising food. Exactly, yeah. And he had a spit bucket there. And sometimes if you didn't call cut soon enough, I didn't do it on purpose, but he'd have to sort of swallow. It must be so, I mean, it's sort of the way I felt when I was lucky enough to write at SNL, right, with these incredible cast members. You know, you've worked with Sam before. Obviously, you know his voice. I think with John, you know, we kind of all know his voice, and yet this is different than anything I've seen him do before.

24:25Yeah. When you're sitting there and you're also directing a script you wrote and you're watching on the monitors, is it just so exciting to see what they're doing with these scripts? Totally. I think they're both the best of their generation, to be honest. We actually had a two weeks rehearsal, which started here in New York at the Public Theater. I think that's when both Sam and I particularly knew we had front row seats to the John Malkovich show. There was one line in the script about the who died and made you the Arch Pussy Ferdinand. A weird line, admittedly. One that my mum probably won't like.

25:05And John did it. And I just sort of suggested it could be a little angrier. And he did it in such a John Markovich way. And he just kind of exploded with the line that literally Sam and I just looked at each other like this. and we realized we're going to be okay on this film. It is really funny when you're working with an actor where the note is like, can you just do it more like you? And they know what you mean. Charlie Kaufman came up with John Malkovich. Yeah, but I mean, John is just a... I think in this particular... Like, you know John's got the anger stuff in his locker and he's got comedy chops in his locker.

25:49But in this, I think there's places in the script. In a lot of ways, the film's about regret and guilt and that kind of stuff. And it's those moments in the film where John's just quiet on his own, smoking a cigarette, where you see the darkness of the life he's lived and you can see how it's tearing him up. And there's no one who could do it like John can. I feel like you've done this thing in films that I was sort of watching this movie and realizing, oh, he's been able to do this before, which is, like, really interesting scenes where two characters are on the phone with each other. And I think that you would think that would seem, like, maybe a little flat and no action in it, but, you know, Ambrouge has great phone scenes, and I feel like Francis and Woody talk about the billboards on the phone.

26:39Yeah, or with Sam at the end, for sure. Yeah. This has Parker Posey. Yes. The goddess that Parker Posey is on the phone with Sam Rockwell, her husband in the movie. And then John and Tom Waits have a phone scene. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's some of the most gorgeous, again, like, I don't know, are you aware when you're shooting two people on the phone? I mean, again, I know you have a background as a playwright, so it is, like, dialogue-based. But there are also these, like, gorgeous scenes where the backgrounds of where people are on the phone. Well, that's the thing. I think as a director, you also, you don't want to be stuck in a room for five pages of this.

27:13So we put Parker Posey in a gorgeous place in Utah, and we put Tom Waits for his side of the phone call in Monument Valley at John Ford Point. And, you know, not inside his little shack. We got him to come out. So I think that's one of the things you've got to think about as a director. But also, like, with Parker, like, she comes in about 20 minutes into the film, but she's got to... We've loved sort of John and Sam at that point, so she's got to come in, like, on fire. and she does in this film. Yeah, no, it is fun right away. You're like, oh yeah, she's going to have no problem hanging with these guys.

27:47Exactly. It's such a wonderful film. I'm so excited everybody gets to see it this weekend. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you, Seth. Pretty much. Having done it, everyone. Wild Horse Nine will be in theaters this Friday, November 6th.

28:01Late Night with Seth Meyers airs weeknights on NBC at 1235, 1135 Central. Original music on the Late Night podcast is by the HE Band. Don't forget to follow the handle Late Night Seth on social media and tell your friends to subscribe to the Late Night Podcast wherever they get their podcasts.