NBC’s Seth Meyers welcomed MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow to Tuesday’s edition of Late Night for the nightly anti-Trump gripe session. Maddow made sure to hit the usual notes, including calling Trump “an authoritarian guy,” but hit some new ones as well as she claimed that Trump is ensuring that the military will be able to kill us all with A.I.
At one point in their discussion, Meyers said of Trump, “Rachel, I don't know if you agree with me. I think he might be unwell.”
Amid laughter and applause from the audience, Maddow responded, “Well—I can't speak to that. But I can say one thing, which is he's a type. Right? He is—and I don't just mean, like, ‘New York real estate scam artist.’ I mean, like, he's a type. He's an authoritarian guy. He's Blond Berlusconi. You know what I mean?”
Rachel Maddow tells Seth Meyers that Trump is "an authoritarian guy. He's Blond Berlusconi" and that he's gonna get us all killed "So, it's like been hard, I think, to imagine, 'How is it that the A.I. Apocalypse would happen?' 'How is it that A.I. Might kill us?' Well, the… pic.twitter.com/hFXpl3FMOj
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) September 30, 2026
Maddow elaborated that, “All these guys are the same thing. And in every authoritarian government, everywhere in the world, the one thing they've all got in common is that the rest of the government doesn't matter.”
She also declared that “There’s all these things that are important about the government, and the military, and the way that we run, but—we run as a country that he doesn't care about, because it's not him controlling them. And so, he thinks it's irrelevant, and he's about to learn a very hard lesson in that regard once the Democrats take Congress back.”
Meyers then switched to A.I., “Another thing, I don't wanna be—A.I., right? Like, we're living this moment where—certainly in the last, like, two weeks, scarier prognostications about what the future of A.I. will be. I don't necessarily think if we had Democrats in power, we'd be better set for this moment. But we do seem like we have a guy in charge who doesn't wanna think about it at all. Is this the wrong guy to solve A.I.?”
Maddow replied, “I will say two things. First of all, The Washington Post just reported this week that Trump administration lawyers made sure to scuttle the international discussions that would have said that A.I. programs aren't allowed to kill people with military weapon systems without humans checking first on what they're trying to kill. So, Trump moved explicitly to make sure no human can interfere with robots' ability to kill us.”
She also claimed that “So, it's, like, been hard, I think, to imagine, ‘How is it that the A.I. Apocalypse would happen?’ ‘How is it that A.I. might kill us?’ Well, the really easy thing to imagine is them using military weapons to kill us, and Trump is intervening to make sure they can.”
That’s not an honest look at A.I. and the military. If someone programs A.I. to believe that 2+2=5, it does not make sense to blame the robot for believing that 2+2=5. If Maddow wants to claim that somebody in the military should do a better job of ensuring that the target list that the A.I. relies on and that was developed years before the war is still accurate, she can, but this idea that the computers have gained full sentience and are about to kill us all in service of the authoritarian Trump is nonsense.
Here is a transcript for the September 28-taped show:
NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers
9/30/2026
1:19 AM ET
SETH MEYERS: Rachel, I don't know if you agree with me. I think he might be unwell.
RACHEL MADDOW: Uh, well—
MEYERS: I think he might be unwell.
MADDOW: Well—I can't speak to that. But I can say one thing, which is he's a type. Right? He is—and I don't just mean, like, "New York real estate scam artist."
MEYERS: Yeah.
MADDOW: I mean, like, he's a type. He's an authoritarian guy. He's Blond Berlusconi. You know what I mean?
MEYERS: Yeah.
MADDOW: Like, he's—all these guys are the same thing. And in every authoritarian government, everywhere in the world, the one thing they've all got in common is that the rest of the government doesn't matter.
MEYERS: Yeah.
MADDOW: It's just them. It's only—the—your foreign policy is what the guy decided to burp out about foreign policy that day. Your economic policy, same thing. The whole government just exists to serve him, and everything else kind of falls away. And that's why there isn't, like, legislation being signed. Like, his party controls both houses of Congress. They haven't passed legislation in a very, very long time because he's not interested in that 'cause it's not about him.
MEYERS: Right.
MADDOW: And so, there's all these things that are important about the government, and the military, and the way that we run, but—we run as a country that he doesn't care about, because it's not him controlling them. And so, he thinks it's irrelevant, and he's about to learn a very hard lesson in that regard once the Democrats take Congress back.
MEYERS: Another thing, I don't wanna be—A.I., right? Like, we're living this moment where—certainly in the last, like, two weeks, scarier prognostications about what the future of A.I. will be. I don't necessarily think if we had Democrats in power, we'd be better set for this moment. But we do seem like we have a guy in charge who doesn't wanna think about it at all.
MADDOW: No. Yeah.
MEYERS: Is this the wrong guy to solve A.I.?
MADDOW: I will say two things. First of all, The Washington Post just reported this week that Trump administration lawyers made sure to scuttle the international discussions that would have said that A.I. programs aren't allowed to kill people with military weapon systems without humans checking first—
MEYERS: Right.
MADDOW: On what they're trying to kill. So, Trump moved explicitly to make sure no human can interfere with robots' ability to kill us.
MEYERS: Right.
MADDOW: So, it's, like, been hard, I think, to imagine, "How is it that the A.I. Apocalypse would happen?" "How is it that A.I. might kill us?" Well, the really easy thing to imagine is them using military weapons to kill us –
MEYERS: Yeah.
MADDOW: —And Trump is intervening to make sure they can.
