For all of Elon Musk’s billions, he couldn’t buy himself a state Supreme Court seat thanks to the voters of swing state Wisconsin.
That news has Late Night host Seth Meyers feeling joy for the first time in weeks—all because liberal judge Susan Crawford won an election Tuesday in a race that normally would have barely made national news.
“The richest man in the world tried to buy a seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court,“ Meyers said at the start of his show Wednesday.
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He continued, “Voters told [Musk], and I believe this is a local Wisconsin idiom dating back to the earliest French settlers who arrived in Green Bay in the 1600s, to ‘Eat cheese!‘”
What made Meyers so happy, he explained, was what the election revealed about the limits of Musk’s influence.
“So it turns out democracy still has a pulse,” Meyers said. “The richest man in the world can’t even buy an election.”
He concluded, “Even if he hands out game show-size million-dollar checks to voters, people are getting up off the mat and saying no to oligarchy. Elon can go to Wisconsin and eat all the cheese he wants, but all he’ll get out of it is some gas.”
Meyers played some news clips covering Crawford’s win, detailing how voters saw the race as a referendum on Musk’s increasingly unpopular presence in the Trump administration.
“Sorry, what is that feeling?” Meyers asked, feigning bewilderment. “It’s like I’m not grinding my teeth anymore. The air is fresh. The light’s warm. I can see colors again.”
Meyers took a sip from his coffee mug and declared, “I can taste my tea again. Oh, my God, this is... This must be how it feels when the news is good.“
“Let me see if it works with alcohol,” he said, taking a sip from the same mug.
“It was never tea,” he admitted. “I’m just joking, it hasn’t been tea since November.”
“And, yeah, I know it’s just a state judicial race, but I’ll take good news wherever I can get it,” Meyers explained. “I mean, I genuinely feel like my body is just a tiny bit lighter today.”
