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Seth Meyers: We'll 'reinvent' after election

Seth Meyers says he sees big changes in store after Nov. 9.

Sure, we'll have a new president. But the host of the “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on NBC, who has become known throughout the election cycle for his searing takes on politics and issues of the day, often Donald Trump, through his “A Closer Look” segments, says it's an opportunity to hit the restart button on his show, too.

"We never really came up with much of a plan in the first place. We found our place as we go,” Meyers said. "There’s an excitement both for relieving ourselves of the burden of feeling like we have to talk about this election every day. And also I think to some degree we’ll have a chance to sort of reinvent ourselves come middle of November, which I can assure you everyone on my writing staff, myself included, are very excited about."

And now, with just a month left until election day, Meyers is taking his New York based show to Washington, taping four nights of shows at the Warner Theatre this week.

“We will not be getting too close to the Trump hotel,” Meyers, who is also the former head writer for Saturday Night Live joked, noting that moving a show to a new city “seems like it puts a lot of life into the show.”

"You get into a nice rhythm with these shows four days a week and sometimes you have to do something fun to get everyone back on their toes,” he added. Though Meyers is known for his politics-heavy show — Meyers said he’s a big fan of tracking the polls — he said he and his writers do not approach each night as an opportunity to preach.

"We never do [politics] unless we think we have plenty of jokes to accompany it. We try very hard to remember that we are a comedy show first. If we want to talk about important things and try to make them Interesting and funny, we never do them if we can only make it interesting,” Meyers said.

Meyers famously took on Trump during the 2011 White House Correspondent’s Dinner and has since continued to be incredibly hard on the candidate. But after the dinner, which some people have cited as one of the sparks that led to Trump’s decision to run for president again, Meyers said he and Trump actually had a pleasant run-in during celebrations for Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary in 2014.

"We had a brief and pleasant interaction and then he had to go on and run for president,” Meyers said.

Whatever goodwill there was between the two evaporated after Trump began his campaign. Meyers denounced Trump’s proposal at one point to ban Muslims from entering the country temporarily, calling it “bigotry, plain and simple."

Initially, Meyers said they had a “tongue-in-cheek” ban on Trump appearing on the show, which solidified as Trump banned press outlets from his campaign.

“But the longer the tongue-in-cheek ban went on the more it became an actual position on the show. If they reached out and wanted to be on the show we would certainly listen, but we have decided to not be aggressive,” Meyers said.

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.