Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert capped another bizarre and frustrating week of Donald Trump “royally shanking his coronavirus press conferences” with an assessment of his latest strategy: inviting individual governors to the Oval Office. On Thursday, the president met with New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, for a press call in which he latched on to an analogy Murphy used for coronavirus shock: “As Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.”
“It makes sense that Trump would relate to Mike Tyson,” said Colbert. “They’re both 80s pop culture icons with horrible histories with women who need no excuse to eat a human ear.”
As for the rest of his press conferences this week, in which the president threw around words rather than guidelines, it seems “Trump doesn’t talk like a guy who knows what he’s talking about”, said Colbert.
Colbert admired in particular Trump’s gall to say the US will somehow be rid of the virus because it will “disappear” with or without a vaccine – “If you don’t have a vaccine and the virus is gone, we’re like we were before,” Trump said. “Oh, where we were before, good!” Colbert deadpanned. “So instead of being in a global pandemic, we’ll go back to being completely unprepared for a global pandemic.”
“Here’s the thing: Trump doesn’t want everything to go back to normal because we’re ready for it to go back to normal,” Colbert concluded. “He wants everything to go back to normal because he’s bored.” Indeed, Trump told reporters this week that he’s been in the White House for months and would “like to get out”.
“Mr President, we would all like to get you out of the White House,” Colbert responded.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers reacted to a truly galling BuzzFeed News report that New York state, on the direct recommendation of the White House coronavirus taskforce, paid $69.1m to a mobile-phone engineer in California who simply tweeted at Trump that he could supply ventilators. That’s three times the retail price of high-end ventilators to someone without medical device experience; not a single ventilator has been delivered on the contract.
“This is insane,” said Meyers. “I mean, we’re talking about a guy who’s the most powerful person on Earth – there’s literally a law that allows him to compel companies to make ventilators – and he’s combing through his Twitter replies like he’s putting a band together – ‘Oh, this guy’s got an amp … well, that could come in really handy.’”
Meyers also rebuffed Trump’s repeated claims this week that no one could have seen a pandemic coming, or that the White House has handled coronavirus well. “Trump had the chance to act early, to prevent both the public health crisis and the economic one, and instead he chose to ignore and downplay the threat,” Meyers said. And part of that failure is Trump’s “spectral son-in-law” Jared Kushner, who on Wednesday told Fox and Friends that the government’s response to the virus was a “great success story”.
“A great success story? You’re not even a great success story,” Meyers retorted. “You’re only in the White House because Ivanka lost Tom Brady’s phone number in one of her sweatshop handbags. You shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House; you should be confessing to Christopher Meloni at the end of an episode of Law & Order.”
“Seriously, we have one million cases, 60,000 deaths and 30 million out of work,” Meyers continued. “If this is a success, what would failure look like? The Statue of Liberty getting laid off and developing a weed habit in quarantine?”
Trevor Noah
The Daily Show
(@TheDailyShow)Apple makes its phones easier to unlock with face ID while wearing a mask, Elon Musk throws a tantrum about having to stay inside, and a Trump reply guy gets a ventilator contract via Twitter. pic.twitter.com/gajm49coqg
Trevor Noah also discussed the insane story of the ventilator contract via random tweet on Thursday’s Daily Social Distancing Show. “First of all, if someone tells you the price of anything is $69m, it’s a joke – 69 is pranking 101,” Noah said. “And second, of all, nice.”
Noah had to backtrack and repeat the story just to process it: “Some random guy tweeted President Trump asking him for a ventilator contract, and … his wish was just granted? Just like that? He said, ‘I want this thing,’ and then he got the thing?”
“I mean, let this be a warning,” Noah concluded. “The next time you tweet at the president telling him that you’ve got Hillary’s emails and deez nuts? Don’t be shocked if Trump shows up to collect.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel again poked at our “hungry hungry hippo-crite” in chief, who spent the week “saying everything is great while simultaneously blaming everyone who isn’t him for why it’s all so terrible”.
Trump has been complaining that his administration inherited bad tests, “which makes no sense”, said Kimmel. “No 1, you can’t have a test for a virus before a virus exists, and No 2, he’s in no position to be complaining about inheriting anything. If it wasn’t for inheritance, he would be the doorman outside one of the buildings his father gave him.”
But if he’s not moved by coronavirus and increasing unemployment, Trump gets heated about bad poll; he was reportedly so upset by his poll numbers vis-a-vis Joe Biden in swing states last week that he threatened to sue his campaign manager. Clearly, his campaign is “running like a well-turmoiled machine”, said Kimmel.
And on Wednesday, Trump dismissed the polls outright, telling Reuters: “I don’t believe the polls. I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think they’ll put a man in who’s incompetent.”
“We did it last time, why wouldn’t we do it again?” Kimmel responded.
