Stephen Colbert
Four weeks into the coronavirus shutdown, there are many things Stephen Colbert misses about the Before Times. But “one thing I have not been missing is Donald Trump”, Colbert said from his home on Tuesday night. “And yet, he persists.”
The Late Show host joked about the president’s latest press conference, in which he lashed out at a Fox News reporter for asking about continued shortages in testing and denied a critical report from the inspector general. But he broke when he got to a clip of Trump calling ABC News’s Jonathan Karl a “third-rate reporter” who will “never make it” after Karl asked about the inspector general’s report.
“What is wrong with him?” Colbert asked. “Look, for the record, this inspector general started under Bill Clinton, served for eight years for George W Bush, eight years for Barack Obama.” Colbert cut himself off – “You know what? Who gives a shit?
“Trump doesn’t understand that no one cares about these hissy fits any more,” he continued. “All of the drama no longer plays to the camera, sir, not even to your own supporters. Because it doesn’t matter who you voted for – everyone just wants to know the truth, because that’s how you stay alive. So grow up and do your damn job! We have to. You should, too.”
Colbert took a deep breath and paused. “Is it still Tuesday?”
In other news, Trump also disclosed a phone call with the former vice-president Joe Biden, which he called a “perfectly friendly conversation”. “Yes, it was a perfectly friendly conversation,” Colbert said. “Joe Biden offered advice on how to deal with the pandemic, and Trump asked Biden if he had any dirt on Joe Biden.”
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also decried Trump’s fact-free briefings, including his insistence that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine can be used to treat coronavirus (doctors say there is no evidence for this, and taking the drug can have lethal side effects). “Well now it turns out Trump’s inexplicable passion for this drug might be a bit more explicable,” said Kimmel, because “turns out, he has a financial stake in the company that makes the drug. Of course he does. Do we really think he went out of his way to learn how to say hydroxychloroquine for no reason?”
Profiting from this unproven treatment “would be like if he tried to host the G7 summit at one of his own resorts”, said Kimmel. “Oh, he did that? Never mind.”
As for the lashings of White House journalists such as ABC’s Karl, Kimmel suggested the press crew band together. “One day, all the reporters should get together and agree to only ask Trump nice questions, just to be dicks,” he said. “One after the other, they should get up and go: ‘Mr President, why was your bold leadership so perfect and effective?’ Wouldn’t that be the best?”
Trevor Noah
And on the Daily Social Distancing Show, Trevor Noah turned to the biggest non-corona story of the week: voting, which “has gone from being a boring civic duty to a recipe for disaster”, he said. “Crowds of people packed in a tight space together, sharing pens, elderly poll workers – it’s a coronavirus all-you-can-eat buffet.”
Because of those risks, many states have decided to postpone their primary elections until later this year – except Wisconsin. The state held its primary election on Tuesday as scheduled, “which, as you can imagine, is a big problem, because not only were Wisconsinites forced to choose between their health and civic duty, but thanks to so many poll workers dropping out, the number of voting sites was slashed across the state”, Noah explained.
In Wisconsin today, voting went from being a civic duty to a recipe for a public health disaster. pic.twitter.com/yVwUiIOXAH
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 8, 2020
That was especially true in urban areas – the number of polling stations in Milwaukee dropped from 180 to just five. “Five polling sites for a city of 600,000 people. And I’m sorry guys, those numbers just don’t make sense,” said Noah, struggling to do the math. “The point is: it’s unfair to the voters.”
The meltdown left people waiting for hours to vote in lines snaking around the city, which is “ridiculous”, said Noah. “There are only two reasons people should be waiting in line for hours around a block: either Baby Yoda is doing a meet-and-greet, or you’re buying a pair of sneakers that are too nice to ever wear.”
The obvious question, Noah continued, is why didn’t Wisconsin delay its election like every other state? The state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, tried to extend mail-in voting, but the Republican legislature and supreme court blocked him, for reasons that some Republicans have made shockingly clear. Expanding voting would mean “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again”, Trump said on a phone call with Fox News last month. Georgia’s speaker of the house said that driving up voter turnout would be “devastating to Republicans”.
“This is insane, man – these Republicans are afraid that if more people get access to voting, they’re going to lose elections,” said Noah. “So instead of just coming up with policies that are more popular, they’d rather just make it harder to vote. Basically, these Republicans believe in the free market for everything except themselves.”
