Jimmy Kimmel: 'Needless suffering and death' is Trump’s new campaign slogan
Jimmy Kimmel
Despite Trump’s declaration Monday that the US has “prevailed” over coronavirus, infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci warned Congress in a televised hearing on Tuesday that reopening the country too soon would lead to “needless suffering and death”, which “I think is Trump’s new campaign slogan,” said Jimmy Kimmel. “Fauci and Trump seem to have opposite views of how to handle this – Trump says ‘we have prevailed!’ on the same day everyone at the White House was required to wear a mask,” he added. “So I guess it just comes down to who you believe: the doctor who’s one of the world’s leading experts on infectious disease, or our personal pan-president.”
To convey the stakes of reopening the country too soon – which, Fauci warned, could also hamper economic recovery – Kimmel used the metaphor of a scab, “a big, black scab on our nation’s face. It’s not pretty; in fact, it’s ugly. It’s doing an important job – it’s healing and containing the wound. The best thing you can do with a scab is be patient and let it fall off. Unfortunately, there are some impatient people who want to dig their tiny orange fingernails into the scab and rip it off early and eat it.
“And while that would feel good for like a second, if you rip off the scab and the wound is still bleeding under there, you have to start all over again with a new scab,” Kimmel said. “So what Dr Fauci is saying is the same thing your mother said: don’t pick the scab.”
Meanwhile, leadership at Fox News, “the little engine behind the back to work movement”, according to Kimmel, decided to keep their New York offices closed through at least 15 June. “Isn’t that something? Fox News, the ones who are making fun of people cowering at home, is advising its employees to stay home,” said Kimmel. “Because apparently, they don’t get their news from Fox News.”
Finally, Kimmel touched on Trump’s new distraction technique of “Obamagate”, a vague, made-up scandal he has propagated since Yahoo News leaked remarks by the former president criticizing Trump’s response to the coronavirus as a chaotic disaster. In an interview with Trump’s daughterin-law Lara, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, called Obama’s critique of the administration “classless”.
“Wait … Obama is classless?” exclaimed Kimmel. “He’s joking – of all the wildly hypocritical things anyone has ever said about anything during this ordeal, the idea that Obama is classless and shouldn’t say bad things about another president – that might take the cake.”
Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah also
addressed Trump’s made-up “Obamagate” conspiracy theory – or, at least, tried to discern what it’s supposed to be about. On Monday, when asked to explain by a reporter, Trump responded: “You know what the crime is, the crime is very obvious to everybody, all you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.”
“OK, that’s just weird – according to Trump, Obama committed the worst political crime in American history,” Noah said, quoting Trump’s words on Twitter, “but Trump won’t tell us what the crime is. Because it’s so obvious that you don’t even need to ask … even though everyone needs to ask.
“Trump is treating Obama less like a criminal and more like they’re in a relationship and Trump feels like Obama messed up,” Noah added, breaking out his Trump impersonation: “If you don’t know what you did wrong, well I’m not going to tell you.”
“So we have no idea what Obamagate actually is supposed to be,” Noah concluded. “And I don’t think Trump actually knows either. In fact, I think the only lesson Trump learned from Watergate is that things he doesn’t like should have the word “-gate” after it – Obamagate, salad-gate, Eric-gate.”
Stephen Colbert
“Listening to health experts testify today, you might feel like we’ve got a long battle ahead of us,” said Stephen Colbert of Fauci’s virtual testimony before the Senate on Tuesday, “but according to the president, we’ve already won.” On Monday, Trump said in a White House briefing that America has “met the moment and we have prevailed” despite rising coronavirus cases across the country and Fauci’s warning that opening the US too soon would lead to “needless suffering and death”.
“Look, I think our country is gonna pull through this, but that seems a little premature,” said Colbert of Trump’s proclamation. “It’s like passing out cigars on your first date, yelling: ‘it’s a boy!’”
Trump, pressed by a reporter, clarified that he meant America has “prevailed on testing”. “Oh, we’re prevailing on something we needed to do months ago,” Colbert deadpanned. “I think his propaganda banner might need a slight change: ‘America leads the world in testing – but not for everyone, terms and conditions apply, side-effects may include no testing.”