Stephen Colbert: America is in trouble – 'or as Trump puts it: promises made, promises kept'
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped a week of troubling debates over reopening the country in Washington. “While Trump keeps trying to lure us out of safety, health experts are warning of dire consequences if we do,” he said, such as Dr Rick Bright, a former health department official who filed a whistleblower complaint claiming he was fired because of his opposition to Trump’s support of hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment. (It’s unproven and could have lethal side-effects). On Thursday, Bright warned Congress about reopening too early, and recalled the dark moment when he realized America was in “deep shit” after a supplier told him they had run out of masks.
“Yes, thanks to poor planning, America is in deep shit,” Colbert said. “Or, as Trump puts it, ‘promises made, promises kept’.”
Bright’s testimony echoed that of Dr Anthony Fauci, who warned Congress earlier this week that Americans should be cautious in reopening schools and other businesses to avoid another crippling outbreak. Nevertheless, Trump told Fox Business Network on Thursday morning that “we have to get the schools open, we have to get our country open now. We want to do it safely, but we also want to do it as quickly as possible.”
“And as we know, the way to do something safely is to do it as quickly as possible,” Colbert quipped. “That’s why custodians put up those floor signs: ‘Caution, run as fast as you can!’”
Trump also tried to reassure the public that coronavirus does “very little damage” to “young and frankly medium-aged people,” and Colbert picked up on the weird age distinction. “For Trump, age categories go: live with your mother, Miss Teen USA, mediumage, ex-wife and biggie-generian,” he joked.
In the same interview, Trump brushed off projections of 100,000 American dead as the “bottom level of the scale” that could have been worse. “Yes, the number of dead is actually unthinkable,” Colbert said, imitating the president, “but to be fair, how about a little gratitude – I didn’t kill all of you, and that was definitely an option.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers also recapped the testimony of Dr Rick Bright, who claims he was fired for resisting Trump’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine – what Meyers called the
“Furbee” of coronavirus treatments.
But “instead of listening to Bright and taking his warnings seriously,” said Meyers, Trump appeared on Fox News Thursday morning to brag about the travel ban imposed on China in January; “I put in a wall, we put in a very strong wall,” he said, which means “there’s a good chance Trump thinks there is a literal wall between the US and China,” said Meyers.
Meanwhile, reports have revealed that the other strategy attempt Trump deployed as America shut down in midMarch – touting testing facilities at big businesses such as Target and CVS – hasn’t worked, as most of the promised facilities haven’t emerged. “This is why we need an actual functioning centralized federal government that listens to scientists, instead of just relying on private companies to do things that don’t benefit their investors or their bottom lines,” Meyers said. The failure illustrates how “Republicans love to hollow out the federal government and outsource everything to big business, and then complain that government is incompetent and should be run like a business,” he continued.
“That’s their scam: make government incompetent, and then use that incompetence as proof that government is bad. They’re like a husband who cheats on his wife and says, ‘See, this is proof that we need an open marriage.’”
Trevor Noah
And on the Daily Show, Trevor Noah investigated the meaning of Trump’s “Obamagate” – a conspiracy for which “Fox News hasn’t been this excited since the last time Colin Kaepernick bent down to tie his shoes.”
Trump tweeted, without explanation, “OBAMAGATE” over the weekend; when asked earlier this week what crimes he was accusing Obama of, Trump evaded answering. But the basic idea, so the claim goes, is that when Obama was president, he illegally used the power of the justice department to spy on his political enemy Donald Trump. “And if you’re thinking,” Noah added, “didn’t he already do this like a year ago? And he called it ‘Spygate?’” You are correct. “It’s called a reboot,” Noah quipped.
After the 2016 election, intelligence officials investigated Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn for secret conversations with foreign powers, a process which involved “unmasking” his identity to government officials – a standard government procedure practiced thousands of times a year. “But that isn’t stopping Donald Trump from proposing his favorite solution to any problem: lock. Them. Up,” Noah said. “Trump loves sending people to jail. I bet that jail in Monopoly was Donald Trump’s idea.”
The full conspiracy theory is “actually pretty complicated – I mean, it’s too much for my little brain,” Noah said, so he looped in Daily Show correspondent Desi Lydic, who “volunteered to watch Fox News non-stop” to explain the theory in a parody of Fox’s crazed, paranoid style: “It’s past time for Donald Trump to drain the swamp, folks, and everyone is in on it – the FBI, the CIA, the XFL, the PT Cruiser, the will.i.am,” she said. “Put it all together and what do you get? I’d spell it out for you, but Fauci’s probably listening.”