Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert explain why Trump is fiddling as the coronavirus burns

As the Democrats brawled in South Carolina, "President Trump is on his way home from India," where "he believes the reception he got was like nothing the Indian people had ever given before," Jimmy Kimmel laughed on Tuesday's Kimmel Live. "Of course he got a big reception — they love cows in India."

Trump's former doctor, Ronny Jackson, just revealed some secrets he used to try to keep the president healthier, though Kimmel noted that hiding the ice cream and sneaking cauliflower into the mashed potatoes is "what we do with our 5-year-old at home." In other medical news, "the stock market was down a lot again today, in part because of the coronavirus, which is spreading," he said. "This morning, the president tweeted that 'the coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,' which means we're in a lot of trouble. I mean, we just found out they had to trick him into eating vegetables. Do we really think he has a handle on the coronavirus?"

"One person who is not concerned about the coronavirus is recent Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Rush Limbaugh," Kimmel sighed. As a counterpoint, he showed a real coronavirus SWAT drill in China.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

YouTube

Watch On

"In lighter news, we're all going to die," Stephen Colbert said on The Late Show. "Today, top health officials issued dire warnings about the coronavirus, or COVID-19." Until recent, "the coronavirus has mostly been restricted to China and people who have traveled to China," he said, but now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "believes the virus is headed here," and could be really bad.

"Fear of the coronavirus is already ravaging Wall Street — on Monday, the Dow tumbled more than 1,000 points, which was its third-worst point drop in history, effectively erasing all gains for 2020," Colbert said. "Then just today, the Dow closed down by almost 900 points! Good Lord, if it goes any lower, I'll have to find out what a 'Dow' is."

But "one man doesn't seem too worried: Donald Trump," Colbert said. And "there's a reason Trump is trying to downplay the coronavirus fears. If the CDC is right about this outbreak, it might be Trump's fault. Because in 2018, the Trump administration fired the government's entire pandemic response chain of command. Trump did not replace them. So currently, our pandemic response team is Ivanka and a bottle of Airborne." Watch below. Peter Weber

YouTube

Watch On