Late night hosts pan Trump's 'sociopathic' push to resurrect the U.S. economy by Easter
The Senate passed a $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue bill with $1,200 checks for Americans and a ban on bailouts for President Trump's businesses, Trevor Noah said on Wednesday's Daily Social Distancing Show. "Just take a second to appreciate how strange it is that lawmakers felt that they needed to write in that the president cannot use this money for himself and his family."
Meanwhile, coronavirus is spreading exponentially in the U.S., especially New York, and "while more and more countries around the world are shutting down to stop coronavirus from spreading ... Trump is preparing for a grand opening" by Easter, Noah said. It's a terrible idea to lift restrictions so soon, but urging people to cram into churches during a pandemic "is basically every supervillain's wet dream," he added. "Trump is like the Joker, just with more makeup."
Trump was already "terrible at Easter," Late Night's Seth Meyers said from his living room, but if his "plan to deal with a very contagious disease is to pack as many people as possible into enclosed spaces, have them touch their faces, and drink out of the same cup," that's straight-up "sociopathic governance."
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Trump clearly "cares more about the Dow than saving lives," and now he's "being goaded on in this sadistic plan to put profits over lives by CEOs, economic advisers, and fringe characters on the right who are actually suggesting that it might be worth letting some people die in order to save the economy," he said. "Glenn Beck accused Democrats of wanting to pull the plug on Grammy, and now 10 years later he's saying the stock market's down, Grammy's gotta go."
"Trump desperately wants to protect his beautiful stock market, and he keeps calling himself a 'wartime president,'" Jimmy Kimmel agreed. "Maybe if we call the coronavirus Vietnam, Trump would be okay with people staying home for it." Many of the Americans quarantined at home are "watching Friends, because you can't see your real ones," Kimmel said, and so he checked in with Courteney Cox and had her play Monica-based trivia with Kimmel's Friends-obsessed cousin Anthony.
"Earlier this month, before everyone was wearing masks and gloves, I met a people wearing, well, masks and gloves — furries," Amy Hoggart reported on Wednesday's Full Frontal. "We can learn a lot from people who were forced to social-distance before it was cool." Watch her surprisingly topical dispatch below. Peter Weber
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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