President Trump "can't hold rallies right now because the coronavirus would threaten the lives of his supporters, and Politics 101 is do not kill your voters," Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show. "So Trump has turned the coronavirus press briefings at the White House every day into these little rallies," and "he outdid himself" Monday with "a two-and-a-half-hour-long insane, emotional, misinforming, propagandistic press conference."
Trump was angry about exposés detailing his "well-known public failure to take the coronavirus seriously, so he forced the assembled press to watch a video of his supposed coronavirus success," Colbert said. Trump's video "skipped over the entire month of February," and when CBS's Paula Reid pointed that out, Trump popped. Colbert filled in the blanks.
The Daily Show also recreated Trump's lost February.
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Tooning Out the News detected a pattern in Trump's press belligerence.
Trump "gave really an all-timer of a press conference yesterday — he was almost foaming at the mouth," Jimmy Kimmel said. Along with attacking the press, Trump also bizarrely picked a fight with governors over his claimed "total" right to call the shots on reopening the economy, contradicting decades of Republican orthodoxy, Kimmel said. You can't embrace "states' rights" and "the total authority of the federal government at the same time. It's like Thanos having an Iron Man–themed birthday party." He gawked at one of Trump's "unbelievable" tweets: "Not only is he threatening not to help states with federal assistance — with our money — the captain from Mutiny on the Bounty, in the end of that movie, was judged to be unfit to lead."
Trump is anxious to restart America's economy as soon as his historically wrong instincts say it's time, Trevor Noah said at his Daily Social Distancing Show. But lucikly, "America doesn't really need to rely on the president's instincts here. Governors are the ones who locked down their states, and governors are the ones who will decide when to open the states back up."
"When Trump heard that the states were going to be deciding on whether or not to reopen their economies, regardless of his decision, he was quick to remind people that his business cards might say president, but y'all better treat him like the king," Noah said. "But the truth is, Donald, if you're not there for the battle, you don't get to lead the victory parade." Watch below. Peter Weber
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