Late night hosts are bemused at Trump's encouragement of the 'virus huggers' flouting his own advice
After a month of isolation, "some of us are starting to go a little kooky in the old squirrel cage," Stephen Colbert said on Monday's Late Show. "Like a handful of idiots who were out this weekend protesting against social distancing." That's so out of the mainstream, he said, that "on Thursday, even Donald Trump encouraged social distancing — and the next day tweeted his support of the protests."
"To be clear, Trump is encouraging his followers to protest his own recommendations," Colbert said. The president said these "virus huggers" are justified in protesting because they are bored, he sighed. "Just because you have 'cabin fever' doesn't give you the right to go out and spread fever fever!" Colbert also noted Monday's historic plunge in oil futures: "Negative 40 bucks! I think that means when you go to the gas station, you get a free tank and $40 worth of Slim Jims. Now to save their profits, Texas oilfields are immediately switching over to drilling for toilet paper."
"There's so much oil right now that there's nowhere left to store it, so they're just paying people to take it off their hands," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. "It's essentially how we're all going to feel in a few months about all that toilet paper we hoarded."
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The anti-lockdown protests are "insane and counterproductive," and they "have clearly been infused with a far-right ideology," Noah said. "Many demonstrators wore MAGA hats, they held up anti-Semitic signs, and in Michigan, they even waved Confederate flags, a clear symbol of Michigan's proud Southern heritage. But it's not just fringe right-wing groups who have been stoking the flames. It's also mainstream right-wing groups, like Fox News."
The biggest problem is that "all of these morons are also have the support of the moron-in-chief," who's urging this "tiny minority" to violate the guidelines he just announced, Noah said. "It's like Trump is a head coach who told his team to kick a field goal, but now he's on the sidelines heckling them for doing it."
"People are getting restless, especially people who aren't too bright," Jimmy Kimmel said, pointing first to the people crowding a Florida beach on Saturday. He also found it "irresponsible to the most unbelievable degree" for Trump to urge his followers to "LIBERATE" states following White House guidelines, especially when Trump himself "refuses to even liberate Melania." 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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