Late night hosts are mixed on Nancy Pelosi 'fat-shaming' Trump, agree his hydroxychloroquine use is idiotic

Late night hosts on Pelosi fat-shaming Trump
(Image credit: Screenshots/YouTube/The Late Show, Late Night, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Daily Showive, The Daily Show)

"It wasn't just doctors who were shocked at Trump's self-medicating" with hydroxychloroquine, Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "had some choice words to express her concern for the president," including "a very polite way" of calling Trump morbidly obese. "It's important to point out that fat-shaming is wrong," he said. "Plenty of wonderful people are old and fat and beloved, like Santa. But guess what? Santa shouldn't take hydroxychloroquine, either!"

Trump dismissed Pelosi as "a waste of time," but he lashed out proper at Fox News host Neil Cavuto for warning viewers not to follow Trump's lead.

The Daily Show's Trevor Noah agreed that Pelosi should not have "weight-shamed" Trump, because that hurts everyone overweight, but "as a Democrat, trolling Donald Trump is her constitutional duty." The criticism from Fox News was "more surprising," he said, but mostly "I feel so bad for this guy's secret service."

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Trump could also just be skillfully distracting everyone from a story that would ordinarily "blow up into a major scandal," Noah noted. Instead of talking about Trump's firing of the State Department inspector general, at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, we're talking about Trump's drug use.

"You have to hand it to Trump: Just when you think it can't get any crazier, he starts popping FDA-disapproved drugs and telling everyone else to try it, too," Jimmy Kimmel said. "Our president is a hydroxy-moron" who "thinks a lupus drug kills coronavirus." He read some of the side effects. "Why would he do this to prevent coronavirus and not wear a mask to prevent the virus?" Kimmel asked. "I have come to what I think is the only reasonable conclusion: He's trying to kill himself."

Tooning Out the News had its own way of expressing concern for Trump's health.

Hydroxychloroquine's "side effects can potentially include agitation, insomnia, confusion, mania, hallucinations, paranoia, as well as lasting psychiatric and neurological symptoms," Late Night's Seth Meyer noted. "So either Trump's lying about taking it ... or he's been taking it for 73 years?" It's shocking but not surprising, he said, that "a huckster who spent his career pushing scam products and miracle cures" is "doing the same thing with a pandemic" now he's president. Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

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.