Late night hosts compare Trump's 'heat ray' request to various supervillains, slam his blue state erasure

Late night hosts on Trump&#039;s heat ray

(Image credit: Screenshots/YouTube/The Tonight Show, The Daily Show, The Late Show, Late Night)

published 18 September 2020

President Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. coronavirus pandemic isn't that bad — if you remove the blue states. "You can't just not count certain states — that's like eating a salad for lunch, a cheeseburger for dinner, then saying, 'If you don't count the burger, I'm vegan," Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday's Tonight Show. "All this COVID stuff is so depressing, do we have any lighter Trump news?." He did, if you count "heat rays" as "light" and trying to use them on protesters not depressing. "A heat ray?" Fallon asked. "Who are his advisers? A bunch of Minions stacked on top of each other? Even Kim Jong Un was like, 'That's pretty messed up, dude.'"

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Colbert mocked Attorney General William Barr's comparison of coronavirus lockdown orders to slavery and shared Trump's horror (but not his disbelief) that a coronavirus vaccine won't be widely available until next summer. "I've learned how to make sourdough, I've watched everything on Netflix — all that's left is exercise, and you can't make me!" he said. Colbert also explained why Trump's forget-the-blue-states remarks were "unspeakably monstrous."

Trump's "comments aren't just embarrassing and unpatriotic and just gross, they're also wrong," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. "Because even if you made the very weird decision to not count deaths from all the blue states, America would still have one of the worst death rates of any country in the world." Michael Kosta suggested granting Trump his wish and making him president of only the red states, and, like Barr, he also had trouble with slavery analogies.

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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.