Late night hosts ponder how Trump sees 200,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths as 'virtually nobody'

The U.S. enters fall with 200,000 COVID-19 deaths, and despite President Trump's "historic shanking of the coronavirus response, yesterday in Ohio, our pumpkin spice POTUS put a positive spin on things," claiming "it affects virtually nobody," Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show. In fact, "the coronavirus has now killed more Americans than the U.S. battle deaths from the last five wars combined," he said, deadpanning to his masked crew and non-existent live audience that "personally, I haven't been affected at all."

"Well, I think he's officially done 'up-playing' the virus," Jimmy Fallon said at The Tonight Show. "Trump said the virus 'affects virtually nobody,' then somebody in the front row sneezed and Trump hit the floor like he dropped his remote. After Trump made that comment, doctors and nurses wanted to respond, but they're currently in the middle of a 4,000-hour shift."

Meanwhile, before Trump has even chosen his Supreme Court nominee, "51 out of 53 Republicans are now on board, while the other two stick out like masks at a MAGA rally," he said. "I still can't believe we're letting Trump make that choice. He's terrible at hiring people. Everyone he's ever hired is either fired, in prison, or in Steve Bannon's case, almost both."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"We are only 42 days away from Donald Trump refusing to accept the results of an election," but he did win "the support of his least-favorite senator, Mitt Romney," for his Supreme Court push, Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "I wonder if the reason why they're doing this — why they're revealing themselves to be utter hypocrites — has occurred to Donald Trump. If Republicans thought he was gonna win, they'd just wait."

"Democrats still held a shred of hope that they could persuade four moderate GOP senators to show some integrity and stick to their principles — and that hope lasted almost a full day and a half," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. "Even Mitt Romney — the dad you ask when your other Republican dads say no — is going along with Mitch McConnell's plan." The Pentagon, meanwhile, spent $1 billion earmarked for COVID-19 equipment production on ship and fighter jet parts. "Why does the U.S. need more fighter jets?" he asked. "Coronavirus has killed way more Americans than any terrorist group. I bet right now ISIS is looking at COVID like, 'Damn, I know we said death to America, but you guys are extreme.'" Peter Weber