Late night hosts mock Trump's coronavirus ratings fixation, compare him with Tiger King's Joe Exotic
"For a lot of people, like myself, today began our third week of quarantine," Jimmy Kimmel said Monday night. "And this is where your survival skill start to kick in." President Trump, for example, "took time during this deadly national emergency to brag about the ratings for his press conferences," Kimmel said. "Just because people are watching you doesn't mean it's good. Have you heard of The Masked Singer? Right now half of this country is watching a show about a bunch of toothless meth-heads abusing tigers." Kimmel suggested Netflix and Disney+ team up to create a version of Tiger King the whole family can watch, and he showed how it might be done.
Yes, "Tiger King, this new Netflix series that is somehow even more viral than COVID-19," is "the only story that everybody's talking about right now," Trevor Noah said, after a global coronavirus update. Tiger King protagonist "Joe Exotic is not only one of the weirdest people you will ever meet in your life, he could also be president of the United States," Noah said. "He's self-absorbed, he's disorganized, he's obsessed with conspiracies," and "he loves portraying himself as an expert in his field, when the truth is he has no idea what he's talking about." Noah walked through a point-by-point comparison of Joe Exotic and Trump, concluding that Exotic "might be just as crazy as Trump, but at least if he's in the White House, we're gonna see tigers."
Late Night's Seth Meyers checked in on how Fox News is handling Trump's handling of the outbreak, and he found possible alcohol abuse and stony faces. Trump himself is "laser-focused on the crisis," he deadpanned, reading a tweet about Harry and Meghan. "Where are you getting your celebrity news during the pandemic? I know it's not People magazine, because even People magazine is covering the coronavirus." Meyers also rolled his eyes at Trump's ratings brags: "People are not tuning in because they all love you, they're tuning in because they're trapped inside," and "we're only trapped inside watching you because you kept ignoring the crisis and pretending it would go away, until it was too late."
The Late Show's Stephen Colbert asked guest John Oliver his opinion on Trump's handling of the crisis. "I really hope he turns it around," Oliver said. "I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, hope that he can pull a rabbit out of a hat, and that rabbit being competence. But I don't think it's safe for any of us to bank on that."
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