President Trump suggested injecting household disinfectant as a possible cure for COVID-19 last Thursday, as The
Late Show — and every other late-night show — noted extensively Monday.
"From the beginning of this crisis,
Donald Trump has been saying a lot of not-smart things," but "injecting disinfectant into your body?"
Trevor Noah said at The Daily Social Distancing Show. "This is the problem when the dumbest person in the room thinks they're the smartest person. You know, Trump is like Neville Longbottom but with Hermione's confidence."People in several states evidently took Trump seriously, flooding poison control with calls. Delightfully, Noah said, "even the people who are dumb enough to drink bleach are still smart enough not to trust something Donald Trump said." And "after Trump's supporters spent the entire day defending him, the president went back on TV to make his fans look like idiots, too," claiming his suggestion was "sarcastic," Noah said, finding one "upside" to this debacle: "When all of this is over, and other countries are asking Americans, 'How the hell did you elect Donald Trump?' Americans can be, like, 'No, dude, dude, we were just being sarcastic."
"Can we claim we were being sarcastic when we elected him president" and get rid of him now?
Jimmy Kimmel asked. "Dr. Donald Jingelheimer Trump spent the weekend trying to pretend he wasn't really suggesting we should infect disinfectant into our bodies," but everyone from the EPA to Lysol felt it necessary to repudiate Trump's comments. "I think this might be the first president ever to embarrass a cleaning product," Kimmel said.
"The quarantine is driving everyone a little crazy, except Donald Trump — it's driving him a lot crazy," A Late Show's
Stephen Colbert said. "Injecting bleach to fight the coronavirus? It's not enough that his supporters are all white on the outside.""Trump got so much heat for the comment that he threatened to stop doing press briefings at all," Colbert said. It obviously didn't last, but he did miss Sunday's briefing, instead spending
first lady Melania Trump's 50th birthday venting about reporters and their "Noble Prizes" on
Twitter. "Now Trump clearly meant the Nobel Prize, except there is not Nobel Prize for journalism," he said. "So Trump revived his new favorite defense," sarcasm.
Yes, after Trump's "psychotic" disinfectant suggestion, "he cycled through his series of obviously B.S. excuses, starting with the classic, 'I was just joking,'" Late Night's
Seth Meyers said. "Because if there's one thing people want from leadership during a pandemic, it's sarcasm — and that was me using sarcasm." Watch Meyers explain how this is hurting Trump politically below.