Trump Pretends He Never Compared Coronavirus to the Flu: A Closer Look

-Hello everyone and welcome back to another edition of “Late Night” in a makeshift home studio. And as you can see, we are trying another location at my house. We had been filming in a garage, but we abandoned it because it was so cold that by the end of Monday's "Closer Look," my nose was redder than a cartoon drunk's. I mean,

look

at that thing. It was like "Late Night with Andy Capp." No, I would

never

have made an Andy Capp reference in front of a live audience because the silence would have been deafening, but these days that's the reaction to everything.

So I thought, you know, why not let it pop? So today we are going to try it from a tight space in the attic, and when I told my 4 year old dad that I was going up in the attic for a while, he said the cutest thing. "If you and mom are getting divorced, tell us." Kids, right? And it

look

s like I'll be doing these shows from home for a while now that the president has extended social distancing guidelines through the end of April as he and his allies try to remember their early dismissal of the

coronavirus

outbreak.

To learn more about this, it's time for "A Closer Look." ♪♪ Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to claim that no one could have foreseen this crisis, even though he was repeatedly warned in intelligence briefings in January and February that it was coming. In fact, the "New York Times" reported Tuesday that White House economists published a study last September that warned that a pandemic disease could kill half a million Americans and devastate the economy. This was ignored within the administration. "Neglected" is a generous description. Actually, what probably happened was that an economist put the study on Trump's desk and said, "Sir, you should read this," and he said, "What is it, nerd?" And then the economist said: "This is a possible pandemic." And Trump said, "What's a pandemic, Poindexter?" And then the economist said, "A pandemic is when a disease spreads," and before he could finish, Trump was asleep at his desk with a Burger King wrapper stuck to his face.

Probably. And, of course, he didn't pay attention. Trump doesn't pay attention. He doesn't listen to the law. He doesn't listen to advice. And above all he does not pay attention to studies. In fact, it makes it much harder for everyone else to pay attention to studies. For example, at his Tuesday night press conference, he handed the microphone to task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, who took the reporters' room through a series of important slides with valuable data. , and Trump just walked up and stood right in front of it. from the screen. "Hey, man, we're trying to read.

Get out of the way." "Should I stand here in front of the screen so you can't read it? Is that helpful, Dr. Birx? Dr. Birx? Maybe I'll stand in front of the part that represents the moment when I should have done something." When did I not do anything? What do you think, Fauci? Uh-oh, I've got you again, Fauci. I have to touch your face again. Oh, this is my favorite game, Fauci, and I always win. I'm just kidding, we're friends. Trump and Fauci, the original Lenny and Squiggy. That's what people say." Seriously, man, the only reason anyone tunes in to these briefings is to listen to the scientists.

They're the main presentation. You're a dancing box of singing popcorn -- ♪ Let's go out to the lobby ♪ ♪ Let's go out to the lobby ♪ ♪ Let's go out to the lobby ♪ ♪ And ignore this scary fact ♪ And that wasn't the only warning the Trump administration got. In fact, even before Trump took office, President Obama's outgoing team tried to prepare to Trump and his aides for a scenario exactly like this. -Days before Donald Trump took office, some of President Obama's advisers guided the incoming president's team through a hypothetical scenario remarkably similar to the one we are experiencing now. It was a briefing about what would happen if a fast-spreading virus spread through London and Seoul, and in that scenario it featured governments imposing travel bans, there were shortages in hospitals across the country, and today, about two-thirds of hospital officials The Trump administration who participated in that simulation are no longer in government. -Of course not.

This management processes employees faster than an ice cream parlor on the Coney Island boardwalk. Someone should have run a simulation of what happens when an egomaniac fires every staff member who ever disagrees with him. "After three years, the simulation shows that everything will depend on you, a professional liar and a teenage ghost from the Victorian era." I mean, Trump has had four, four chiefs of staff in four years, and the current one, Mark Meadows, officially started in office yesterday. Man, what a time to start working for this White House. "Okay, show me my new office." "I can't, they've turned it into a field hospital.

Besides, you're the surgeon general now." And what will be the next step for him, caretaker of Joe Exotic's animal park? And even if the officials at that briefing were still in the government, I bet they didn't learn anything anyway because Trump was standing directly in front of the screen. So Trump received plenty of warning that something like this was coming, and yet he and his aides repeatedly downplayed or dismissed the threat. He said cases would go down to zero, that it would miraculously disappear, and he

compared

it to the flu even though the

coronavirus

is much more infectious and much more deadly. -This is a flu.

This is like a flu. You treat this like the flu. It's a bit like the common flu, for which we have flu vaccines. And we will essentially have a flu vaccine for this in a fairly rapid manner. The flu kills between 25,000 and 69,000 people a year in our country. That was shocking to me. In the last ten years, we have lost 360,000. These are people who have died from the flu, what we call the flu. -What do you mean by what we call flu? It's the flu. We all call it the flu. Trump talks about common words as if they were complicated medical jargon. "We in the scientific community call it the flu.

It's called that because it started in Europe and then flew here." Also, basically everything he said in that clip was wrong. Turns out you're not a science expert just because you look like a science experiment. It's like a bunch of body parts that a dead gangster has sewn together and brought to life by some guy who went to school with Dr. Frankenstein but dropped out his sophomore year. I can see him being tormented by villagers with torches: "Ah, fire is bad, but not that bad, basically the same as the flu. Ah!" Trump should be in a documentary where Jane Goodall teaches him sign language. "Donald, can you say the words 'distribution emergency'?" -Distribution emergency. -And then, less than a month ago, Trump tweeted: "So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common flu.

An average of between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is closed. Life and the economy continue. Right now there are 546 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 22 deaths. Think about that." Every time a world-renowned idiot like Donald Trump tells you to think about that, it's your cue to get out of the conversation. He's like the dumbest guy at a cocktail party trying to make conversation by telling you something he read on a Snapple cap. "Broccoli, you know, is the only vegetable that's also a flower, so it's something to think about." Of course, the lie that the coronavirus is like the flu caused obvious damage.

Do you know how many people heard that and then repeated it? Even if you hated Donald Trump and knew not to trust a word he said, everyone had that friend or family member in the text chain saying, "You know, it's not going to be that bad. It's going to be like the flu." ". " Or should I say: "It will be like what we call the flu." And now that his White House projects between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus, Trump has changed his tone again. -I have had many friends, businessmen, people with a lot of sense common, they said to me: "Why don't we just hold on?" A lot of people have said, a lot of people have thought about it: "Hold on, don't do anything, just hold on and think of it like it's the flu." But it's not the flu.

It's cruel. -You were the one who said it was the flu. Those friends of yours were you. Or more likely, your other personalities. That's a serious Trump, an angry Trump, a sweaty Trump, and a dumb Trump. "And they all told me They said this is like the flu. Dumb Trump even said it with an old fashioned horn. Oh, silly Trump, you are incorrigible." And then Trump tried to claim that despite repeatedly ignoring the problem, failing to increase hospital capacity and falling behind on testing, which inhibited our ability to track and quarantine cases as South Korea did, their administration actually deserved credit for bringing the projected death toll down to just between 100,000 and 200,000. -What do the models suggest as a minimum if you have full mitigation? -It says 100,000 to 200,000.

Any thing... it's a lot of people, right? It's a lot of people. Well, you didn't ask the other question: What would have happened?, because this is the question I've been asking Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx for a long time. time, and they've been working on this for a long time. a long time. The question is, what would have happened if we had done nothing? -That's what you did. You did nothing and you do nothing. You work less than oil CBD And doing nothing is the only thing you're good at. Even when you had your own game show, you ended up only being on it for about five minutes.

You'd be Alex Trebek if he only appeared on Final Jeopardy! "Let's take a look at those scores and wow, it looks like someone doesn't know about his potent drinking beverages." And it's really a shame that he's president right now because he's so ill-prepared for the job and because if he weren't president, he would have been great in quarantine. All you'd have to do is sit at home, order takeout, watch TV and tweet like the rest of us, and those will be your favorite things. You would have killed him in quarantine. President Hillary Clinton would have held it up as an example of how to achieve social distancing. "We all need to follow doctors' advice and stay home, just like Donald Trump, who is currently sitting in his pajamas watching a rerun of 'Maury' and tweeting: 'Colonel Sanders should be promoted to General Sanders.' He's a national hero." And yet, because he managed to hold back for an hour after weeks of lies and serial failures that led us to this heartbreaking moment, some in the media were gullible enough after four years to give Trump credit for his change in tone. -President Trump just a few moments ago with a somber tone. -Now, for his part, and this goes to the change in tone and behavior, Trump warned that the next two weeks would be tough. -It was a very sober president we saw. -The president took a very somber tone in his last briefing. -This was a different Donald Trump tonight. -My God, Jeffrey Dahmer could fool these people. "This one doesn't It's Jeffrey Dahmer, the crazed killer.

This was a more serious Dahmer, just quietly preparing a home-cooked meal for yourself." Of course, it was a different Donald Trump. It's a different Donald Trump every night, which means it's always the same Donald Trump. He

never

fundamentally changes who he is. .is like a person. He just swings wildly from one extreme to the other. He's like a werewolf, but for the sun instead of the moon. But Trump isn't the only one trying to remember his initial response to the crisis. Too is one of his closest and most loyal defenders on television, Sean Hannity. A few weeks ago, Hannity tried to claim that he was taking the situation seriously.

And on Monday, in fact, he accused others in the media of spreading conspiracy theories .This show has always taken the coronavirus seriously. And we have never called the virus a hoax. How can anyone trust conspiracy theorists, that whole network full of lies, conspiracy theories? -Dude, the only thing you do is spreading conspiracy theories. You're like Alex Jones without the brain pills. In fact, you should probably take some. His network spent years promoting wild conspiracy theories, from death panels to birtherism to non-existent voter fraud. Fox has even interviewed a real lizard person. And notably, in this particular case, Hannity supported Trump during his initial claim that the coronavirus was no big deal, using the word "hoax" to describe criticism of Trump's response and even suggesting at one point that it might be a deep-state plot to destroy the economy. -Now they are unfortunately politicizing and, in fact, weaponizing an infectious disease, in what is basically just the latest effort to hit President Trump.

They are scaring the hell out of people. And I look at it again like, "Oh, let's hit Trump with this new hoax." There's a guy from MIT I noticed on Twitter who said, quote, "The deep state's coronavirus scare will go down in history as one of the biggest scams to manipulate economies, suppress dissent, and push for mandatory medications."It may be true. -You are not a newscast if you end your segment with "It may be true." That's a catchphrase you get at 2:00 a.m. after one of those shows about ancient aliens teaching the Aztecs how to grow grain. "It may be true.

Probably nonsense." Seriously, we should get Trump there so he can stand in front of Hannity during a show. Once again, side by side, here's Sean Hannity. -They're scaring the hell out of people, and I see it again as, "Oh, let's hit Trump with this new hoax." This show has always taken the coronavirus seriously and we have never called the virus a hoax. -Man, that takes some guts. If Donald Trump turned out to be an amazing president who united the country, I would eat my words. I wouldn't sit here and swear I never said he should be in a documentary where Jane Goodall teaches him sign language.

Trump should be in a documentary where Jane Goodall teaches him sign language. No, of course, I mean, yeah, when you cut it like that. The president and his allies wasted precious weeks in which we could have been preparing for this crisis. We saw it coming. We could have increased testing and hospital capacity, quarantined and traced cases to contain the spread. We now face the prospect of a horrible tragedy. And when the time of reckoning comes, Trump should be removed from office... -Quite quickly. -This has been "A

closer

look." ♪♪ Stay safe. Wash your hands. We love you.