Trump Wants to Reopen America as Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerates: A Closer Look

-Hello everyone and welcome once again to "Late Night on Lockdown". My staff and I are still at home social distancing and doing our part to slow the spread, which everyone should do. On Monday we did our "Closer Look" from a hallway. But they asked me to move because hallways are, by design, access routes. It may be in a different place, but the story is largely the same: the rapid spread of the

coronavirus

outbreak and the leadership crisis at the federal level. And now the president and some of his allies say we should worry more about the stock market than saving lives.

To learn more about this, it's time for "A Closer Look." From the very beginning of this crisis, Donald Trump has desperately tried to eliminate it through magical thinking, which makes sense because for most of his life, magical thinking has worked for him. I mean, he's failed at practically everything he's ever done, but he always magically avoids the consequences, like in the '80s and '90s when he lost over a billion dollars and dressed like that. It takes magical thinking to think that outfit works. He

look

s like an unemployed magician at a job interview. My last concert, let's say it... disappeared.

It seems he was banned from performing at children's birthday parties for using cocaine in the bathroom. Hi jimmy. How about we put a little icing on that cake? Trump is a con artist par excellence, which is bad when you're running a casino to the ground, but it's especially bad when you're in charge of responding to a deadly

pandemic

that's ravaging the country's healthcare system and tanking the economy. This is a situation that worried everyone when we decided to put the most self-centered man in the world in the most powerful position in the world. It's like those stories you hear about a small town that elects a dog as mayor every year.

Sure, you know, it may seem funny at the time, Mayor Dog, but what happens when there's a storm and you need the mayor to coordinate disaster relief but he won't come out from under the couch? Trump is fundamentally ill-equipped to handle the reality of a situation like this because he has never lived in reality. His entire life has been based on magical thinking, and that's what we've seen since the beginning of this crisis, like when he literally said the problem would miraculously go away. Even his intelligence reports and public health experts warned him that it would be extremely dangerous. -We are going down, not going up.

We are going down substantially, not up. You know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously disappears. I hope it's true. -The

coronavirus

is very under control in the United States. -It will go. Just stay calm. Be calm. It's really working. And many good things are going to happen. It's going to disappear one day. It's like a miracle. Will disappear. -God, it sounds like he's making statements in front of a mirror. It's like an eighth grader trying to prepare for a school dance. "Yes, you have a huge pimple right now, but one day it will disappear like a miracle!" Plus, the last person any of us should trust for miracles is Donald Trump.

I doubt he can name an actual miracle from the Bible. Well, let's see. Everyone knows that Jesus healed a leopard, removed its spots so that he could leave the leopard colony. Also, the least effective way to calm someone down is to say, "Calm down." This is how you talk to a dog in heat. "Lucy, calm down. Stop fucking with everyone's legs." You can't just tell someone to calm down. You actually have to be calm. Doctors calm you down by telling you how they will treat you. They don't walk into your exam room and say, "Okay, we have your CT scan.

Calm down." You see, in his confused childish mind, Trump thought that simply acting like the problem didn't exist would make it go away, which I can tell you by trying...that doesn't work. Of course, Trump's happy talk didn't work. The virus did not miraculously disappear. There are now more than 50,000 cases in the United States. The World Health Organization said Tuesday that there has been a large acceleration of cases in the United States and that it has the potential to become the next epicenter of the outbreak. And in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that the spread is accelerating faster than anticipated.

He warned other states that they were going to experience what New York is facing and he put it this way... -One of the forecasters told me: "We were watching a freight train crossing the country. Now we are watching a bullet train." , because the numbers are increasing very quickly. -That's right, a bullet train. And that's scary because Americans have never before seen public transportation as fast as a bullet train. Our trains are basically public toilets on rails. True story: In New York, the F train is nothing more than an old handcar driven by two rats. And it's not just Cuomo who is sounding the alarm.

This week began with the Surgeon General delivering a dire message to Americans on the "Today" show, warning them that things are about to get very bad and pleading with people to stop showing up in large public places, like the cherry trees in flower in Washington. D.C. -I want the United States to understand that this week things are going to get ugly. And we really need to come together as a nation. I heard the story that you guys were just playing around, young people on the beaches. We see here in D.C. that the district installed a camera so people could see the cherry blossoms.

You

look

through the camera and see more people walking than cherry blossoms. And that's how the spread is happening. -First of all, no one

wants

to tune into a live broadcast and see a group of people walking around. That's why zoos have penguin cameras, not "guy on his couch eating fried food" cameras. "Honey, look. Oh, look, he's going for a second bag. Oh, how majestic." I mean, no one

wants

to see a guy sitting alone at home talking to a webcam. There you go. The Surgeon General's chief said it himself: This week is going to be bad.

The governor of New York called it a bullet train and the WHO said the United States could become the next epicenter. Or, as the president said on Tuesday... -Ultimately, the goal is to relax the guidelines and open things up to very broad sectors of our country as we approach the end of our historic battle with the invisible enemy. There is tremendous hope as we look forward and begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. -Light at the end of the tunnel? What are you talking about? Are you sure you're not looking at the sun again?

We can all see the light at the end of the tunnel, burning our retinas, scarring our pupils and leaving us permanently blind. And thanks to that blindness, we no longer have to look at boring graphs (so boring) that tell us that things are getting worse every day. It's not a flat curve, no. Think about how upsetting this is. Experts tell us it could take months. New York is the first major epicenter. We are still two or three weeks away from reaching the peak. Nurses and doctors on the front lines describe the chaos and compare emergency rooms to war zones.

And the president claims it's almost over. Discovering what World War II would have been like if FDR had said, "December 7, 1941, a date that will go down in infamy as the end of World War II! Smoke 'em if you got 'em, boys. Us." I've wrapped it up." Trump has always cared more about the stock market than the public health crisis. He cares more about the Dow Jones than saving lives. It's that simple. He sees the stock market as key to his political fortunes. staff, so now he's talking about lifting public health restrictions and opening the country again for Easter, which is less than three weeks away -I'd love to have it open for Easter, okay?

I'd love to have it open for. Easter. I'll tell you right now. I'd love to have that. It's a very important day for other reasons, but I'd love to have the country open and looking forward to Easter. -Who suggested that day? -I just thought it was a beautiful moment, a beautiful timeline. -So you came up with that yourself? and you decided to hand over the decision to this guy? He will bring the eggs whether we like it or not. I say be prepared. Don't pull quotes out of your ass. On the one hand, that's unhealthy and you should wash your hands all the time.

And two, don't ruin Easter. You are terrible at Easter. Every year you give a rambling speech to the kids at the White House Easter Egg Roll with that surprised Easter Bunny standing next to you, you know, the one who always looks like he just caught his wife having sex with his brother. "Deborah, what about our 30 children?" Remember, this is something real that the president said at the White House Easter Egg Roll just two years ago. -Also, I want to thank the White House Historical Association and all the people who worked so hard with Melania, everyone to maintain this incredible house or building or whatever you want to call it, because there really is no name for it.

Is special. And we keep it in optimal conditions. We sometimes call it tippy-top shape. -Just a reminder, we have a president in charge of the response to a

pandemic

who did not remember the name of the White House and who sometimes he calls "in top shape" "in top shape." We are Or as I sometimes call it Trump not only randomly and arbitrarily made up a date out of thin air to

reopen

the country against the advice of virtually all public health experts, but he even suggested that he wanted churches to be filled with worshipers in Easter.

Look, Easter is a very special day for me. And I see it in that timeline that I'm thinking about. And I say, "Wouldn't it be great to have all the churches full"? You know, churches are not allowed, essentially, to have much of a congregation there. So I believe that on Easter Sunday there will be full churches throughout our country. I think it would be a beautiful moment. -Wait. So your plan for dealing with a highly contagious disease is to pack as many people as possible indoors, have them touch their faces, and drink from the same cup?

I mean, let's be real. It's not even a great idea when there isn't a pandemic. It's almost like he's trying to make as many people sick as possible. I mean, remember when he announced his confusing and poorly planned travel ban and crowds of people rushing back into the country crammed into airports and waiting in line for hours? What will Trump do next? Organize a giant music festival called "Cough-chella"? Bad news, guys. It's just the port-a-potty. Bad planning. That's up to me. Obviously, public health experts are horrified at this idea. Last week, one of the world's leading infectious disease experts, Dr.

Anthony Fauci, known for face-palming in the background while the president speaks, called him crazy and ruthless at a White House press conference. . -If you take a look at what is happening in China, you will see what is happening right now, right now in Italy and what is happening in New York City. I don't think that with a moral conscience you can say, "Why don't we just let it happen and let X percent of the people die?" -Ah, look, there's your mistake. You said "with some moral conscience." You forgot that you were next to President Caligula. Trump has no moral conscience.

He is a racist casino owner and New York City landlord. Having a moral conscience is disqualifying. I mean, look at him: he dresses like he's leading a meeting of the Five Families. All he needs is a baseball bat and a fedora. In fact, Trump was asked on Monday if Dr. Fauci agrees with his plan to

reopen

the country in less than three weeks, and Trump's response was not, um, reassuring. -Do you agree with you on the need to reopen the economy soon? -Well, he doesn't agree. -Oh, doesn't he agree? Thank you for clearing that up. He didn't tell me that he disagrees with me about not reopening the non-economy, also known as the economy-or-non-onomy.

And he didn't say that he shouldn't stop being president. Actually none of that is true. He said a lot of medical things and I ignored him while he worked on my Easter list. Fingers crossed, I understand what I'm in for. And now Trump is being goaded into this sadistic scheme of putting profits before lives by CEOs, economic advisers, and right-wing fringe figures who are actually suggesting that it might be worth letting some people die to save the economy. . -The president is right. The cure cannot be worse than the disease. And we're going to have to make some difficult trade-offs. -Within a very few weeks, people with lower risk of suffering from the disease will return to work. -My message is that, let's get back to work.

Let's live again. Let's be smart about it. And those of us who are over 70 years old will take care of ourselves. But don't sacrifice the country. -I'm in the danger zone. I would prefer my children to stayat home and for all of us over 50 to get in and keep this economy going. Even if we all get sick, I'd rather die than kill the country. -Oh, well, Glenn "Death Panels" Beck is back. You know, divorced Santa Claus around here. I guess it's easy to take that stance when you've been socially distancing yourself from people for five years.

Remember when he pretended to hate Trump for a second as a marketing ploy and a bunch of people helped rehabilitate him and now he's on TV saying that if you're old, you should be willing to sacrifice yourself for Carnival Cruise's stock price? ? I'm sorry, but I'm not going to follow the public health advice of a guy who looks like Colonel Sanders, but instead of chicken, it's just buckets of nonsense. Forget, during the Obama administration, Beck, this same Beck, repeated the famous "death panels" line, accused Democrats of wanting to kill people simply by expanding access to health care. -End of life care.

Let me translate "nonsense" into English. End-of-life care: night, night, Grammy. Pulling the old plug. -Glenn Beck accused Democrats of wanting to pull the plug on the Grammys, and now, 10 years later, he says the stock market is down, the Grammys have to go. If you're over 60 and related to Glenn Beck and you see him holding a pillow near your face, run. Seriously, I can't believe these psychopaths say that old people would rather die than sit inside and watch Netflix for a few weeks. You are boomers! You're supposed to love television, watching television. That's what you love. CBS needs to air an emergency "Blue Bloods" marathon ASAP just to keep these people worried.

You know "Blue Bloods." Starring the reverse mortgage guy. "Why would I lie to you? Just get a reverse mortgage. I'm not taking your house. I already have a house. I'm Tom Selleck, man." Perhaps what happened here is that a group of rich people realized that to save lives and protect the economy, they would have to redistribute some of the wealth to workers, and they found that intolerable, because here there is a third option. We can keep people home to save lives and give them money to get through the crisis. Just look at the countries facing this same crisis.

The Danish government has promised to cover between 75% and 90% of salaries if companies do not lay off their employees. And the Netherlands will pay up to 90% of salaries for companies hardest hit by the pandemic, with additional provisions developed for restaurants. We could have that here. Instead, the president wants you to return to work in three weeks, even if that means wearing a protective suit during your shift at Olive Garden. "Want unlimited breadsticks? They're seasoned with garlic and Purell." The Netherlands even offers special provisions to help restaurants. Meanwhile, our president doesn't even know what takeout is. -So many of these restaurants, it's incredible.

They are doing service where people come and pick it up. Delivery... I mean, it's been amazing what they've been doing. A totally different business than what they had, apart from cooking food. Other than that, it's like a totally different business. -Dude, that's takeout. You just described takeout. It's totally different. Instead of serving the food in the restaurant, they put it in a little bag. It's called a dog bag. I guess because... I don't know... the dog... a dog brings it to your house. And then... I just want a well-trained dog not to eat the food in the bag.

I guess they then give the money to the dog. Do you know how this works? Dr. Fauci? Do you know how this works? Don't touch your face, Fauci. Gotcha, Fauci. We're almost over this. Don't ruin it with the touch of the face. I'm just breaking balls, Fauci. You are my best friend. We are now in an extremely dangerous moment where a reckless ruling class and a self-absorbed president are trying to prematurely end the fight against a dangerous pandemic because their stock portfolios are taking a hit. This is sociopathic governance. If you were evaluating our president's mental competence, you definitely couldn't say that he is in... -In top shape. -This has been "A

closer

look."