Jimmy Kimmel
On Wednesday evening, Jimmy Kimmel celebrated the words of Anthony Fauci, who said on Tuesday the US is no longer in the “pandemic phase” of Covid-19 as cases decline. “We are now transitioning from the pandemic phase to the awkward teenage phase,” Kimmel joked. “So instead of your hands, wash your face.”
“And yet there are hundreds of nuts out there still spreading nonsense, touting unproven, ineffective medications, calling for Dr Fauci’s head,” he added. One of those people is Kari Lake, gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, who in a campaign speech called for ivermectin, a horse dewormer not recommended as a treatment for Covid, to be made widely available and promised to issue a warrant for Fauci’s arrest.
“We’re at the point I was fearing that we’d reach, where Donald Trump is almost mainstream,” Kimmel said. “He’s like the moderate now. Mitt Romney’s a hippie, Trump’s the moderate, and then we have all these crazies. Trump being president was like opening Tandora’s box. There are so many genuinely frightening individuals running for office.”
Kimmel also picked on another favorite target: Trump’s floundering app Truth Social, his supposed copycat to Twitter, where he hasn’t posted since its launch day in February. “The last time he ignored something this much, it was named Eric,” Kimmel quipped.
Truth Social’s selling point has been “free speech” – “they won’t ban you like Twitter did to Trump,” Kimmel explained. “But if you go through their community guidelines, which we did, you will see that isn’t necessarily true.”
Truth Social claims to report content that misrepresents a business, “like, for instance, this tweet Trump posted about Dominion voting machines” as part of his misinformation campaign after the 2020 election. (Dominion has filed a $1.3bn defamation lawsuit against several Trump allies.)
The company also says it will delete accounts that use Truth Social “for crime or any other unlawful acts”, such as “I don’t know, starting a riot at the Capitol, maybe?” Kimmel noted. “What I’m wondering is maybe this is why Trump hasn’t been posting on Truth Social. He’s banned from that one, too!”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers swatted down Trump’s claim that he wouldn’t return to Elon Musk’s Twitter if allowed. “I’m sorry, but there’s no way Trump won’t immediately go back to tweeting if he’s given the chance,” Meyers said.
“Trump doesn’t have the self-restraint to stay off Twitter. Offering his Twitter back is like offering Keith Richards a cigarette.”
“While banning Trump from Twitter has always been complicated,” he noted, “I think it would be terrible, certainly for me, if Trump got his Twitter back, mainly because not having him on Twitter has just been a huge quality of life improvement.”
Meyers also mocked Truth Social, after chief executive and former congressman Devin Nunes appeared on Fox News and practically begged the hosts to join the site. “Every time you think your life is bad, just remember: you could be a former congressman begging Brian Kilmeade, a man with the eyes of a cabbage patch doll, to send out truths,” Meyers noted.
Fox News host Steve Doocy told Nunes, on-air, that he couldn’t join Truth Social because of a waitlist.
“A waiting list? Isn’t the whole point of the internet that everything is instant?” Meyers said. “This is like if you clicked on Apple maps and it was just a list of places where you could buy a map.”
Trevor Noah
Dr. Fauci declares America’s pandemic phase over…ish? pic.twitter.com/2KIx6iKw7H
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 28, 2022
And on The Daily Show, Trevor Noah cheered for Fauci’s “out of the pandemic phase comment” with a half-hearted drop of deflated balloons.
“Don’t let these balloons fool you,” he said. “This doesn’t mean we’re out of the pandemic. A lot of people misinterpreted this news today. They were like, ‘the pandemic is over! Time to tongue-kiss my grandmother again!’”
“But that’s not what this means,” he continued. “What Fauci was saying is that America is currently not in a ‘pandemic phase,’ as in: not a pandemic right now but it’s not over. It could come back. Or it could go away. But it could come back. Or go – you don’t know. It’s a phase. It’s sort of like wide-leg jeans. They disappeared for 20 years, and now suddenly everyone looks like they had to borrow a pair of pants from Shaq.”
“But as much as you want to get angry at people, here’s the thing: Dr Fauci, how do you not know by now how stupid people are?” he wondered. “We’re all stupid. You can’t just say ‘Oh, pandemic phase is over!’ All we hear is ‘Party time!’”
