On Sunday, just before he staged an ill-advised car ride outside Walter Reed hospital—a public relations stunt that put Secret Service agents at risk of contracting the coronavirus—President Donald Trump sought to control the messaging about his positive coronavirus diagnosis with a video.
“I learned a lot about COVID. I learned it by really going to school,” said Trump, who was diagnosed last week, hospitalized on Friday, and then returned to the White House on Monday. “This is the real school. This isn’t the ‘Let’s read the book’ school. And I get it, and I understand it.”
The clip was one of the many shocking missives from the president over the last few days, but Seth Meyers didn’t want to let it slide without a little commentary. “First of all, ‘let’s read the book school’ is just school. That’s what school is. It’s like calling it a ‘let’s eat the food’ restaurant, or ‘let’s do the exercise gym,’” Meyers joked on Late Night. “Second, now you’ve learned a lot about COVID? Maybe you could have looked into it a bit before you and seven million other Americans got it. You can learn to cross the street safely without getting hit by a bus first. He’s like a dude in a full-body cast saying, ‘Great news: I learned a lot about Don’t Walk signs.’”
Trump’s antics since being admitted to Walter Reed hospital have been widely criticized and denounced—especially his brief parade on Sunday. “That should never have happened,” a current Secret Service agent told CNN of the event. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to be around them. … The frustration with how we’re treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We’re not disposable.”
On Late Night, Meyers called the trip “shockingly reckless,” but also mocked Trump for his failure to understand the optics. “Nothing projects strength like waving from the back seat of an SUV like a kid headed for soccer practice,” Meyers said. “When you said you learned about COVID, did you mean you learned how to spread it? I’m surprised he didn’t jump out of the SUV and crowd surf. Seriously, you’re in an enclosed space with other people. What’s next? Are you going to cough on the girl scouts who sold the most cookies in a Walter Reed elevator?”
On Monday, Trump left Walter Reed and returned to the White House, where he promptly removed his mask despite still having a highly infectious disease that has killed more than 210,000 Americans. But before he did that—and staged another photo op against the backdrop of the White House steps—Trump suggested citizens should learn to shrug off the global health crisis.
“Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
“Remember, he might get better from COVID, but he will never get better as a person,” an angry Meyers said in response to Trump’s words. “I mean, of course you can say ‘don’t be afraid of COVID.’ You have the best taxpayer-funded medical care in the world. It’s easy to say ‘don’t be afraid to jump out of this plane’ when you’re the only one with a parachute.”
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