Donald Trump and his advisors have tried to move on from the president’s comment last week that household disinfectant or sunlight could perhaps be used as remedies to treat coronavirus patients—but Seth Meyers and his fellow late-night hosts were not about to let the stunning remarks slide. On Monday night, Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Trevor Noah all unloaded on Trump for his suggestion, and his later attempts to paint the gaffe as sarcasm.
“I’ve gotta be honest, when we went on hiatus a week ago, I did not expect that when I came back I’d be talking about the president suggesting using disinfectants and powerful lights to cure coronavirus,” said Meyers. “But then again, that’s on me. I should have expected it. We should all know by now that Trump will be more outlandish with each passing week because that’s his nature.”
On The Daily Show, Noah was similarly left aghast by the president: “This is the problem when the dumbest person in the room thinks they’re the smartest person,” Noah said.
But the host did try to find some mock empathy for Trump. “I almost don’t even blame Trump, because there’s no way he even understands what bleach is,” Noah joked. “Like, do you think Donald Trump has ever cleaned anything in his life? Do you think he has ever actually used disinfectant? Cleaning supplies might as well be magical potions to him.” Busting out his Trump imitation, Noah continued, “I dropped a hamburger on the carpet, then some Mexican lady came in with some Clorox, sprayed it on the carpet, said some spell in Spanish, and then it was gone.”
On Thursday, in response to a presentation that showed how disinfectants can effectively kill the coronavirus on surfaces, Trump proposed that doctors investigate whether they could work similarly in the actual human body. “I see disinfectant, where it knocks [coronavirus] out in a minute—one minute—and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning,” he said. “Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me.” On Friday, after an immediate backlash, Trump claimed he was simply asking the question “sarcastically to reporters,” despite very clearly directing his musings toward the health advisors present at the briefing.