-Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the attic.
As many of you know, I've been doing the show from home
despite some non-ideal circumstances,
specifically I only have three shirts,
and they come in three different varieties --
blue, blue, and a slightly lighter blue.
And, yeah, I'm aware that this makes me, as the kids say,
"basic," but in fairness, I've been slightly distracted
from wardrobe questions by the fact that there are wasps --
actual wasps buzzing around my head.
And if you don't believe me,
here's one zipping by during Tuesday's monologue.
But don't worry. That's not just any wasp.
That's Nick, our segue-writing wasp, and speaking of segues,
the White House is calling their response
to the coronavirus pandemic a success story
even as the country passes grim new milestones.
You've done it again, Nick!
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪
We've now surpassed one million coronavirus cases
and 60,000 deaths in the span of about two months.
Now, regardless of where you stand politically,
that's a staggering heartbreaking number,
or as Donald Trump put it
at the end of his press conference on Monday,
job well done.
-Let's do one more, please, in the back.
-If an American President loses more Americans
over the course of six weeks
than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War,
does he deserve to be re-elected?
-So, yeah, we've lost a lot of people,
but if you look at what original projections were,
2.2 million.
We're probably heading to 60,000, 70,000.
It's far too many, one person is too many for this,
and I think we've made a lot of really good decisions.
I think we've made a lot of good decisions.
I think that Mike Pence and the task force
have done a fantastic job.
I think that everybody working on the ventilators,
you see what we've done there, have done unbelievable.
The press doesn't talk about ventilators anymore.
They just don't want to talk about them, and that's okay.
But the reason they don't want to talk --
That was the subject that nobody would get off of.
They don't want to talk about them.
So, no, I think we've done a great job.
-Oh, boy. He should not have taken one more question
because that was a brutal way to end a press conference.
You know when they heard that question
in the Fox News control room, they basically said,
"Quick, cut to an Acorn stair lift commercial.
What do you mean you don't have one?
No, we should always have it ready.
Well, for reasons like this."
Trump must have been kicking himself for taking one more.
That was like that moment you start talking smack
during a game of Jenga.
"Yeah, I'll grab another block with one eye shut. Oh [bleep]"
And you know as soon as he heard
the word "Vietnam," he probably thought to himself,
"Vietnam, am I going to have to dodge you again?"
He's so bummed you can't use make-believe bone spurs
to get out of Vietnam questions.
[ As Trump ] I'd love to give you an answer,
but unfortunately, I feel, uh,
what I fear is a spur in my bone,
back again, so I'm going to have to call it a day.
[ Normal voice ] And, of course,
the press doesn't want to talk about ventilators.
Nobody wants to talk about a critical shortage
of life-saving medical equipment.
The reason it was such a hot topic for a while
was because everyone was afraid we were going to run out.
Thanks to Americans staying home to flatten the curve
and states sharing equipment with each other,
we avoided the worst case scenarios.
No thanks to you.
You're like the mayor showing up at the end of "Jaws" saying,
"Oh, so I guess the press
doesn't want to talk about sharks anymore?
Okay. Well, I would love to know.
'Cause I'm the mayor and I'm still a big shot in this town.
If we're not talking about sharks, let me know."
In fact, here's how unhelpful the president was
when it came to procuring much needed ventilators for states.
BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday night that a random dude
tweeted at Trump that he could make ventilators,
and then the White House helped that guy
get a lucrative contract to make ventilators,
which he never produced.
On March 27th, Trump posted on twitter to urge Ford
and General Motors to start making ventilators now.
One of the thousands of replies that the tweet attracted
struck an equally urgent tone.
"We can supply ICU ventilators, invasive and non-invasive.
Have someone call me. Urgent."
Its author was an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley.
A specialist in mobile phone technology,
he currently has just 75 followers on Twitter
and no apparent experience in government contracting
or medical devices.
Honestly, how long until he replies to a spam e-mail
offering free boner pills?
I mean, I guess we'll know exactly how long
the day he turns to Dr. Birx
in the middle of a press conference and says...
[ As Trump ] There's also a chance that --
Correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Birx,
that boner pills might possibly
be an effective treatment for the virus,
so if someone had a surplus of boner pills,
that person could possibly be a hero?
Dr. Birx, I see you've wrapped your head in scarves again.
I can't hear you. It's muffled.
When you talk through the scarves,
it just comes through as muffles.
[ Normal voice ] I mean, right off the bat,
there are so many red flags there.
First of all, there are major companies
that make ventilators, so if a guy with 75 followers
is tweeting at you, he's probably not,
you know, a power player.
CEO of General Electric doesn't spend all day replying
to individual people on Twitter, "I can get you a microwave.
Have someone call me. Urgent."
Second, making mobile phones
has nothing to do with making ventilators.
Ventilators help you breathe, while phones,
at least in the meantime, help you hyperventilate.
Oh, I just got an alert. The president says,
"Ingesting bleach cures male pattern baldness.
[Breathlessly] Oh, my God. Oh, I'm hyperventilating.
[ Normal voice ] And yet, incredibly,
Trump actually took this guy seriously.
Three days later, New York State paid Oren-Pines
69 -- wait-for-it -- million dollars.
The payment was for 1,450 ventilators,
at least triple the standard retail price of high-end models.
Not a single ventilator ever arrived.
State officials said New York entered into the contract
at the direct recommendation
of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
This is insane.
I mean, we're talking about a guy
who is the most powerful person on Earth.
There is literally a law that allows him
to compel companies to make ventilators,
and he's combing through his Twitter replies
like he's putting a band together.
"Oh, okay. This guy's got his own amp.
That could really --
that could really come in handy if we had somebody
with their own amp."
Trump had the chance to act early
to prevent both a public health crisis and an economic one,
and instead he chose to ignore and downplay the threat,
or as he put it yesterday at the White House...
-This plague should never have happened.
It could have been stopped. But people chose not to stop it.
-Oh, people chose not to stop it? Why so coy?
Pray tell, Donald, who are these people you speak of?
[ As Trump ] This plague never should have happened,
but someone really dropped the ball.
I'm not going to name names, Mike Pence.
[ Normal voice ] Hey, maybe he was talking about
his spectral son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Kushner has supposedly played a central role
in the administration's coronavirus response,
and on Wednesday, he said this to "Fox & Friends."
-We're on the other side of the medical aspect of this,
and I think that we've achieved
all the different milestones that are needed.
So the government, federal government
rose to the challenge and this is a great success story.
-This is a success story? You're not even a success story.
You're only in the White House because Ivanka
lost Tom Brady's phone number in one of her sweatshop handbags.
You shouldn't be anywhere near the White House.
You should be confessing to Christopher Meloni
at the end of an episode of "Law & Order."
Seriously, we have one million cases,
60,000 deaths, and 30 million out of work.
If this is a success, what would failure have looked like --
The Statue of Liberty getting laid off
and developing a weed habit in quarantine?
Kushner also defended the administration's push
to prematurely re-open the economy
before there are plans to effectively contain
the spread of the virus.
-The goal here is to get people back to work.
The eternal lockdown crowd can make jokes
on late-night television, but the reality is,
is that the data is on our side. -Oh, my God.
First of all, thank you for watching.
[ Chuckles ] Sorry about that Tom Brady joke, so stupid.
But also, I'm kind of terrified that you're watching.
Now I'm going to have nightmares
about that tiny door back there creaking open
and seeing Jared Kushner's face in the shadows.
Second, no one wants eternal lockdowns.
If I see another one of my friends holding up
a janky loaf of homemade bread on Instagram,
I'm going to run outside and lick a banister.
We want a plan for re-opening things safely.
You think I don't want things to open up?
I used to do a show with multiple shirts and zero wasps.
I worked in a building that had 50 lunch options.
Now the only thing on the menu
is whatever the boys don't finish.
Which isn't much, mind you, because the 2-year-old
eats like a horse and he has the dumps to prove it.
I just changed his diaper.
You know when I'll have to change the next one?
Based on recent patterns, any minute now.
You know what this, bro?
You know what this is right here?
It's a [bleep] space heater.
And I have it because I'm cold all the time.
I always feel like you just looked at me.
I mean, I used to have an audience
of human beings who laughed at jokes.
Now the only thing watching me are the dead black eyes
of a stuffed elephant rocker.
So, yeah, I want to go back to normal, too.
Now, not only is the administration's response
not a success story, in reality,
we're learning that the death toll is almost certainly
an undercount, according to analysis of CDC data
by "The New York Times" this week.
And if you're looking for a metric to compare
our so-called success story to actual success stories
in other countries, there's this --
We recorded our first case of coronavirus
on the same day that South Korea recorded theirs.
And this week, while we were passing 1 million cases,
South Korea was reporting that they had reported
no new domestic cases of COVID-19
for the first time since February.
That's right. In South Korea,
they're down to zero new domestic cases,
while over here, the president is suggesting
we should gnaw on the Tide To Go pens
like they're bread sticks.
And not only is our case load much higher,
but the federal government has also failed to provide
any leadership at all in responding to that case load.
In fact, Trump has failed so spectacularly
to provide any coherent federal coordination
that states have essentially divvied themselves up
into regional partnerships to work together,
basically forming mini-federal governments.
There's a Western States Pact that includes
California and Oregon,
a Midwest partnership between Illinois and Michigan
and five other states,
and a regional advisory council of seven states
including New York and New Jersey.
First of all, I just want to say,
I'm genuinely happy to see New York and New Jersey
working together after their years long feud
over who actually owns the Jets. "It's you."
"No, no, no, no, no, no. You take them. We're good."
"No, no, no, I think it's definitely you."
Second, look at this, I knew Republicans
loved the confederacy, but I don't think they literally
wanted to break up the Union.
The country is broken down into districts,
we're facing meat shortages,
and the postal service is warning it could collapse.
We're like a week away from Trump announcing
the first annual hunger games.
[ As Trump ] Pennsylvania, who do you send as tribute?
[ Spooky Philly accent ] We send a most enticing creature.
[ Normal voice ] Pretty good Philadelphia accent.
[ Spooky Philly accent ] His name is Gritty.
[ Normal voice ] In fact, just to give you an idea
of how miserably that Trump has failed
at even the most basic aspects of his job,
here's a truly insane story about what officials in Illinois
had to do just to get masks for healthcare workers
without federal leadership.
Illinois officials tracked down a supply
of 1.5 million potentially life-saving
N-95 respirator masks in China through a middleman
in the Chicago area and negotiated a deal to buy them.
One day before they were expecting to complete
the purchase, they got a call in the morning from the supplier,
informing them he had to get a check to the bank
by 2:00 p.m. that day, or the deal was off.
Other bidders had surfaced.
Illinois' Assistant Comptroller Ellen Andres
jumped into her car and raced north on I-55
with a check for $3.5 million.
They arranged to meet in the parking lot
of a McDonald's restaurant just off the interstate
and they made the handoff there.
That is insane.
We're talking about protective gear
for frontline healthcare workers
and states are forced to do million-dollar deals
in McDonald's parking lots like they're buying meth
from Walter White.
If New Mexico wants to buy ventilators,
they're going to have to go to the basement
of Los Pollos Hermanos.
So, needless to say, good news is hard to come by
these days, but on Wednesday, we did finally get
some genuinely good news when it was announced
that a potential therapy for COVID-19
had proven effective in a randomized clinical trial
as Dr. Anthony Fauci explained
during a meeting in the Oval Office.
-Right now, I can bring you one of the best headlines
since coronavirus took hold of the United States.
Here it is, the potential for a true treatment.
Now, there are no approved medications for coronavirus.
But just a short time ago,
the nation's leading infectious disease expert
said the result of this randomized controlled study
for this drug called remdesivir
is according to Dr. Fauci, quite good news.
Why you ask?
Because it showed remdesivir appeared to be effective
and helped people recover more quickly once they were sick.
-The data shows that remdesivir
has a clear-cut significant positive effect
in diminishing the time to recovery.
This is really quite important for a number of reasons,
and I'll give you the data.
It's highly significant.
It is a very important proof of concept.
Because what it has proven
is that a drug can block this virus.
-You know when Trump heard that,
he so badly wanted to pipe up and say,
[ As Trump ] All right, that's great news,
but should we maybe pair that with lights?
Just next time we do a study, give them that?
You know, remdesivir and then maybe a lava lamp
or something might double the effectiveness,
and then we'd both be right, you know, the scientists
who spend time with clinical studies and then me,
the guy who said "light."
[ Normal voice ] But what's especially notable about
this genuinely promising news is that it comes after months
of the president floating
one unproven miracle cure after another,
each getting more desperate and more dangerous than the last.
-It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for
and we'll essentially have a flu shot for this
in a fairly quick manner.
You take a solid flu vaccine,
you don't think that would have an impact
or much of an impact on corona? -No.
-They're going to have vaccines, I think, relatively soon,
and they're going to have something
that makes you better and that's going to actually take place,
we think, even sooner.
And I hope they use the hydroxychloroquine.
It will be a gift from heaven, and it works.
Is there a way we can do something like that?
By injection inside or almost a cleaning?
I would like you to speak to the medical doctors
to see if there is any way that you can apply
light and heat to cure.
-When you heard an 18th-century doctor
say "apply light and heat to cure,"
you knew were a goner.
"So, bad news, the leeches didn't work.
But we can still try light and heat.
Though, maybe, get your affairs in order."
It's not hard to look at countries like South Korea
and see what an actual success story would have looked like.
We could have had an early robust response
to contain the spread of the virus
and allowed things to remain open.
Instead I'm stuck here in my attic dodging wasps
while I try to tell... -Jokes on late-night television.
-[ Shivering ]
[ Breathing heavily ]
[ Exhaling sharply ]
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
We've been talking about City Harvest during this crisis,
and you have been really helping.
So if you can, please continue to give.
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but City Harvest is keeping their trucks full
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Stay safe. Wash your hands. We love you.