Late night hosts improvise their shows from home with jokes about coronavirus, toilet paper, and Trump
Like everyone else affected by the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, late-nights hosts are improvising their furloughed shows and trying to do their part to keep up morale. Coronavirus "is a crisis that we have to face together — by staying as far apart as possible," The Late Show's Stephen Colbert said from his porch in South Carolina, delivering his "low-res" monologue via an "iPad on top of a plant stand." With coronavirus dominating the news, he said, Joe Biden's big, likely fatal victories over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Tuesday's Democratic presidential primaries are like "two old men playing Monopoly while their house burns down."
"Remember when we used to think we'd never get to all the shows on Netflix?" Jimmy Kimmel asked in his from-home "minilogue." President Trump "has a catchy little nickname for the coronavirus — he now calls it the 'Chinese Virus' every chance he gets," mostly "to deflect blame away from him. It's like when he started calling Eric and Don Jr. the 'Ivana kids.'"
"Trump is the only person who could hold a press conference about a pandemic and then turn it into a fight about racism," Trevor Noah said on his Daily Social Distancing Show. He said he kind of feels "bad for Trump" over the U.S.-Canada border being closed, "because he's finally getting the border shutdown he always wanted, it's just happening with the wrong country." Noah also called Roy Wood Jr., who said he planned to join the NBA to get a coronavirus test, then ran off to stop his 3-year-old son from eating the toilet paper.
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Conan O'Brien offered a helpful "life hack" about the "many things around the house you can use instead of toilet paper."
CVS has "what you need, and every receipt a week's worth of toilet paper," The Tonight Show's Jimmy Fallon agreed, his wife operating the camera at their cabin and his daughters showcasing the trials facing a lot of Americans now working from home. Additionally, he said, "we've all gotten to be like, 'Wow, Dave from HR has a pretty ugly house.'"
"If there's one takeaway from the videos the other late-night hosts put out, it's that they have incredible homes," said Full Frontal's Samantha Bee. The first of her "daily tips for how to survive and thrive while also social distancing" involved chopping wood while using NSFW expletives. Peter Weber
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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