Donald Trump checked himself out of the hospital and seemingly declared himself cured of the COVID-19 infection that put him there. Naturally, this was the main topic of conversation for late night hosts on Monday night, and Colbert went at Trump for this move right out of the gate on “The Late Show.”
“Big news. After being choppered to Walter Reed Hospital on Friday, Donald Trump has now been released back into the wild,” Colbert said, as the now-infamous footage of Trump standing on the White House balcony began to play. We see Trump salute, and then give a double thumbs up. “There here is, immediately taking off his mask, saluting the Marines and, I’m gonna say, camera crew filming this campaign ad. Hey, who’s got two thumbs and doesn’t care if you live or die? This guy.”
While Trump may be excited to be home, though, the move might create complications for everyone else who will be in the White House.
“My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone he’s about to infect,” Colbert quipped, before reading out the tweet in which Trump had made the announcement Monday morning.
The tweet read: “I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
“Well, I’m glad the president is feeling better. And of course I wish him continued good health. And it goes without saying: what a tool!” Colbert said. “‘Don’t let it dominate your life.’ OK, so you’re saying the people who lost their lives, they either didn’t have enough moxie or they didn’t live in a big white house that has 20 full-time medical staff and get choppered to a suite at Walter Reed where they received a combination of cutting edge treatments that literally no one else on the planet has received.
“OK fine, then just make the surgeon generals warning: ‘Don’t let cancer dominate your lungs! Smoking is cool, because my lung transplant was successful!’”
Unfortunately, Colbert noted next, we still basically know nothing about how well Trump is actually doing.
“What does this tell us about the president’s health? I don’t know. Because we’ve already been lied to so many times that we don’t actually know enough of what’s true to understand how much we’ve been lied to,” Colbert said.
And that’s when he got to the topic of Trump’s doctor at Walter Reed, Sean Conley, who made some interesting statements during his press conferences over the weekend. We see a clip of Conley’s odd interaction with reporters over the question of whether or not Trump had been put on oxygen. The exchanges in the video go like this:
Reporter: “He has not received any supplemental oxygen?”
Conley: “He’s not on oxygen right now, that’s right.”
Reporter: “He’s not received any at all?”
Conley: “He’s not needed anybody any this morning today at all, that’s right.”
Reporter: “Has he ever been on supplemental oxygen.”
Conley: “Right now he is not on oxygen.”
Colbert was flabbergasted.
“He’s so bad at lying. It’s like if your wife asked, ‘Are you having an affair with Janet?’ ‘Honey, I have not had supplemental Janet sex this morning, that’s right,’” Colbert joked.
You can watch the opening monologue from Monday’s episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” in the video embedded in this article, or on YouTube.
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