Seth Meyers: It’s ‘Sociopathic’ for Republicans to Force Schools to Reopen (Video)

“Donald Trump is the last person I would trust with my kids’ safety,” Meyers said in the first new “A Closer Look” in two weeks

Seth Meyers returned with a new episode of “Late Night” Monday after taking the last two weeks off, and he brought with him a fresh 14-minute edition of “A Closer Look.” In it, he railed against Republicans for their unyielding quest to force the country’s children to risk their lives by attending school in person next month while coronavirus continues to rage.

“Many countries have also reopened their schools thanks to their success in suppressing the virus. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the president wants to force teachers and students back in the classrooms as the outbreak worsens, without sufficient health and safety protocols in place, because he thinks it’ll help the economy and thus his reelection,” Meyers said.

Then “Late Night” played a clip of Trump declaring: “We have to open our schools. Open our schools. Stop this nonsense. We open our schools. Germany, Norway, so many countries right now, they’re open. The schools are open. And they’re doing just fine.”

“Yeah, that’s because they suppressed their outbreaks, you sadistic sack of laundry,” Meyers continued after the clip. “You rushed everyone back to work too soon against the advice of your own scientists just to please the Dow, and now we have 60,000 new cases every day and we’re banned from traveling to Europe. Do you know what that means? If Americans can’t go to Europe, who’s gonna wear shorts and Mickey ears to the Louvre?”

Then Meyers circled back to the point.

“Look, everyone wants schools to reopen, believe me. I desperately want my kids to go back to school in the fall. I mean, to keep them busy during this, I’ve had to put them on the show, and now they’re demanding to know when their next gig is. They have agents now. I walked by the little one’s room the other day and heard him on the phone demanding points on the gross,” Meyers said.

Meyers then went into detail about what specifically is wrong with this whole idea of forcing in-person schooling while the Republican government has so dramatically failed to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

“We can’t just decouple schools from the community they’re in. If there are outbreaks everywhere, then schools are gonna have outbreaks, too,” Meyers said. “Even in the best of times, schools are a breeding ground for viruses. An elementary school is like you took a Five Points tenement building and put it on the lido deck of a cruise ship. Every parent knows if you have a child in school, you basically have to put DayQuil in your coffee until they leave for college.

“And if you’re gonna force students and teachers to go back amid a deadly pandemic, you should at least, at the very least, have an idea for how you’re going to protect them. Instead, education secretary Betsy DeVos says it’s up to you to figure out how you’re gonna keep your kids safe. And if you don’t, they’re going to unilaterally strip funding from your school, which they don’t even have the power to do anyway.”

Next up, we got a series of clips of DeVos being questioned on TV news, being asked why she wants to force schools to open with the pandemic spreading and no government safety plan. In one clip from Sunday, CNN’s Dana Bash noted, “You are compelling schools to reopen regardless of what’s happening.” To which DeVos replied, “No, what we’re saying is that kids need to be back in school.”

In the clip Bash also asked, “Why do you not have guidance on what a school should do just weeks before you want those schools to reopen and what happens if it faces an outbreak?”

“You know, there’s really good examples that have been utilized in the private sector and in elsewhere, also with frontline workers and hospitals,” DeVos replied in the video.

“We can’t even get protective equipment for doctors and nurses, but you want schools to operate like hospitals?” Meyers noted after the clip finished. “Why not go even further and say schools should operate like astronauts. ‘There’s really good examples that have been utilized on the international space station. If we launch all of our schools into orbit, then they can’t get coronavirus.’”

Meyers continued, “When you’re talking about forcing children and teachers to go back to schools amid a deadly pandemic you failed to stop, without even putting a plan in place to protect them, that’s how you know you belong to a sociopathic political movement. We’re at the mercy of a sadistic oaf who’s being shielded by a political party that cares more about statues than people.”

You can watch the entire new “A Closer Look” segment from Monday’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers” in the video embedded up at the top of this article, or on YouTube right here.

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