Stephen Colbert Goes Off on Trump for Threatening to #FireFauci

Now that coronavirus deaths in the United States have surpassed every other country on the planet, Stephen Colbert concluded Monday night that President Donald Trump is “in over his head.”

“And I’m not the only one who feels that way. So does Donald Trump,” the host said, quoting news stories that described the president as “shell-shocked” and “deflated” by the enormity of the crisis. And yet “for weeks, he did nothing” to stop the spread. “It’s the classic children’s story,” Colbert said. “The Boy Who Ignored Wolf."

As Colbert explained, Trump’s “mishandling” of the pandemic was confirmed over the weekend by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who told CNN’s Jake Tapper that if the country had “started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives.” He added, “Obviously no one is going to deny that.”

“That is admirable restraint,” Colbert said in response. “You can tell Dr. Fauci knows the serenity prayer. ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know that Donald Trump is a complete disaster.’”

All of this led Trump to promote the hashtag #FireFauci on Twitter Sunday night, even if the White House insisted on Monday that the nation’s top infectious disease expert isn’t going anywhere.

“He’s going to fire Anthony Fauci, the only guy in the room who knows what the hell he’s talking about!” Colbert exclaimed. “And this is how it always happens: he retweets someone saying he should fire somebody, as if he doesn’t have the power to do that. Then his staff denies it, then he fires the person anyway and replaces them with the first guest he sees on Fox News. So get ready for the new director of allergy and infectious disease: Kid Rock.”

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