On Tuesday night’s episode of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Kimmel began his monologue with the big topic of the day: Dr. Anthony Fauci’s testimony in a congressional hearing, in which he was heckled by Sen. Rand Paul. But after that, Kimmel transitioned into a thread about the folks around the country who are defying lockdown orders, as well as Fox News extending its own work-from-home directive even while trumpeting the “America must reopen” rhetoric.
Kimmel’s comments about Dr. Fauci wrapped up with a metaphor about scabs. If you pick a scab too early, Kimmel said, then the wound will be right back where it was before the scab was formed. So with the coronavirus pandemic, Kimmel said, “don’t pick the scab.”
“Unfortunately, there are some impatient people who want to dig their tiny, orange fingernails into the scab and rip it off early. And eat it,” Kimmel joked.
So, Kimmel said, while Trump “continues to pat himself on the back and insist the numbers are going down almost everywhere, they are not.”
“NBC News got hold of an unreleased report from Trump’s own pandemic task force that shows the numbers going way up in many spots across the country. The virus is surging across the Midwest and the South.,” Kimmel continued, as the show displayed footage of folks defying their local stay-at-home orders. “This is from a restaurant in Castle Rock, Colorado that decided to open on Mother’s Day despite an order that bans in-house dining throughout the state. You can see no one was protecting themselves. I guess if it’s mom’s last meal you might as well make it delicious.
Then Kimmel took aim at those protesters in Florida who went viral on Monday for doing their workouts on the sidewalk in front of a courthouse.
“In Clearwater, Florida, demonstrators gathered outside a courthouse to protest the fact that gyms are closed,” Kimmel said. “Well, looks to me like they don’t need a gym. They’ve got a perfectly good sidewalk to do push-ups on.”
Kimmel then delivered the punchline to this whole thread.
“And this is interesting. At Fox News, which is the little engine behind the back-to-work movement, they just decided to keep their offices closed through June 15th. Isn’t that something?” Kimmel mused. “Fox News, the ones who are making fun of people cowering at home, is advising its employees to stay home. Because apparently they don’t get their news from Fox News. So it looks like we’ll have at least another month of Judge Jeanine smearing her lipstick on like the Joker.”
You can check out Kimmel’s monologue from Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in the video embedded up at the top of this article.