Seth Meyers Blasts Trump for Trusting “Demon Sperm Lady” on Coronavirus. The Late Night host also mocked “dumb guy” Donald Trump Jr. for trying to defend his recent Twitter timeout.
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Air date: July 29, 2020
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Captain’s Quarters. I have now been trapped inside without an audience since March, and, as some of you have noticed, that I’ve gone a little insane. Weird things have been happening to my hair, I befriended the wasps in my attic, And for some reason I even went on a lengthy and irrelevant rant about a 20-year-old TV show for teens, Dawson’s Creek.
You know what they say, Seth. A creek is just a tiny ocean.
[Chuckles] Who would say that and why? Oh, right, I’ve also become friends with a talking painting, and by the way, I’m aware that the Sea Captain character has been divisive. Some of you love him. Some of you hate him — Dad! Some of you are just confused as to why we’ve chosen to invest so much of our time and energy into this bit. So, we have decided to settle this debate once and for all with a poll — Should we keep the sea Captain? Yes or no. To vote, just log on to www.google.com, type in Sea Captain, but don’t click search, take a screen shot, print it out, write yes or no or it with a Sharpie, and then mail it to wherever your best guess is for the address I’m filming the show at. We will reveal the poll results at the end of the summer.
The only pole I’m interested in is a fishing pole.
Jokes like that aren’t helping your chances of sticking around, Sea Captain.
Okay.
Speaking of psychosis, President Trump and his allies in the right-wing media are once again amplifying an unhinged viral video lying about the coronavirus. For more on this, it’s time for A Closer Look.
As the coronavirus pandemic has spread out of control, so has misinformation about it. If you have Facebook, or an uncle who still wears his class ring, you’ve probably heard some of it. I’m pretty sure we’ve all gotten at least one e-mail from a relative during this whole thing with the subject line like…
“Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Coronavirus can be cured by swallowing a candle and sticking garlic up your butt!”
…when we all know that swallowing a candle and sticking garlic up your butt is number three on goop’s top 10 ways to relax on a job interview.
And it won’t shock you to learn that a lot of the misinformation can be found on Facebook, the Website you signed up for just to see if your high school crush got married to that son of bitch, Jeff. Well, A — they did, and B — they also went crazy.
A report in April collected some of the most popular coronavirus myths circulating on Facebook, the website you sign up for just to see if your high school crush got married to that son of a bitch Jeff and A, they did, and B, they also went crazy!
A report in April collected some of the most coronavirus myths, come of them circulating on Facebook.
Some examples include…
Coronavirus can be destroyed… by chlorine dioxide.
A regular oil proves effective against coronavirus.
There was a post claiming you can hold your breath for 10 seconds to test yourself for coronavirus.
And another alleging that someone named Dr. Mario Pesaresi had revealed that inhaling steam is a natural remedy for coronavirus. Well, if steam cures disease, that would finally explain why all New Yorkers on subways look so hale and hearty. The L train is more restorative than an Icelandic spa. Second, I don’t know who Mario Pesaresi is, but he sounds like a doctor Paulie Walnuts would be friends with on The Sopranos. “What’s that smell?” “Oh, that’s me, Ton. Dr. Pesaresi told me if I put provolone in my pants, it would cure my you-know-what.” “I don’t know what.” “I got a genital discharge.” “Ohh! We’re eating here!” By the way, if you’re offended, you should know the writer who wrote that is Italian-American.
“Ah, Italy, the New Jersey of Europe.”
So is the writer who wrote that. Mwah.
Now, you’ve probably heard some of the more infamous and ludicrous conspiracy theories like the idea that 5G mobile towers are spreading coronavirus or that it was created by Bill Gates as a way to implant chips into people through vaccines.
Unfortunately, these ideas aren’t just confined to dark corners of the Internet. They often make their way into the real world as we saw in April when right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones showed up to an anti-lockdown protest in Texas. You remember Alex Jones, the guy who always looks like he’s trying to Hulk-out but can’t. I think because instead of gamma rays, he was hit by ham-ma rays.
“I like it.”
Jones led the crowd in chants of “Arrest Bill Gates.”
[Crowd chanting “Arrest Bill Gates!”]
The only police who should arrest Bill Gates are the fashion police. Bill, why can’t you find a tie that goes down to your waist? You look like the assistant manager at a GameStop. You and Trump need to split the difference. You’re an I.T. billionaire. Stop dressing like an I.T. guy.
And then there are the viral videos, which might seem at first lance to come from reputable medical professionals, repeating some of the wildest debunked conspiracy theories about the origins or effects of COVID-19. Like that infamous Plandemic video, featuring Syosset Stevie Nicks, a person who claims, among other things, that masks can somehow “activate” coronavirus, that beaches shouldn’t be closed because they have restorative properties that cure diseases, and that… “Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious diseases, was responsible for the creation of the coronavirus.” Which is ridiculous for many reasons. I mean, if the guy could create a highly-infectious virus in a lab as part of a secret plot to sell a money-making vaccine, don’t you think he could also learn how to throw a baseball?
And then there were those two Urgent Care doctors from Bakersfield, California, who falsely claimed in a viral YouTube video that the virus just wasn’t as deadly as most other experts believed. They based that claim on some extremely faulty data, which they arrived at through some truly terrible math. Basically, they claimed that a lot more people in California had been infected with the coronavirus, which would make the percentage of cases that result in death a lot smaller. And they arrived at that conclusion, in part, by taking the rate of positive tests at the clinics they own and just extrapolating that rate to the entire California population, which makes no sense. The people who walk into an Urgent Care clinic because they think they might be sick aren’t a representative sample of the entire population. I mean, I know I’ve definitely gone to Urgent Care like four or five times to ask them about a weird rash and been told it’s just New York skin. Could be bedbugs. Could be a rat bite. Could be heat rash from having your radiator stuck on high all winter. Could be irritation from a cockroach in your kitchen smoking a cigarette.
[Inhales] “I’m your new roommate, and no, I won’t wear a mask. We need to get organic soaps.”
As one biologist —
“I’m sorry. I draw the line at soaps.
As one biologist who specializes in infectious disease modeling put it, the doctors’ method was “A bit like estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court.” Which is ridiculous. You can’t estimate the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court. However, you can estimate the average basketball skill level of Americans from the players on the Knicks.
In both of these cases, those videos are not just seen by millions of people before being taken down, they were also amplified by right-wing media. The Sinclair Broadcast Group had planned to air an interview with the star of Plandemic this past weekend until it backed down after an outcry. Although, even in their statement withdrawing the segment, they also seemed to defend their initial decision a little, writing… ” We’re a supporter of free speech and a marketplace of ideas and viewpoints, even if incredibly controversial.”
That’s not a justification for saying whatever you want without consequences. You guys love to talk about the marketplace of ideas, but actual marketplaces are also free to impose their own rules. Because if you just let everyone and everything into the marketplace, you get Etsy. “Happy birthday, Mark.” “Oh, a dream catcher… made of old… Fresca cans. You…shouldn’t have.”
And I’m not saying free speech should be regulated by the government, but we can do things like, say, break up big-tech companies so they don’t have so much monopoly power. Also, a marketplace of ideas, just like a marketplace of goods, should be responsive to criticism. In a real marketplace, you can’t just open a store called “Arsenic-fil-A” or “Toys R Us and Us Toys R Knives.” And then say, “You can’t criticize me. It’s the free market.”
Dangerous misinformation like this has been surging during the pandemic, often with the help of prominent figures on the right. The latest example is a Facebook video staged and funded by a right-wing dark money groups. The video, which was viewed by over 20 million people before being taken down, claimed you don’t need to wear a mask because the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is a cure for coronavirus, even though it’s been repeatedly disproven by study after study. Just last week, there was yet another study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which found that hydroxychloroquine does not help COVID-19 patients. No drug has been studied this much since those troublemakers at Psi U conducted an experiment to see which strain of marijuana makes DORITOS taste better. I hope you’re happy, gentlemen, You’ve all flunked out.
And believe me, we all wish hydroxychloroquine actually worked. We wish everything worked. Everyone wishes there was a cure for coronavirus. No one wants to be trapped inside for this long. If hydroxychloroquine really worked, I’d take an UberPool to Times Square to get coughed on by a tourist just for old times’ sake. “Ah, Times Square… Where else in the world can you get… M&Ms?” I can’t wait to be first in line at my local bodega ordering a bacon, egg, and cheese. Well, no, with my luck, I’d be second in line behind a construction worker placing their order for his entire crew. “
[New York accent] On the fish sandwich, I need pepper and a light hot sauce.”
[Normal voice] I miss you, friend. I’ve cursed you under my breath, but I do miss you now.
But all the studies tell us hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, and pushing it is dangerous, especially — especially for people who actually need it for conditions like lupus. After the President began touting hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus earlier this year, lupus patients struggled to get it with one telling “USA Today” that because… “She was unable to fill her normal prescription, she is rationing her pills, taking a half-pill every day – a quarter of her normal dosage” That’s horrible. Lupus patients basically have to microdose a life-saving medication the same way your recently-divorced aunt microdoses LSD. “If I take the right amount, it’s almost like Steve never existed in this universe.”
And yet, because they’ve failed on the pandemic response, and because they’re desperate for a magic fix that will make the crisis go away, prominent figures on the right are now pushing the discredited hydroxychloroquine video. The President’s son, Don Jr., had his Twitter account partially locked for 12 hours after tweeting the video to his 5 million followers. And then last night, he went on Fox News to complain.
[Donald Trump Jr.] Now, Twitter takes me down for that, but Twitter has no problem saying that coronavirus disinformation spread by the Chinese government does not violate their rules. That’s interesting. Jake Tapper himself a few weeks ago posted, “Study finds hydroxychloroquine helped coronavirus patients survive better.” Now, why is Jake Tapper not spreading misinformation but I somehow am?
It’s fun when a dumb guy brings printouts to an interview. It’s like when the jock on campus carries around a book to impress girls. “Oh, this? Yeah, I was, uh, just reading about my favorite author, Ernest Hemingway. He went to jail. They, uh, made a movie about it.” Oh, wait, wait. I’m sorry, what’s on one of those printouts? Oh, man. “What is it? I can’t see. -Ah, n-n-nothing.”
And by the way, there’s a huge difference between a journalist tweeting a link to a news story and what you tweeted out. At least he tweeted a link to a reputable news organization reporting on a study that put the findings in proper context and used cautious language, whereas you just tweeted out a video funded by a right-wing dark money group with a doctor calling hydroxychloroquine a “cure for coronavirus.” A doctor, by the way, who also claims that, “gynecological problems are, in fact, caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches,” that “alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments,” that “scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious,” and that the government is run in part not by humans but by reptiles and other aliens.”
[As Paulie] Hey, Ton, I figured out where that discharge came from. I had dream sex with a demon.” “
[As Tony] Ohhh! We’re still eating here!”
[Normal voice] “Demon sperm” sounds like a catchphrase on “Church Chat” after dark. “
[As Dana Carvey] Look at you with your throbbing loins and pulsating buttocks. Is it possible you’re infected with, hmmmm-uh, could it be…
[echoing] demon sperm?”
[Normal voice] [Sighs] Side note — I’m very close to having early 1990s Dana Carvey hair, although I’m even closer to Dennis Miller. Oh, man. Have those ’90s Miller locks? That’s the dream. “Back to The Look, Jocko!” See? He serves a purpose.
Also, if they were really using DNA in treatments, Trump definitely would’ve asked Fauci about it. “
[As Trump] Fauci, just spit-balling here, what if we got an alien and just let it attach it to your face? You know, like a big hand? I’m hearing very good things from my friends at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Fauci.”
[Normal voice] Seriously, does she actually practice medicine? Filling out those insurance forms must be a nightmare. Have you recently one — traveled abroad, two — visited a farm, three — boned a demon? Seriously, who on Earth could possibly trust a doctor like this? Oh, God… Why’d I ask?
[Donald Trump] There was a woman who was spectacular in her statements about it, that she’s had tremendous success with it. And they took her voice off. I don’t know why they took her off, but they took her off. I can tell you this. She was on air, along with many other doctors. They were big fans of hydroxychloroquine, and I thought she was very impressive.
[Donald Trump] I was very impressed with her and other doctors that stood with her. I think she made sense.
Cool, so, Trump won’t listen to the renowned infectious disease expert who actually works for him but he loves the demon-sperm lady. Was he like this when he lived in New York? Because New York is filled with people like this. If you go to a community board meeting, there’s always at least one demon-sperm guy. That’s how you know the meeting is ending. “Alright, we have time for one more issue. Yes, you, sir? “Yeah, I got a question. Uh, what are we gonna do about the demon sperm on the statue in the park?” “Sir, for the last time, that’s pigeon poop.” “That’s what Azazel wants you to think!” “We’re adjourned.”
Although, I guess Trump is used to hearing crazy stuff from doctors since this guy was his doctor. “Hey, man, you want to try this alien vaccine I’ve been working on? It’s here somewhere. Soy sauce packet, soy sauce packet, honey mustard. Oh, here we are, cocaine. Oh, did I say vaccine? I meant cocaine.”
Dangerous coronavirus misinformation is surging on social media, and it’s being amplified by the President and his backers because they know their response to the pandemic has been a colossal failure. Just step back and consider how insane this is. The President can’t be bothered to focus on the things that actually work — like testing, contact tracing, isolation, or mask-wearing — but if a crazy person posts a video claiming lizard people are making alien vaccines, his response is —
That’s interesting.
That’s The Look, folks, and I…am…out of here.
