Stephen Colbert opened The late show on Thursday – a year since COVID-19 was officially considered a pandemic – by playing a slightly modified version of the new PSA with four former presidents.
In addition to clips of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter each promoting vaccinations, this one featured clips of Donald Trump predicting that the virus would magically “disappear” without the need for a vaccine.
In reality, the 45th president was nowhere to be seen in the ad, which premiered online Thursday morning. After dusting off his W. impression to fool Bush for choosing a baseball game as something he looks forward to most now that he’s vaccinated, Colbert turned to the only living former president who is conspicuously missing.
“Maybe his invitation got lost in the mail … because he destroyed the mail!” the host joked. “Ol ’45 was left out of the POTUS PSA party, but he has made his own statement about the vaccine.”
From there, he read aloud the ‘statement’ Trump would have preferred to tweet: ‘I hope everyone remembers when they get the COVID-19 vaccine (often called the China virus) that if I wasn’t president you would At best, not getting that beautiful ‘photo’ for 5 years, and probably not at all. I hope everyone remembers! “
“First of all, that’s unbelievably sad,” Colbert replied. Second, pathetic. Third, how did we learn about this statement at all? He can’t tweet this stuff! Did he just print it out and staple it to telephone poles in Palm Beach? He might as well have had ‘Ex-prez will take credit, and teach you guitar!’ Can release. “
“We banned him from Twitter,” he concluded. ‘Can we ban him from paper? Is that possible?”