Stephen Colbert on how Trump overshadowed COVID vaccine news

Stephen Colbert reacted to the Trump administration’s latest COVID-19 policy

While a handful of states are trending in the right direction, it has still been some time since the country received good news regarding the novel coronavirus pandemic. That changed with a report indicating promising developments on a vaccine. However, that news was overshadowed by a new policy from President Donald Trump as Stephen Colbert explained during his Late Show monologue.

An experimental vaccine developed by the National Institutes for Health and Moderna Inc. is ready to move into the final stage of testing. This comes after the drug was found to have improved the immune system, earning praise from Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The ideal scenario would be for the vaccine to be ready for distribution by the end of the year or early 2021. In the meantime, cases continue to spike in several states leading to rollbacks on reopening and more hospitalization rates.

These numbers don’t do the Trump administration any favors after months of downplaying the severity of COVID-19 and suggesting that the U.S. was the best country when it came to handling the pandemic. So as a solution, the White House has a new plan to control the story. Stephen Colbert can take it from here:

Stephen Colbert says President Trump is trying to cover up his failures

Stephen Colbert knew long ago that President Donald Trump had failed when it came to leading the country through the pandemic. From blaming China to saying the virus would disappear to suggesting that disinfectant could be used as a treatment, nearly everything the president has said or done has been considered a failure by critics like Colbert.

Now President Trump is trying to cover up that failure by having novel coronavirus hospital data sent to his administration rather than the Centers for Disease Control. This move lets the White House limit public knowledge and control the narrative by getting a first look at the data.

So while the vaccine developments are good news, the more immediate issue is how the White House could hide the truth about the pandemic. Colbert doesn’t have much time to celebrate the vaccine news when faced with another example of corrupt practices.

Perhaps the Trump administration was hoping that excitement over the COVID-19 vaccine would distract the public from its takeover of hospitalization data. But people like Colbert have become too suspicious of the federal government not to keep a close eye on everything it does, no matter what else is going on.

What did you think of Stephen Colbert’s monologue? Share your thoughts in the comment section below. Keep checking Last Night On for more from The Late Show and the rest of late night television.