As many of you know, I've been doing the show from home

despite some non-ideal circumstances,

specifically I only have three shirts,

and they come in three different varieties --

blue, blue, and a slightly lighter blue.

And, yeah, I'm aware that this makes me, as the kids say,

"basic," but in fairness, I've been slightly distracted

from wardrobe questions by the fact that there are wasps --

actual wasps buzzing around my head.

And if you don't believe me,

here's one zipping by during Tuesday's monologue.

But don't worry. That's not just any wasp.

That's Nick, our segue-writing wasp, and speaking of segues,

the White House is calling their response

to the coronavirus pandemic a success story

even as the country passes grim new milestones.

You've done it again, Nick!

For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."

♪♪

We've now surpassed one million coronavirus cases

and 60,000 deaths in the span of about two months.

Now, regardless of where you stand politically,

that's a staggering heartbreaking number,

or as Donald Trump put it

at the end of his press conference on Monday,

job well done.

-Let's do one more, please, in the back.

-If an American President loses more Americans

over the course of six weeks

than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War,

does he deserve to be re-elected?

-So, yeah, we've lost a lot of people,

but if you look at what original projections were,

2.2 million.

We're probably heading to 60,000, 70,000.

It's far too many, one person is too many for this,

and I think we've made a lot of really good decisions.

I think we've made a lot of good decisions.

I think that Mike Pence and the task force

have done a fantastic job.

I think that everybody working on the ventilators,

you see what we've done there, have done unbelievable.

The press doesn't talk about ventilators anymore.

They just don't want to talk about them, and that's okay.

But the reason they don't want to talk --

That was the subject that nobody would get off of.

They don't want to talk about them.

So, no, I think we've done a great job.

-Oh, boy. He should not have taken one more question

because that was a brutal way to end a press conference.

You know when they heard that question

in the Fox News control room, they basically said,

"Quick, cut to an Acorn stair lift commercial.

What do you mean you don't have one?

No, we should always have it ready.

Well, for reasons like this."

Trump must have been kicking himself for taking one more.

That was like that moment you start talking smack

during a game of Jenga.

"Yeah, I'll grab another block with one eye shut. Oh [bleep]"

And you know as soon as he heard

the word "Vietnam," he probably thought to himself,

"Vietnam, am I going to have to dodge you again?"

He's so bummed you can't use make-believe bone spurs

to get out of Vietnam questions.

[ As Trump ] I'd love to give you an answer,

but unfortunately, I feel, uh,

what I fear is a spur in my bone,

back again, so I'm going to have to call it a day.

[ Normal voice ] And, of course,

the press doesn't want to talk about ventilators.

Nobody wants to talk about a critical shortage

of life-saving medical equipment.

The reason it was such a hot topic for a while

was because everyone was afraid we were going to run out.

Thanks to Americans staying home to flatten the curve

and states sharing equipment with each other,

we avoided the worst case scenarios.

No thanks to you.

You're like the mayor showing up at the end of "Jaws" saying,

"Oh, so I guess the press

doesn't want to talk about sharks anymore?

Okay. Well, I would love to know.

'Cause I'm the mayor and I'm still a big shot in this town.

If we're not talking about sharks, let me know."

In fact, here's how unhelpful the president was

when it came to procuring much needed ventilators for states.

BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday night that a random dude

tweeted at Trump that he could make ventilators,

and then the White House helped that guy

get a lucrative contract to make ventilators,

which he never produced.

On March 27th, Trump posted on twitter to urge Ford

and General Motors to start making ventilators now.

One of the thousands of replies that the tweet attracted

struck an equally urgent tone.

"We can supply ICU ventilators, invasive and non-invasive.

Have someone call me. Urgent."

Its author was an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley.

A specialist in mobile phone technology,

he currently has just 75 followers on Twitter

and no apparent experience in government contracting

or medical devices.

Honestly, how long until he replies to a spam e-mail

offering free boner pills?

I mean, I guess we'll know exactly how long

the day he turns to Dr. Birx

in the middle of a press conference and says...

[ As Trump ] There's also a chance that --

Correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Birx,

that boner pills might possibly

be an effective treatment for the virus,

so if someone had a surplus of boner pills,

that person could possibly be a hero?

Dr. Birx, I see you've wrapped your head in scarves again.

I can't hear you. It's muffled.

When you talk through the scarves,

it just comes through as muffles.

[ Normal voice ] I mean, right off the bat,

there are so many red flags there.

First of all, there are major companies

that make ventilators, so if a guy with 75 followers

is tweeting at you, he's probably not,

you know, a power player.

CEO of General Electric doesn't spend all day replying

to individual people on Twitter, "I can get you a microwave.

Have someone call me. Urgent."

Second, making mobile phones

has nothing to do with making ventilators.

Ventilators help you breathe, while phones,

at least in the meantime, help you hyperventilate.

Oh, I just got an alert. The president says,

"Ingesting bleach cures male pattern baldness.

[Breathlessly] Oh, my God. Oh, I'm hyperventilating.

[ Normal voice ] And yet, incredibly,

Trump actually took this guy seriously.

Three days later, New York State paid Oren-Pines

69 -- wait-for-it -- million dollars.

The payment was for 1,450 ventilators,

at least triple the standard retail price of high-end models.

Not a single ventilator ever arrived.

State officials said New York entered into the contract

at the direct recommendation

of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

This is insane.

I mean, we're talking about a guy

who is the most powerful person on Earth.

There is literally a law that allows him

to compel companies to make ventilators,

and he's combing through his Twitter replies

like he's putting a band together.

"Oh, okay. This guy's got his own amp.

That could really --

that could really come in handy if we had somebody

with their own amp."

Trump had the chance to act early

to prevent both a public health crisis and an economic one,

and instead he chose to ignore and downplay the threat,

or as he put it yesterday at the White House...

-This plague should never have happened.

It could have been stopped. But people chose not to stop it.

-Oh, people chose not to stop it? Why so coy?

Pray tell, Donald, who are these people you speak of?

[ As Trump ] This plague never should have happened,

but someone really dropped the ball.

I'm not going to name names, Mike Pence.

[ Normal voice ] Hey, maybe he was talking about

his spectral son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Kushner has supposedly played a central role

in the administration's coronavirus response,

and on Wednesday, he said this to "Fox & Friends."

-We're on the other side of the medical aspect of this,

and I think that we've achieved

all the different milestones that are needed.

So the government, federal government

rose to the challenge and this is a great success story.

-This is a success story? You're not even a success story.

You're only in the White House because Ivanka

lost Tom Brady's phone number in one of her sweatshop handbags.

You shouldn't be anywhere near the White House.

You should be confessing to Christopher Meloni

at the end of an episode of "Law & Order."

Seriously, we have one million cases,

60,000 deaths, and 30 million out of work.

If this is a success, what would failure have looked like --

The Statue of Liberty getting laid off

and developing a weed habit in quarantine?

Kushner also defended the administration's push

to prematurely re-open the economy

before there are plans to effectively contain

the spread of the virus.

-The goal here is to get people back to work.

The eternal lockdown crowd can make jokes

on late-night television, but the reality is,

is that the data is on our side. -Oh, my God.

First of all, thank you for watching.

[ Chuckles ] Sorry about that Tom Brady joke, so stupid.

But also, I'm kind of terrified that you're watching.

Now I'm going to have nightmares

about that tiny door back there creaking open

and seeing Jared Kushner's face in the shadows.

Second, no one wants eternal lockdowns.

If I see another one of my friends holding up

a janky loaf of homemade bread on Instagram,

I'm going to run outside and lick a banister.

We want a plan for re-opening things safely.

You think I don't want things to open up?

I used to do a show with multiple shirts and zero wasps.

I worked in a building that had 50 lunch options.

Now the only thing on the menu

is whatever the boys don't finish.

Which isn't much, mind you, because the 2-year-old

eats like a horse and he has the dumps to prove it.

I just changed his diaper.

You know when I'll have to change the next one?

Based on recent patterns, any minute now.

You know what this, bro?

You know what this is right here?

It's a [bleep] space heater.

And I have it because I'm cold all the time.

I always feel like you just looked at me.

I mean, I used to have an audience

of human beings who laughed at jokes.

Now the only thing watching me are the dead black eyes

of a stuffed elephant rocker.

So, yeah, I want to go back to normal, too.

Now, not only is the administration's response

not a success story, in reality,

we're learning that the death toll is almost certainly

an undercount, according to analysis of CDC data

by "The New York Times" this week.

And if you're looking for a metric to compare

our so-called success story to actual success stories

in other countries, there's this --

We recorded our first case of coronavirus

on the same day that South Korea recorded theirs.

And this week, while we were passing 1 million cases,

South Korea was reporting that they had reported

no new domestic cases of COVID-19

for the first time since February.

That's right. In South Korea,

they're down to zero new domestic cases,

while over here, the president is suggesting

we should gnaw on the Tide To Go pens

like they're bread sticks.

And not only is our case load much higher,

but the federal government has also failed to provide

any leadership at all in responding to that case load.

In fact, Trump has failed so spectacularly

to provide any coherent federal coordination

that states have essentially divvied themselves up

into regional partnerships to work together,