The Jon Stewart who returned to The Daily Show two years ago was the same talented, passionate, dynamic, truth-telling comic he was during his long, multi–multi-Emmy-winning run starting in 1999. Only better.
If in doubt, check out Monday night’s edition. This was classic Stewart at another level—hilariously funny, with a socko message that could be boiled down to a couple of mid-show cris de coeur: “What is happening???”
That was his reaction to President Trump ending his Thanksgiving weekend with his family (his “crime” family, Stewart joked) by sending out a Truth Social post declaring that the governor of Minnesota is “retarded.” And following that up by how he responded to reporters, who had been dutifully stuck at Mar-a-Lago over the holiday and now had to “fly back with this nut,” when they asked whether he stood by that slur of a characterization of Tim Walz.
“Yes, there’s something wrong with him.”
The visibly apoplectic Stewart’s response: “There’s something wrong with him?”
The apoplexy was only ratcheted up by the segue into the scene of Trump digging into his insult bag to label two women journalists “stupid people,” trying to sell them on the notion that he had an MRI but had no idea what part of his body was being looked at.
This is such a piquant absurdity that it is a can’t-miss, fish-in-a-barrel, late-night comedy premise. And Stewart didn’t miss.
He pictured Trump begging the doctor not to tell him which body part was the target because “I want to find out at my MRI-reveal party.” Fake balloon pop, fake confetti falling: “Oh it’s the lymph nodes!”
Cue a second “What is happening???” along with a two-handed slap of the desk.
“For God’s sake, man, were you not curious at all? When they laid you down in a tube for a half an hour to 45 minutes, you didn’t want to know what they might be doing? Or did you just think to yourself: ‘What a loud tanning bed!’”
That whole sequence merited the evaluation “crazy funny” because both those words are literally appropriate.
But there was more.
Next, he spent a little time examining “the utter incoherence” of the Trump presidency, illustrated by the reaction to the alleged shooter of two National Guard members being an Afghan, and thus inspiring Trump’s ban on Afghan refugees—and, he threw in, Somalians, though he also recognized they had nothing to do with the shooting.
As Stewart summed it up, “I don’t see color, I just hate all of it.”
What kind of people does Trump like? Clips showed him loving folks from Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland. “OK, now I’m starting to see a pattern,” Stewart said, a point underscored by the exception the administration is offering to its refugee ban: white Afrikaners. “I mean really, what have white Afrikaners ever done to anybody?” Stewart observed, without the need to explain further.
And in a typically brilliant use of other clips assumed by TDS staff, Trump had mentioned in the past some other “weirdly specific” exceptions to his disfavor: “Maitre d’s, wine experts, even waiters, high-quality waiters.”
Can’t deny talent like that, apparently. Stewart, his face portraying the elevated reaches of absurdity being achieved here, obviously couldn’t resist the perfect pun: “So Somalians aren’t welcome, unless they’re also sommeliers?”
What has really tipped Stewart 2.0 into a higher realm of performance is the passion he brings to delivering comedy this potent. He often did that in the past. Now it feels like a mission.
And he’s able to go to just about any length to drive his message home, no longer limited by the restraints of an actual network schedule. Because Comedy Central doesn’t follow TDS with another original show as it once did (with the brilliant Colbert Report), the network allows the Stewart-hosted editions to go about as long as Stewart wants to make the points he wants to make.
The point in the last third of Monday night’s show was less about comic absurdity than pointed truth-telling, from the ludicrous notion that he had “aced” a cognitive test even when he couldn’t remember why he had an MRI, to the nasty slurs and insults he resorts to, especially toward women, now designated “stupid people” in lieu of ugly or fat.
The idea that people from countries Trump and his cadre don’t like—for the ugliest of reasons—should be banned, shunned, and grabbed in the night and carted away like refuse on the sidewalk, while people who stormed the Capitol and tried to overthrow the government are pardoned to, in some cases, go on new crime sprees, clearly earned Stewart’s genuine, non-comic umbrage.
“That’s the real Trump standard. If you’re not part of Trump’s group, you have no margin of error in this country,” Stewart said. “But if you are, it’s all margin of error. Not only are you not judged by the worst of your group, the worst of your group isn’t judged at all.
“And anybody who thinks that Trump’s Third-World immigration crackdown is really about national security, and is not just an opportunity for a USA complexion correction, I have but one thing to say to you.”
Cut to Trump clip: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?”
As Trump might also put it: Aced it.
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