The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart opened Monday’s (June 3) episode by discussing Donald Trump‘s recent conviction and President Joe Biden‘s bizarre reaction.
On Thursday (May 30), the former president was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to his hush-money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair.
Stewart aired a clip from Biden’s press conference when a reporter asked him to share his thoughts on the Trump verdict. In the video, Biden is seen walking away before stopping and turning around with a massive smile on his face.
“No, don’t stop!” Stewart begged. “Why can’t they tell him to just f****** keep walking whenever he’s out in public?!”
After playing a clip of the smile, Stewart added, “Why does everything have to be so f****** weird? Why? If you have something to say about [Trump’s conviction], say it! If you don’t have something to say about it, don’t say it!”
“But you’re just gonna stop and hit them with some kind of 70s sitcom freeze-frame?” he continued before replaying the clip with some classic sitcom-style music over the top of it.
Stewart also focused on the media’s response to Trump’s guilty verdict, including a clip from Fox & Friends Weekend where Trump claimed never to have said “Lock her up” in relation to Hillary Clinton.
The late-night host then threw to several instances of Trump using the infamous phrase that became the rallying cry of his 2016 presidential campaign.
However, Stewart was more incredulous that none of the three Fox co-hosts had rebutted Trump’s claim. “There’s three of them!” he said. “One of them didn’t remember he said ‘lock her up,’ I can believe. Two of them didn’t remember? Three of them?! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we need courts.”
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While Stewart acknowledged there are issues with the American legal system, he noted how it’s the last place where politicians are held accountable and forced to back up their claims. Specifically, he showed how Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s claims of election fraud fell apart as soon as they made it to court.
“The difference between in court and out of court is that, in court, someone can say ‘prove it,’” Stewart stated. “And the problem is that most of the time in this country, our political leaders are not in court. They are here on TV, where the news media has decided that there’s really no such thing as reality.”
He continued, “We are all living in one reality, and it can be the news media’s job to litigate the parameters of said reality. What the courts do really well is look backwards and reconstruct the realities of what happened. The news media could do the same, but what they do instead is look forward and wildly speculate on the future.”
You can watch Stewart’s full monologue above.
The Daily Show, Weeknights, 11:30/10:30c, Comedy Central
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