In the first “Daily Show” episode since July, host Jon Stewart zeroed in on the public’s concerns about President Trump’s health, telling viewers: “Trump is alive. Although, I definitively would not go so far as to say ‘alive and kicking.’”
Stewart poked fun at the rumors that began to circulate in late August that Trump had secretly died. “It does say something about the ubiquity of Donald Trump in our lives that we don’t hear from him for 20 minutes and we’re like, ‘He’s dead,’” the comedian noted. “How do you know he’s dead? ‘Well, it’s been seven minutes since the word ‘Newscum’ has come up on my feed. He must be dead!’”
“Of course, Trump didn’t die in office,” Stewart added. “But I wouldn’t put it past him — trying once again to take credit for something Biden already accomplished.” The comedian subsequently rolled a series of TV clips in which spectators and analysts have looked for physical signs in recent weeks of Trump’s health by zooming on his ankles, bruised hands and apparently “lumpy” eyes.
“These really are not medical appraisals. It’s just more like insults,” Stewart jokingly observed. “Like, ‘Hey, according to the Mayo Clinic, why are his eyes so f—king lumpy?’”
Lest it seem like he was coming too much to Trump’s defense, Stewart went on to call out the president for his childish need for validation and praise from his followers and cabinet members. Responding to Trump’s remark in August that he would like to “try and get to Heaven,” Stewart said, “I’m sure you do. But you know, hey, look, the first step is always admitting you have a problem.”
Following clips of Trump’s White House appointees shamelessly heaping praise upon him, Stewart said Trump’s need for validation goes “way past trophy fondling and cereal box deputy badges.” After initially comparing the president to a Make-a-Wish kid, the Comedy Central star countered, “I’m beginning to think everybody treats Trump like this not because he’s the Make-A-Wish kid, but because he’s that ‘Twilight Zone’ kid that, any time somebody made him mad, he sent them out to the cornfield.”
The “Daily Show” host continued to draw parallels between Trump and the terrifying central figure of “It’s a Good Life,” the “Twilight Zone” episode in which an entire town’s worth of people are forced to live at the mercy of a six-year-old boy with godlike mental powers who demands that they worship him.
“This is where we’re at, America,” Stewart remarked, as the screen turned black-and-white and he adopted his best Rod Serling impression. “For your consideration, a nation held hostage by the fragile ego of a man-baby president, who may or may not be dying of hand syphilis … But [who] is puffy. I don’t know if he’s dying. He’s weirdly puffy … and who we’re trapped with for at least three more years in the Twilight Zone.”
