“Daily Show” correspondent Josh Johnson took his first spin in the late night series’ hosting chair, wasting no time calling out President Trump on all of his efforts over the past week to distract from his administration’s ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
“Trump has been throwing every distraction he can at us,” Johnson told Comedy Central viewers Tuesday night, before playing a clip of the president calling former president Barack Obama “sedatious” [sic] and accusing him of trying to “steal” the 2016 presidential election from Trump. “Boos aside … ‘sedatious’?” Johnson joked. “It feels like he’s mispronouncing a new Black friend’s name.”
“The problem with this distraction is that it’s so old Jeffrey Epstein wouldn’t date it,” Johnson continued. “Trump has been going after Obama for decades. He’s going to need something else, something juicy.” Unfortunately, the first-time “Daily Show” host was equally unimpressed by Trump’s other distraction efforts, which have included new reports about the president’s health and a promise to get Coca-Cola to start using real cane sugar.
You can watch the full “Daily Show” segment yourself in the video below.
“This is so insulting,” Johnson said of Trump’s Coca-Cola promise. “Trump’s treating Americans like a kid you can bribe with a treat.” To demonstrate what he meant, Johnson grabbed a can of Coca-Cola, took a sip of it and then told viewers, “Mmm, I don’t care about pedophilia anymore!”
Regarding the Trump administration’s recent release of new documents surrounding the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., “The Daily Show” spotlighted a tweet by Bernice King. The famed civil rights activist’s daughter wrote on X after the release of the documents, “Now, do the Epstein files,” along with a photo of her father giving a disapproving look.
“Damn, that is cold,” Johnson remarked. “Do you know how much you have to screw up for Dr. King’s family to go, ‘No, no, we choose violence’?” The “Daily Show” host then offered the president a piece of advice about how to handle the fallout of his administration’s handling of the Epstein files.
“If Trump wants to distract us, all he has to do is keep his promises,” Johnson concluded. “If you ended the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, that would be extremely distracting. If you put up affordable housing, Americans would be like, ‘What Epstein files? I’m too distracted memorizing my new home address.’ If you want to think of it in terms you can understand, think of it like a bribe, Mr. President. You’re the deal guy. Make us a deal.”
