Thursday’s episode of “The Daily Show,” hosted by Jon Stewart in a rare Thursday appearance, began with a brutal response to ABC suspending Jimmy Kimmel:
“From Comedy Central. It’s the all new government-approved Daily Show with your patriotically obedient host, Jon Stewart.”
But that, as it turns out, wasn’t just a one-off joke ahead of a straight commentary on the matter. It was instead the set up to an episode-long gag in which “The Daily Show” was reimagined as a cringe, North Korea-esque propaganda outlet devoted entirely to praising Donald Trump and Republicans, and of course condemning his enemies.
And it was possibly the best response to what happened to Kimmel since he was suspended a day before, in response to right wing outrage over a comment he made assuming facts about the man who killed Charlie Kirk — that were later disproved by information that only became available later.
Appropriately, instead of the usual fake newsroom set, the entire, 23-minute-long opening segment featured Stewart in front of what appeared to be an incredibly gaudy, excessively gold-trimmed room on part with what Trump has recently done to the White House.
“We have another fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show,” Stewart said at the start. “Wow. I’m coming in tonight from a real s—hole, the crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster like no one’s ever seen before, someone’s National Guard should invade this place. Am I right?”
At this, the audience laughed loudly, prompting a panicked-looking Stewart to rasp out “shut the f— up!” at them, a gag that would continue throughout the segment. He then began the State TV parody version of the usual “The Daily Show” news recap, starting with Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK.
Or, as Stewart put it, “our great father has not been home. For father has been gracing England with his legendary warmth and radiance.”
“Gaze upon him! With a gait even more majestic than that of the royal horses that pranced before him, he wowed the English with charm, intelligence and an undeniable sexual charisma that filled their air like a pheromone-packed London fog,” Stewart continued.
His recap of Trump’s visit continued, with the actual events framed by absurd, obviously false, extravagant praise. “The perfectly tinted Trump dazzled his hosts at dinner with a demonstration of unmatched oratory skill,” Stewart declared.
Short after, praising Trump’s claim to high literacy in highly sarcastic obsequiousness, Stewart added, “I’ll tell you whose client list Trump’s name is on: Dewey Decimal’s.”
“But of course,” Stewart continued, “as great as those authors are, there can only be one most tremendous author in the English language… Oh, how fortune has smiled upon us, for that very scribe is also our dear leader.”
Things continued along these lines, with Stewart moving on to other reasons Trump has been in the news recently, and of course the more negative the reason, the more fawning his praise. Eventually, he reached Trump’s comments from earlier in the day Thursday about Kimmel’s suspension.
Said Trump in part, “he had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago. So you know, you could call that free speech or not.” At that, Stewart began to hammer the point of all this home.
“You may call it free speech in jolly old England, but in America, we have little something called the First Amendment. Let me tell you how it works. There’s something called a Talent-O-Meter. It’s a completely scientific instrument that is kept on the President’s desk, and it tells the President when a performer’s TQ talent quotient, measured mostly by niceness to the president, goes below a certain level, At which point the FCC must be notified to threaten the acquisition prospects for billion dollar mergers of network affiliates.”
“These affiliates are then asked to give ultimatums to the even larger mega corporation that controls the flow of state approved content, or the FCC can just threaten those licenses directly. It’s basic science,” Stewart said. “There are
certain rules of free speech that we must all abide by. But in case anyone needs a refresher, we’re going to go over the rules.”
The first, as Stewart summed up after playing clips of Trump supports in the media who back his attacks on free speech, was “people cannot just go on television and mislead viewers with made up.”
He then ran a supercut of blatant lies told by various hosts on Fox News.
Next, as Stewart summarized after playing more clips, was “You can’t say fascist. You can’t say enemy, mistake. You can’t say less than human. These are simple rules that any responsible member of a society can easily follow.”
He then, of course, played a bunch of clips of Trump and his supporters in the media doing exactly that.
Next, Stewart eventually said, “only a bad person would celebrate violence or make crass jokes about it.” This was followed by clips of multiple high ranking Republicans and conservative media allies mocking violence inflicted on Democrats.
“I don’t know who this ‘Johnny Dribble Live’ ABC character is, but the point is, our great administration has laid out very clear rules on free speech,” Stewart said as he started to wrap things up. “Now some naysayers may argue that this administration’s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smokescreen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation. principle-less and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance. Some people would say that. Not me, though. I think it’s great!”
Watch the whole thing below:
