Jon Stewart is sounding the alarm on Donald Trump’s recent actions, especially in regards to what it means for laws and the way they are enforced.
On Wednesday’s episode of “The Weekly Show,” Stewart hoped people were starting to notice that Trump was “blowing past norms” and showing the cracks in the system to check his executive power. The military strike that resulted in Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was the latest alarm bell.
“I think he’s shown the weakness of liberal democracies almost not in norms,” Stewart said. “But by the idea that if you control – what did he say about the Supreme Court when the Supreme Court came in and said you can’t do that? ‘How are you going to enforce that?’ It’s worse than ‘oh, he’s blowing past norms.’ It’s why I wasn’t so bothered by ‘oh, he fired some inspector generals’ when he blew past norms. I kind of soft-pedaled it.”
He continued: “This is a different thing. This is a different thing that is now being accomplished. This isn’t about norms. It’s exposing the weakness of the enforcement mechanisms of the laws that a powerful executive just decides to ignore.”
The capture of Maduro, who was first indicted in New York in 2020 on drug-trafficking charges, followed months of escalation in the region as the US military conducted lethal strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
Several lawmakers questioned Trump’s authority to act, with Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern writing on X that “without authorization from Congress, and with the vast majority of Americans opposed to military action, Trump just launched an unjustified, illegal strike on Venezuela.”
When asked about McGovern’s comments during an appearance on Fox, Trump said “these are weak, stupid people,” and suggested the US would’ve been destroyed if he hadn’t been elected in 2024.
