Jon Stewart mocked both President Biden and former President Trump during his return to “The Daily Show,” saying both 2024 candidates are “stretching the limits of being able to handle the toughest job in the world.”
After a nine-year absence, the 61-year-old comedian returned to hosting duties on the Comedy Central show to raucous applause Monday. The cable network announced last month that Stewart would sit at the anchor desk on Monday nights, with a rotating lineup of other hosts on other weekdays.
Stewart took aim early in his monologue at Biden and his response to special counsel Robert Hur’s classified records report that drew attention to the president’s age and cognitive ability.
“This guy couldn’t remember stuff during his deposition. Do you understand what that means? He had no ability to recall very basic things under questioning,” Stewart said, before then zinging Trump and playing footage of him being unable to recall facts during depositions.
“Biden’s lost a step, but Trump regularly says things at rallies that would warrant a wellness check,” Stewart said to laughs.
“The question then becomes, what the f‑‑‑ are we doing here, people?” said a seemingly exasperated Stewart.
“We have two candidates who are chronologically outside the norm of anyone who has run for the presidency in this country, in the history of this country,” Stewart said of the 81-year-old Biden and 77-year-old Trump. “They are the oldest people ever to run for president — breaking by only four years the record that they set the last time they ran!” Stewart exclaimed.
“We’re not suggesting neither man is vibrant, productive or even capable,” Stewart said.
Striking a more sober tone, Stewart said: “What’s crazy is thinking that we are the ones as voters who must silence concerns and criticisms. It is the candidates’ job to assuage concerns — not the voters’ job not to mention them.”
While Biden “isn’t Donald Trump,” Stewart said, mentioning the 45th president’s multiple indictments and legal cases against him, “the stakes of this election don’t make Donald Trump’s opponent less subject to scrutiny.”
“It actually makes him more subject to scrutiny,” Stewart said.
Come Election Day, Stewart said, “If your guy loses, bad things might happen, but the country is not over. And if your guy wins, the country is in no way saved.”
“So the good news is: I’m not saying you don’t have to worry about who wins the election,” Stewart concluded.
“I’m saying you have to worry about every day before it, and every day after, forever.”
It’s never a binary on/off switch. Democracy dies through slow corrosion. If we let Trump off with all of those crimes he committed, and allow him to get re-elected, all of those crimes are now unenforceable.
Well, unenforceable for the rich and powerful. The poor has a different system of justice.
DeSantis, Haley, and all of the Speaker nonsense has been infighting with old-guard rich assholes who want to break government more subtlety than how Trump and the rest of the Tea Party idiots do things. The GOP has been trying to steer out of this Trump trainwreck ever since it’s started, and they don’t have the control over their own populace than they used to. But, that’s not a good thing because everything that the GOP represents has been going even further extremist.
But, do you know what happens when these candidates drop out? They immediately fall in line. They kiss Trump’s ass so hard that no callous insult he made at him is unforgivable. Hell, Trump accused Ted Cruz’s father of helping in the JFK assassination, and Ted was like, “Yeah, we should totally vote for this guy!”
There are a lot of ways to define what qualifies as Democracy: is it the mere presence of voting? Is it the impact of that voting? Is it equal/ universal voting rights? Is it the ability to enforce voting outcomes? Or the ability for voters to choose what is voted on?
Some of those are clear binaries, and some of those are gradations or thresholds.
Personally, I think it has to be a combination of universal voting rights, voter-led ballot control(i.e. choosing what to vote about), and enforceability.
To me, we’ve been failing as a democracy for a long time.
The unenforceability of those laws is not determined by his reelection, they’re determined by the actual court cases charging him with crimes. We do not have the ability to force SCOTUS to allow him to be held accountable, and comforting ourselves that we actually can, merely by not re-electing him, means you already realize the laws are not going to be enforced against him in the “Justice” System.
Which is exactly what every Democrat challenger does as well.
You’re broadening the scope of the conversation so much that it’s losing any meaning or focus.
No, if someone is claiming that democracy is being killed, it’s very important to define what that actually means. If Democracy is the simple act of some any given sub-group being allowed to vote, it’s never going to ‘die’ in the US. If on the other hand it’s the actual ability for individuals to overrule those in power via voting, then it’s arguably already dead. Definitions are important.
Definitions are important. Muddying the waters of a term we all more or less understand is not productive.
When I say “Trump is eroding our democracy,” most people - including you - understand what I’m driving at. Don’t be difficult just to win an internet argument.
I agree with Stewart on that point:
Trump is not going to end voting if he gets reelected, and voter suppression and disenfranchisement by Republicans existed long before Trump and will continue long after Trump. There is nothing that Trump is going to fundamentally change about our government.
It will be very bad if he gets elected, but the country is not over, and using hyperbolic language that implies otherwise, like “This is a question of whether democracy dies in America.” (which is what the commenter I initially responded to said), is just being used to deflect from very important and valid criticism of the alternatives. More importantly, it runs the danger of creating voter fatigue; not every election can be an exceptional, emergency situation, and all of Trump’s runner-ups like DeSantis and Ramaswamy, are all running the same playbook.
If the only way for America and/or Democracy not to die is for Republicans to never again become president, it’s already lost, because we’re in a duopoly with them (which the DNC is actively working to maintain), and it is an eventuality.
I said he is eroding our democracy. I didn’t say the country is over.
You inserted yourself into a conversation I was having, in which the other person (P03 Locke) was disputing Stewart’s assertion that the country would not be over, and asserting that
That is the context in which I felt it was necessary to define Democracy.
You then jumped in and said
despite the fact you had not actually said that previously, and that it is a different stance from what P03 Locke said.
P03 Locke never asserted Trump was eroding Democracy, they said he would be killing it, and they said that as a direct counter to Stewart’s assertion that the country would not be over, which indicates that in P03 Locke’s mind, the death of Democracy is equivalent to the end of America.
In that case, it’s incredibly important to define Democracy, in order to understand exactly what changes P03 Locke believes Trump will make, so we can actually assess the likely impact of those changes, and see what precisely they think qualifies as the end of Democracy.
I “inserted” myself? This is a public forum. You made a public post and public comments. You know people - anyone - can comment. What are you even going on about? If you don’t want people chiming in to conversations and don’t have them on a public forum. You don’t get to use the veritable megaphone that is the Internet and then get summarily pissy and throw an entitled tantrum when people don’t agree with you.
If you don’t like what I have to say, then stop responding to me and/or block me. The tools are available to you.