Jon Stewart, who resigned from the newsroom last week, returned to the Daily Show on Monday night. “My name is Jon Stewart and I have risen from Covid hell,” he joked in the opening monologue. “Newbie, I didn’t like it.”
After greeting viewers from the X-Program, where Donald Trump’s disastrous interview with Elon Musk had taken place just hours earlier, Stewart turned his attention to the former president’s faltering campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“A month ago, he was basically president,” Stewart said. “He had cheated death and started a new trend in earrings. At the time, people thought his choice for vice president was a smart decision. He had everything in his pocket, and then it was taken away from him.”
The host noted that Trump was “trying out some nice doom-mongering on Harris” before showing footage after footage of the former president rehashing the same insults he used on President Joe Biden – the attacks ranged from scaremongering about World War III to a stock market crash.
“This is just a remix?” Stewart asked. “Dude, you can’t just find Biden and replace him with Kamala. This is lazy apocalypse.”
The comedian added: “That’s when Elton John changed three words and then pretended that ‘Candle in the Wind’ was always about (Princess) Diana. It wasn’t! Very disrespectful to Marilyn (Monroe).”
Elsewhere, Stewart mocked Trump’s nostalgia for his former opponent. “It’s sad. It’s like watching an old man talk to an empty seat on the bench. And then you realize his wife used to sit there,” the moderator joked. “He would give it all up for just one more moment with Crooked Joe.”
Harris will formally accept her nomination next week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. While a host of politicians and celebrities have pledged their support for the vice president, Harris and Trump have agreed to a debate on September 10, hosted by ABC. The news came after Trump tried to back out of the dispute last month, demanding a debate with his preferred propaganda channel, Fox News.
