Jon Stewart, who stepped back from the news desk last week, returned to the Daily Show on Monday evening. “My name is Jon Stewart, and I am risen from Covid hell,” he quipped in the opening monologue. “First-timer, did not care for it.”
After welcoming viewers joining the show from X, where Donald Trump‘s disastrous interview with Elon Musk took place just hours before, Stewart turned his attention to the former president’s struggling campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“A month ago, he was basically already the president,” said Stewart. “He had cheated death, started a new ear accessory trend. Back then, people thought his VP selection was a smart choice. He had it all in the bag, and it was taken away.”
The host remarked that Trump was “trying out some good catastrophizing on Harris,” before rolling back-to-back footage of the ex-president recycling insults he used for President Joe Biden on Harris — the attacks ranged from fearmongering warnings of World War III to the stock market crashing.
“This is just a remix?” Stewart asked. “Dude, you can’t just find and replace Biden with Kamala. That’s lazy apocalypse-ing.”
The comedian added, “This is like when Elton John changed like three words and then pretended ‘Candle in the Wind’ was always about [Princess] Diana. It wasn’t! Very disrespectful to Marilyn [Monroe].”
Elsewhere, Stewart mocked Trump for being nostalgic for his former opponent. “This is sad. It’s like seeing an old man talking to an empty spot on the bench. And then you realize that’s where his wife used to sit,” joked the host. “He would give up everything for just one more moment with Crooked Joe.”
Harris is poised to officially accept the nomination at Chicago’s Democratic National Convention next week. As a wave of political leaders and celebrities have pledged their support for the vice president, Harris and Trump have agreed to a debate on Sept. 10 that will be hosted by ABC. The news arrived after Trump had attempted to back out of the showdown last month and requested a debate with his preferred propaganda network, Fox News.
