Only 34 days until the election, Jon Stewart is on a mission to help his viewers decipher through Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump's differing and sometimes confusing policy statements.
Starting the episode with a bang, "The Daily Show" host wanted viewers to know he was drawn to Harris for his vote. "I've been leaning towards Kamala Harris because of her impressive resumé and her ability to switch from Indian to Black like that," the host joked.
But the star of the episode was Stewart's charts. One was labeled on its Y-axis, “Policy Specifics” and its X-axis labeled, “Time.” The comedian used the chart to label how specific Trump's policies were to alleviate prices and cost of living as American households are struggling.
However, in a recent interview, the former president deflected from answering the question and spun blame on Harris's inability to talk about policy specifics and how she is not fit to become president.
Stewart then switched out his graph for another one, its Y-axis now labeled "Huh?"
"I guess I had the wrong chart!" Stewart said. "The question sir, was specific to, how are you going to bring down inflation?" He added, "Your answer so far has been huh," while drawing a dot on the chart with a confused face. The show continued playing Trump's answer, which still did not clarify his plan for inflation. So Stewart drew an increase on his chart.
“Maybe he didn’t really want to talk about his inflation policy, since economists say it would make inflation worse. Which, you know, is the wrong direction,” Stewart said.
After playing Trump's confusing stance on in vitro fertilization (IVF), Stewart brought out his third and final graph. The graph said, "What the actual f**k are you talking about?"
"So, clearly, what people like about Donald Trump is not his clear, specific policies as they demand from Kamala Harris. But I'm still open! I'm an undecided voter, you know, because of the horse kick to my head."
Then the show played clips of Trump's biggest supporters who explained their love for the candidate. One person said, "President Trump is the best friend American workers have had in the White House."
"Donald Trump is a champion of hardworking men and women. He's behind every kind of worker from auto to sex!" Stewart quipped.
But Stewart concluded that the reasons people love Trump have nothing to do with who he actually is or his policies, highlighting various clips of Trump's statements against weaponizing freedom of speech against any criticism of him including punishing late-night comedians for their commentary on him.
The comedian concluded, “It’s as though they’ve created a fictional character, a bizarro Trump, whose accomplishments and character bear little resemblance to the self-aggrandizing, perpetual victim guy he continues to tell you explicitly that he is.”
“This fictional Trump, who is portrayed as much better than he actually is, is running to be president of a country he paints as much worse than it actually is,” Stewart said. “But I got to tell you, whatever country that is where families are routinely murdered several times while making breakfast could really use Donald Trump. The rest of us? Not so much.”
"The Daily Show" airs Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m. ET on Comedy Central and streams on Paramount+.
