Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has canceled his book tour to avoid encountering protests over his GOP budget vote that has effectively destroyed his credibility with other Democrats. But if he ever re-starts it, he’ll want to avoid “The Daily Show,” entirely, as on Monday Jon Stewart dragged him at length for what he referred to as “total capitulation” to Trump and the Republican Party.
Or as he put it bleakly at the start of Monday’s “The Daily Show,” “it is Trump’s world, and we’re just cowering in it.”
You can watch the full video here:
Stewart then listed just a few of the absolutely horrifying actions the Trump administration has taken since last week. This inclided the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident married to an American citizen who was arrested and now faces unlawful deportation because Republicans object to his constititionally protected political opinions. He also discussed the terrifying speech in which Trump threatened to imprison his political opponents and falsely claimed it is illegal for news channels to air negative coverage of him.
Then Stewart mocked Trump’s claims to have won yet another golf tournament at the golf clun that he himself owns, while also ordering military actions.
“But fear not, because Democrats, put on the back foot, finally have an opportunity to stand up and show their dispirited party they still have the principle and the backbone to face down this wannabe tyrant,” Stewart then said. This allowed him to pivot to the discussion of last week’s budget bill, in which, as Democrats made clear again and again, the Republicans could not pass without Democrats.
“It turns out the Byzantine Senate rules have presented a golden opportunity the minority party,” at which point he run a supercut of Democrats explaining just how bad the bill is and why they opposed it.
Then Stewart ran a clip of Schumer addressing the Senate last week to say Republicans didn’t have the votes, a clear signal, so other Democrats believed, that the bill would die in the Senate. Except, as Stewart reminded viewers, Schumer abruptly betrayed the caucus by throwing his support to the bill and ultimately leading 8 other Democrats to vote with Republicans.
Stewart played a clip of Schumer’s excuses for this betrayal, saying in part, “I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people.”
“But you had say it were terrible,” Stewart said dejectedly, before reminding viewers that not only did Schumer cave, he didn’t even bother trying to use the leverage he had to negotiate for Democratic priorities.
“Senator Schumer, no disrespect, but you are a disgrace to Jewish stereotypes about financial negotiation,” Stewart joked.
“And for those of you who may have felt like this was a total capitulation, Senator Schumer just felt like this wasn’t the moment for Democrats to press their case, because Trump is still too strong,” the “Daily Show” host continued, running a clip in which Schumer explained that his plan is for Trump’s popularity to drop to 40%, at which point, Schumer argued, Republicans would start coming around.
Stewart dismissed this, saying, “the grand plan is, Dems keep fecklessly complaining until the 48 approval comes down to 40, which is a plan, but it’s forgetting one crucial piece of information in Schumer’s popularity calculation” devastating,” which is that currently Democrats are polling so much worse than that at 27%.
“You’ve got to get Trump to lose eight points of popularity just for you to get to the point where you’re 13 points below him. Your approval is only seven points above where it turns red and goes into low power mode,” Stewart joked. Then, he demonstrated how bad these numbers are by making fun of the way Schumer wears his glasses very low on his nose.
At that, Stewart tore apart another argument that Schumer has made several times in the last few days about how he knows the Republicans will come around: “I talk to them, one of the places I talk to them [is] in the gym. You know, when you’re on that bike in your shorts panting away next to a Republican, a lot of the inhibitions come off.”
“I’m gonna dangle my balls out of my shorts,” Stewart mocked. “Oh, you know, they’re gonna lose all their inhibitions on the equipment. You know, actually, Chuck, I would like to work with you on Medicaid reform. And also, I never told anybody this, but I once jerked a guy off in a park. Oh, this elliptical. I just lose my inhibitions.”
“I would probably be just a skosh more receptive to Schumer’s theory of gym based negotiation strategies, if it had worked the last time,” Stewart added. Then he played clips of Schumer saying the exact same thing in 2019.
After mocking this for a few more minutes, Stewart then pulled back to mock other high ranking party leaders over what he identified as “a persistent fiction within the Democratic Party that if they just hang out with Republicans in the gym, or wait out Trump’s popularity, or give them concessions on a continuing resolution they said would harm the country, that Republicans will finally see the light. Democrats will be rewarded with productive bipartisanship.”
“Or as they put it,” Stewart said before cueing up a supercut of multiple Democratic leaders who used the exact phrase “the fever will break,” when insisting the obviously intractable and unreasonable Republicans of their day could change. And the examples went back to Barack Obama’s first term.
This fiction, Stewart said, is paired with a delusional belief that it is actually Republicans who are somehow in a precarious position. Except, he continued, “Republicans have gotten everything through every crazy appointment. The guy who wrote the children’s book on russiagate runs the FBI. Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Fox and Friends Guy, they all sail through. Literally.”
“Look, you don’t understand, these Republicans are committed to a plan born of ideological 50 to 60 year project to remake the United States, and classifying it as ‘a fever’ excuses you from having to propose an alternative, coherent vision, and allows you to pretend that this is just an issue of messaging and not merit,” Stewart added.
From here, he also mocked the absolutely terrible messaging Democrats engage in — particularly one very, very cringe video in which a group of Democratic congresswomen pretended to be options on the character selection screen of a fighting video game.
“Just understand this: Whatever this is, is no match for the game Republicans are playing,” Stewart concluded, at which point the a “Fatality” clip from a recent “Mortal Kombat” game played onscreen.
During the latter segment, Stewart did get one very good joke in at the expense of Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw — the guy famous for wearing an eyepatch. Watching a Democratic congresswoman’s “Getting Ready” video, in which she explained a political issue while applying eye makeup in her car, Stewart joked, “I’m having difficulty focusing on what you’re saying, because I’m terrified that you’re a hard yellow light away from ‘getting ready with Dan Crenshaw.’”
At that, Stewart turned to the camera on his right and said, “Obviously that is not meant in any way to diminish Congressman Crenshaw’s service, how he was wounded in Afghanistan… making a ‘get ready with me’ Video. Comedy is legal again, right?”
The post Jon Stewart Mocks Chuck Schumer for Caving on GOP Budget: ‘It Is Trump’s World, and We’re Just Cowering in It’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.