Jon Stewart celebrates Assad’s ousting while dreading Trump’s return on The Daily Show

The Daily Show comes to us tonight with a host in a rare upbeat mood. Celebrating the end of Bashar al-Assad’s reign as President of Syria and his family’s 50-year stranglehold over the country, Jon Stewart hosted The Daily Show with optimism. Remember optimism? Well, at least until he got to America. Stewart spent much of the first half of tonight’s episode enjoying clips of Syrians toppling statues and stealing chairs from Assad’s vacated palace. He marveled at how quickly Syrian rebels ended a years-long civil war and a half-century of authoritarian control. Finally, he wondered aloud if the leader of the Syrian rebels, Abu Mohammad al-Jolan, a former Al Qaeda member, was a Swiftie. “How many terror groups is this guy in?” Stewart asked. Like many, Stewart didn’t know how to react to al-Jolan’s leadership. On the one hand, he’s a former member of Al Qaeda. On the other, he claims to have gone through a phase and is now calling for a conquest of peace and mercy. “Who amongst us hasn’t gone through an emo phrase, or a goth phase, or a 9/11 phase?” Stewart jokes. “I don’t like Jihad anymore, Dad. I’m into horses.” ”

The news out of Syria had Stewart’s attention more than domestic issues this week. However, he did take a look at what President-elect Donald Trump got up to on a pre-presidential trip to Europe. Trump attended the opening Notre Dame with Jill Biden, which our next President immediately turned into sponcon that sexualized the First Lady, like a real class act.

Tonight’s episode was mostly a grab bag of Stewart’s excitement over the news in Syria. So the meat of the episode came from the interview segment with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, a candidate for DNC Chair. Stewart was very enthusiastic with Wikler as the candidate pointed out what makes shows like The Daily Show difficult for politicians.

“When they’re on your show, they’re trying to remember all those things about what might be a landmine, if you step on it, it’s going to blow up in your face. You’re trained to do that in politics,” Wikler said. “You’re trained to navigate through these incredibly tricky waters. That is sometimes important work to hold a coalition together. But it’s easy to get lost in that and not actually get to the whole point of the thing, which is to fight in a way that makes a difference in people’s lives, so that they remember who was on their side when something went wrong.”