Jon Stewart fights a fire tornado of conservative callousness on The Daily Show

One week into the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires, Republicans are already testing out new ways to torture vulnerable Americans. We don’t know why they hate Americans so much, but they do, and they want to turn that hatred into “Trump Was Right” hats. Far be it from us to criticize the President-elect, who spent the weekend determining the best ways to be unrelentingly spiteful about a natural disaster that has killed 24 people so far and burned down more than 12,000 homes, businesses, schools, and other structures. Thankfully, it’s Monday, and on tonight’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart could barely contain his rage, ranting at the right-wing “psychos” developing new forms of abject cruelty as they shoehorn culture war issues into the discourse.

Stewart didn’t start from an angry place. When the show began, he focused on the outpouring of generosity and goodwill from all corners of the globe. Firecrews came in from Mexico and Canada to help California despite the frequent attacks from our future president. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered to send 150 Ukrainian first responders. “We’re so fucked that a country that has been relentlessly bombed for almost three years was like, ‘You poor bastards,'” Stewart said. It was a kind gesture of Zelenskyy. If only American politicians were like him. Instead, Republican members of Congress teased conditions for disaster relief and argued that this was all due to poor forest management, a lack of water, and, you guessed it, DEI. Megyn Kelly, in particular, was flabbergasted that there are lesbian firefighters, while others suggested using water to fight the fire. There is nothing like fire on water. Even better, heterosexual water.

“These are all great pointers on how to mitigate fires, and I’m sure California has absolutely been trying water,” Stewart said. “There’s one thing you might not be considering as you criticize them, and that’s this: I don’t know what kind of a system you develop that completely mitigates the risk of fire, plus drought conditions, plus 60 to 80 miles per hour winds, plus delicious wood.”

We must ask: Have they tried cloud-seeding? They know how to do it.

Tonight’s desk segment was some prime Daily Show in “ineffectual hypocrisy police” mode. Clips of Republicans talking about how unless California changes its inclusive ways, they’ll never access relief funds and, we guess, die on the streets for not voting for Trump in large enough numbers. But Stewart’s rage was like the fire tornado: ferocious, hypnotic, and untamable. Ultimately, as is usually the case with The Daily Show, it’s nice to hear someone in comedy not parroting stupid conspiracy theories because social media cooked their brains.

“Improvements can be made in leadership, in management, in design, in materials in myriad ways, but sometimes fire fucks a tornado and makes a mockery of human infrastructure and our ability to dictate the terms of our existence on this planet.”