Jon Stewart struggles to break from the MAGA hypocrisy time loop

Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show desk Monday night to shine a light on Donald Trump’s hypocrisy, and by the way, could whoever’s responsible for trapping us in this time loop figure it out already? It’s been almost 10 years since Trump first came down that escalator and we’re still doing this. We’re tired, Stewart’s tired, surely Trump must be tired too. Elon Musk is definitely tired from all that jumping around he was doing at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. 

If only the entire episode of The Daily Show was just dedicated to roasting the hell out of that little jumping bean, but unfortunately that’s just a small portion of Stewart’s latest monologue. Most of it is dedicated to highlighting how many people and entities Trump has accused of running election interference (Facebook, Alexa, the upcoming film The Apprentice) while praising somebody like Musk who is offering people money for outreach to swing voters. Musk has now gone totally mask-off “dark MAGA” and continues to position himself as a champion of “free speech,” telling the Pennsylvania crowd that “The Second Amendment is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment.”

This is where Stewart jumped in to remind that “Guns don’t protect our free speech,” the Constitution does. Guns are “a tool of intimidation, and one that I think is actually being irresponsibly and recklessly invoked because some people in your crowd thought they might have been shadowbanned by Facebook,” Stewart said. “I mean, for God’s sake, you guys are in Butler, Pennsylvania. The whole reason you’re there is because some fucking asshole with an AR-15 tried to permanently litigate his vision of this country’s free speech. That’s why you’re there. The whole point of a society is guns don’t decide it. I would prefer at this moment not to trade in a government that offers me many remedies for my concerns, legitimate or illegitimate, for a situation where my rights are determined by how many militia members agree with me.”