Jon Stewart opened Monday’s episode of The Daily Show by echoing what many watching were feeling. “It has been two weeks since the election. Feels like two months,” he said, before adding: “So it’s been 15 years since the election.”
The late-night host slammed Democratic leaders for trying to spin media interviews, playing back footage of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Rep. Dan Goldman, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal. In one clip, Goldman touts how Dems flipped three House seats and “gained back almost all of those that we had lost in 2022,” prompting Stewart to introduce a new segment to the show, “The Audacity of Cope.”
“Even those putting up resistance to Trump’s agenda don’t seem to understand who they’re dealing with,” Stewart said as he pointed to a report of on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) accusing Trump and his transition team of breaking the law by failing to sign an ethics pledge.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Stewart railed. “Republicans are playing chess, and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because they glued their balls to their thigh.”
Stewart called out Democrats for trying to play by the norms while the GOP exploited legislative loopholes, using president-elect Donald Trump’s intention to bypass the Senate’s confirmation process by adjourning Congress and installing his cabinet of die-hard MAGA loyalists through recess appointments.
“That is our government in a nutshell: The rules say ‘We can stop it.’ The loophole says, ‘Fuck that,’” Stewart said. “So what are you left with? The last refuge of losers: The norms.”
“You guys be the loophole guys that figure out how to get shit done,” he continued before referencing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack: “Because [Republicans] don’t give a fuck about your norms. They will exploit any loophole, even if they have to go through clearly closed windows to do it.”
To drive home his point, Stewart compared the Democratic process to getting things done by using a needle and thread, and using a donut to demonstrate the GOP strategy.
“Meanwhile, the Republicans come in, and all they have to do is finger-bang a donut,” Stewart quipped, before obliterating the hapless pastry.