Jon Stewart returned to hosting The Daily Show on Monday night, and he immediately dove into the possible “October surprises” that could still impact the final weeks of the presidential election campaign.
Stewart began the segment by briefly looking over past October surprises, including the infamous Access Hollywood tape, as well as the media running through a selection of recent natural disasters and wars that might become the dreaded black swan event in the waning days of the campaign.
“Why are October surprises always so shitty? Why do we never get a good October surprise that brings our country together?” Stewart joked, adding that he hoped that internet stars Pesto, the absolute unit of a baby penguin, and Moo Deng, the impish baby pygmy hippo, may start dating.
Stewart that expanded the point about October surprises, by suggesting that they invariably favor Republicans, who capitalize on death and misery to score election points. “If monkeypox runs amok, I don’t see how we lose!” Stewart said mockingly. “What does it actually say about a party that a war, a strike, and a natural disaster work in their favor? Sir, the election’s close, but if we could just get the population shell-shocked and desperate, we can do it.”
Turning his attention to recent events, Stewart said an October surprise for him was seeing Elon Musk, exposed belly and all, at Donald Trump‘s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “[Musk’s] October surprise is he’s come out MAGA.”
“Now, you might think one of the world’s richest men controlling one of the world’s most influential platforms could be a recipe for what some may consider election interference,” Stewart said, before joking to the audience, “You stupid, stupid people.”
Stewart called back to the 2016 and 2020 election, when Trump vociferously accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of election interference and pointed out the brazen double standard now that Musk, the owner of the embattled X platform, has come out in support for the former president. The segment dived deeper into Trump’s repeated threats to punish and imprison people who he felt were interfering in the election against him, including the team behind the biopic The Apprentice.
“Trump has threatened almost all of them with either imprisonment, lawsuits, or censoring, which is why this one section of this weekend’s rally in Pennsylvania was so striking, when Elon Musk was discussing why he supports Donald Trump,” Stewart said, coming to the main thrust of the segment.
A clip of Musk’s speech from the Trump rally was then played: “The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. You must have free speech in order to have democracy. That’s why it’s the First Amendment.”
Stewart shot back: “Elon, were you not watching the rest of the show? A movie Trump doesn’t like is going to get sued. A tech mogul he doesn’t like, he wants to put in prison. It’s not free speech if only Trump’s admirers get to do it without consequence. That’s just not how it works. It doesn’t go that way. I don’t see how his support of free speech is “expose the belly” worthy. I just don’t.”
Another clip of Musk’s was then played: “But at least the Constitution remains intact and is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment. The Second Amendment is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment.”
A clearly riled Stewart went for the jugular: Guns don’t protect our free speech. Our free speech is protected by the consent of the governed, laid out through the Constitution. It’s not based on the threat of violence. It’s based on elections, organizing referendums, a judicial system. Our social contract offers many, many avenues to remedy these issues and allows sides to be heard and adjudicated. Guns, from what I can tell, seem to mostly protect the speech of the people holding the gun. It’s a tool of intimidation…”
Met with rapturous applause, Stewart hushed the audience as he wasn’t done.
“It is 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 shadow-banned by Facebook. I mean, for God’s sakes, 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,” Stewart said, referring to the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump. “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.”
Softening his voice, Stewart concluded by addressing Musk directly. “The country ain’t perfect, and there’s a lot of issues we don’t agree on: choice, immigration, shrinkflation of snack chips, the unholy marriage of penguins and hippos. But, honestly, dude, a country that can adjudicate these complicated issues through a sometimes frustrating, overly bureaucratic constitutional system of checks and balances and peaceful transfer of power is the only kind of country that I want the children of Pesto and Moo Deng to grow up in.”
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