June 29, 2018

Sometimes Jon Stewart misses the mark by a mile, but when he's in the zone, there is no voice I'd rather hear. He dropped in on Stephen Colbert last night to deliver this scathing takedown of Trump. Via Vanity Fair:

Stewart dedicated the latter half of his appearance to specifically addressing the cruelty of Trump’s border policy, which separated thousands of asylum-seeking children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. As the comedian pointed out, Trump could have designed a more stringent border policy that made the point about enforcement without taking such extreme measures—“but I guess it wouldn’t have felt right without a Dickensian level of villainy.”

“Clearly, we’re not going to be able to negotiate or shame you into decency,” Stewart said. “But there is one place where I draw the line: I won’t allow you and your sycophants to turn your cruelty into virtue.” A clip rolled, showing various right-wing anchors praising the president for being “the exact right leader” and “a fighter.” As one pundit put it, “Donald Trump talks like the majority of the American people talk.”

“The majority of the American people aren’t assholes,” Stewart said, before getting more serious. “He doesn’t talk like the majority of the American people. He talks more like a gerrymandered minority that shrewdly played the electoral college.” He cited Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech—specifically, the idea that all Southern slaveholders wanted at the time was for free states to “cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right.”

“It was on this point that Lincoln said the Union could not bend,” Stewart said as he wrapped up his appearance. “And what Donald Trump wants is for us to stop calling his cruelty and fear and divisiveness wrong, but to join him in calling it right. This we cannot do. And by not yielding, we will prevail—unless, of course, the Democratic leadership continues to be a bunch of feckless—” It was there that Colbert cut him off.

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