If you missed this week’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart kicked things off with a moment that felt almost too surreal to be real. He went after Donald Trump for accepting FIFA’s brand-new Peace Prize, all while the US is cranking up military pressure on Venezuela. Stewart didn’t tiptoe around it either. He treated the whole thing like an absurd contradiction playing out in plain sight.
Stewart started by walking viewers through last Friday’s World Cup draw. For most people, the draw is just about figuring out which countries will face each other in the opening round. But Stewart pointed out that the smaller storyline of “who will get stuck in the group of death” wasn’t even the biggest question of the night. Instead, he joked, the real suspense was “who would win FIFA’s first Peace Prize?”
He played the moment straight for a beat, pretending to take FIFA seriously. “Because when I think of one sport that fosters peaceful coexistence, it’s the beautiful game,” he joked. Then he rolled the clip of FIFA president Gianni Infantino naming Trump as the inaugural recipient.
Stewart acted stunned, shouting “Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my god!” before calling it “the prize specifically created to appease him! The FIFA appease-prize!” The audience roared, but Stewart wasn’t finished. Later in the show, he topped it with one of his sharpest lines of the night. “The craziest part wasn’t necessarily Donald Trump being awarded an entirely fictitious golden butt plug,” he said, making it clear how ridiculous he thought the whole setup was. “It was the cognitive dissonance of flipping over to the news channels, post-peace ceremony.”
He then cut to a string of clips warning that the United States is “on the brink of war with Venezuela,” with Trump “ramping up the pressure” on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Stewart looked genuinely baffled as he asked, “The brink of war? President Trump, did this meaningless award mean nothing to you?”
To underline his point, he ran more soundbites describing how the Pentagon is “surging battleships towards the coast of Venezuela,” and how the operation amounts to “the largest U.S. show of force in the Caribbean in decades.” Stewart, being Stewart, couldn’t resist turning it into one more punch line. “Not including, of course, your friend Stephanie’s destination bachelorette party. That is the largest show of force,” he joked, getting one last laugh from the crowd.
The entire segment worked because the contrast really was that stark. On one channel, Trump was accepting an award meant to symbolize peace. On another, analysts were warning about war drums beating in the Caribbean. Stewart simply connected the dots and added his trademark sarcasm to highlight how strange the moment felt.
