Jon Stewart has delivered a 15-minute monologue in response to Donald Trump’s US election victory and the fallout, which has seen political pundits criticise the Democrats for being “too woke”.
Trump soared to a surprisingly big victory over Kamala Harris in last week’s election, winning seven swing states to return to the White House.
On election night, Stewart used the closing portion of The Daily Show to hit out at pollsters who claimed throughout the campaign that Trump and Harris were neck-and-neck in the polling.
The 61-year-old comedian used his first show since it was confirmed that Trump had won to criticised pundits who have been trying to find reasons for why the Democrats performed so poorly.
Stewart played a montage of commentators from various US news channels who claimed that the Democrats had gone “woke” and were too concerned with “virtue signalling” and “identity politics”.
“I only have one problem with the woke theory,” Stewart added. “I just didn’t recall seeing any Democrats running on woke s***.”
Stewart then proceeded to play a compilation of Democrat campaign videos, all of which focused on the border issue and migrant crisis, which was also a major campaign element for the Republicans.
The host then shows more eye-opening Democrat campaign videos that focused on being pro-police, pro-firearms, anti-immigrant and against transgender healthcare. He also showed a clip of Harris proclaiming: “I have a Glock.”
“They acted like Republicans for the last four months,” Stewart yelled. “They wore camo hats and went to Cheney family reunions. Do you know how dangerous it is to wear a hunting hat around Cheney?”
He furiously added: “Democrats were mostly running against an identity that was defined for them based on a couple of months of post-George Floyd, defund the police Instagram posts from four years ago. What happened was the country felt like the government wasn’t working for them, and that the Democrats in particular were taking their hard-earned money and giving it to people who didn’t deserve it as much as them. So the Democrats have got to chill out. I’m glad to say Democrats did protect democracy – just for the other side.”
Jon Stewart can't believe there are pundits who think the Dems went too "woke." All they did was copy Republicans! pic.twitter.com/vBMlPMCCmn
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) November 12, 2024
Stewart concluded his rant with a reassuring message for Democrats with a reference to the past. “I’m sure any robust examination of better policies is very welcome,” he said. “But I just want to please assure people: This isn’t forever.”
A map of the results of the 1984 presidential election is then shown, where every state, barring Minnesota, voted for Republican president Ronald Reagan.
“Everyone thought that was the end of the Democrats, but eight years later, there was a Democrat back in office” said Stewart.
