Jon Stewart Says Harris Certifying Trump’s Win Is ‘Like Attending Your Own Funeral’
Jon Stewart returned with his first episode of The Daily Show after the new year and took the opportunity to reflect on the four-year anniversary of the Capitol insurrection. The anniversary coincided with Vice President Kamala Harris certifying the presidential election of Donald Trump, which Stewart noted “has got to sting.”
“What a historic day in Washington, D.C. it is,” Stewart said, showing a photo of the Capitol building covered in snow. “As many of you know it’s Jan. 6. And as you can see, once again, a blanket of angry white descending on the Capitol. This white, oddly enough, not as disruptive. It did snarl traffic, but a lot less bear spray and Confederate flags.”
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He continued, “It is the day that traditionally we now pretend that we knew was a big deal in terms of certifying the elections. Be honest: Before that insurrection you had no fucking idea what I was talking about.”
Stewart pointed out that awkward fact that Harris, who lost to Trump in the election, had to act as the “master of ceremonies” for the certification. He then played a clip of the vice president reading the number of votes Trump received in Florida in front of applauding congress members.
“That’s got to sting,” he responded. “She’s like, ‘Um, I can hear you.’ That’s like attending your own funeral, and even the mourners are like, ‘Woo-hoo!’ I can’t imagine anything that would be more uncomfortable than sitting there while the crowd applauds your opponent.”
The host then played a clip of Harris announcing her own votes from California to more applause. “Wait! That sounded louder,” Stewart said. “There is a lot of joy in that room. I think she can still win this thing! She just needs them to find 130,000 votes in Georgia! And then some in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and maybe Wisconsin.”
He added, “But, ultimately, the certification ceremony that we all look forward to every four years since I was little, went off without a hitch. Because it’s amazing how smoothly our democracy works when you don’t act like a little bitch when you lose. Not naming names! Just saying.”
Elsewhere on the episode, Stewart examined the recent attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas. “These attacks are really frightening,” he said. “Add to this the feeling of societal tenuousness that we’ve been ingesting since, I’m going to go with, the creation of Facebook. More frightening is that we can’t place these attackers into the normal neat boxes of disturbed, bullied loners. Not only do they not fit into neat ideological packages, they almost seem uncomfortably normal.”
The late-night host offered “plea to all the would-be terrorists out there” as he acknowledged that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, Matthew Livelsberger, and Luigi Mangione were all “normal-seeming people” who suffered “a setback in their life.”
“Hey girl, down on your luck?” Stewart said, looking directly into the camera. “Girlfriend left you, job’s a dead end, spending a lot of time watching whatever YouTube autoplay is showing you, and now you got some ideas. How about you don’t kill everybody? Just do what everybody else does in that situation; get a fucking podcast. That way, nobody dies. You get a podcast, nobody dies, you can still terrorize people, and no, I do not want to be on it.”
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