On “The Daily Show” Monday night, Jon Stewart urged Democrats to act more like Republicans through “exploitation.”[ing] the loopholes” if they want to get something done.
“We haven’t learned anything! Even those who oppose Trump’s agenda don’t seem to understand who they are dealing with,” Stewart said during his opening monologue. The late-night show then played a report on Senator Elizabeth Warren accusing the president-elect of breaking the law after she failed to sign an ethics pledge by deadline.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The Republicans are playing chess, and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because they have their balls glued to their thighs. That’s what happens,” Stewart said. “The election we just had was a rejection of the status quo, an over-regulated system that no longer responds or serves the needs of the people or their beloved squirrels. Oh, RIP, Peanut.”
He continued, “Government, in theory, is a constitutional system of checks and balances between equally powerful branches. But what government actually is is an overly complicated, Byzantine, bureaucratic maze of rules, loopholes and norms. Complex enough that, A, if you want to find a rule that stops you from doing something, you’ll find it. And B, if you really want to do something, you can find a loophole to get around that rule. And then the standards are exactly how many times you’ve had to do this kind of thing.
Stewart noted Trump’s “provocative and unorthodox” Cabinet picks, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former Rep. Matt Gaetz and Fox News host Pete Hegseth.
“Democrats are confident that the Senate’s vaunted constitutional rules will be the guardrail for this madness,” Stewart said of Trump’s Cabinet nominees. However, Trump can bypass that confirmation process by adjourning Congress and installing his picks through recess appointments.
“That’s our government in a nutshell: the rules say, ‘We can stop it.’ The loophole says, ‘Fuck that!’” Stewart said. ‘So, what are you left with? The last refuge of losers: the norms.”
The late-night host later added: “Republicans are exploiting the loopholes in the law. Democrats complain again and again about the standards, and it has terrible consequences.”
Stewart recalled that in March 2016, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court because the election was too close.
“You can argue that Obama could violate the standard, say the Senate failed to comply with their advice and consent, and still appoint him and see what the hell happens. Fight!” said Stewart. “But they just said, ‘Oh, we’ve never heard of that line before, but okay.'”
Four years later, near the end of Trump’s first term as president, Republicans filled a vacancy on the Supreme Court, despite the next election being less than two months away. “They didn’t give a fuck!” Stewart noted.
“Let this show be the completely ineffective hypocrisy finders. I can tell you from experience that it produces no results. You guys are the loophole figuring out how to get things done because [Republicans] don’t give a fuck about your standards. They will exploit any loophole, even if it means going through clearly closed windows,” Stewart said next to an image of the January 6, 2021 insurrection. “You would think that after Trump’s presidency, Democrats would have learned from this . But they have doubled.”
Stewart gave a visual demonstration of the Democrats’ current actions by struggling to thread a needle.
“To get anything done, Democrats feel like they have to thread the needle to make sure — oh, we have to make sure that any standard follows the overly complex, bureaucratic process that we ourselves have created” , Stewart explained.
“Meanwhile, the Republicans come in and all they have to do is bang on a doughnut. That’s all they have to do.” The late-night host then destroyed a donut by putting one of his hands through the hole.