Jon Stewart Is Wrong About Another Trump Presidency

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – Anyone who’s listened to my podcast knows that I both greatly admire and routinely criticize Jon Stewart who, by the way, returned as the Monday night host of The Daily Show this week. 

He’s immensely smart and funny, but his cynical, exasperated, too-hip-for-the-room take on politics has always rubbed me the wrong way, mainly because it drags him into familiar and insufferable both-sides territory. Sure, it’s super easy to take one look at the news, throw your hands in the air, pretend as though you’re above it all, and curse the entire system as ineffectual and all the participants as buffoons. As many of us know, it takes time, patience, and study to see the complicated nuances in our constitutional republic, as well as the history of why those nuances exist in the first place.

But yes, I get it, American politics is hard, and democracy is messy. Change takes time, deception is common, and not every player has the nation’s best interests in mind. The process is frustrating and water is wet. Disillusionment with our system is already prevalent with a great number of American citizens, so anchoring your comedy on the theme of politics is lame and everyone is dumb is about as populist as you can get. According to a Gallup poll last month, only 28 percent of us “are satisfied with how democracy is working in the country.” Congratulations, Jon, your brave political take is in alignment with 70 percent of Americans. The airplane peanuts take on our political discourse. Yawn.

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I mistakenly thought that stepping away from televised political comedy and taking a breather for the duration of the Trump nightmare might give Stewart some time to re-evaluate his cynicism. I was disabused of that assumption when his opening segment was more of the same: his aforementioned cynical exasperation and, with it, a 20 minute comedy chunk about how Trump and Biden are basically the same – equally feeble and incompetent – that Biden, in particular, deserves more scrutiny for some reason, despite Trump’s endless roster of crimes, indignities, lies, scams, and promises of dictatorship.

He ultimately lost me near the end of the segment when he said: "If your guy loses, bad things might happen, but the country is not over."

I couldn’t believe what I had heard. Surely, he and his writers have read the, you know, news and are up to speed with what’ll happen if Trump wins. Let’s do the list, and you can tell me whether the country is over if the clown dictator shoehorns his ponderous bulk back into the White House.

• January 6 and the election theft plot that preceded it sent a clear message: if Trump wins again, he will not leave office. This alone would signal the end of democracy, at least at the national level.

• Trump has repeatedly pledged to be a dictator “on day one.” But we all know that dictators don’t give up their power until they’re dead.

• A plan called Project 2025 will back up Trump’s dictatorial plans by firing 50,000-plus federal workers and replacing them with Trump loyalists. The project’s architects are already recruiting loyalists for the jobs. It’s all happening now. Project 2025 also calls for stripping the Department of Justice of its independence and placing it under the direct control of the White House, transforming the entirety of federal law enforcement into Trump’s personal Gestapo. This isn’t partisan hyperbole.

• Without the Justice Department or other guardrails, who will tell Trump “no” when he predictably abuses power? Who will drag him out of the White House at the end of his term when he refuses to leave?

• The presidency, therefore, will be transformed into a Putin-style tyrant-for-life. Additionally, Trump will begin moving taxpayer money into his own bank accounts, enriching himself like the Russian kleptocrats and oligarchs he admires so much.

• Trump plans to, on day one, order the military to start rounding up and arresting people of color en masse, then indefinitely detaining them before deporting them under the pretext of punishing undocumented immigrants. But who here thinks he’ll stop there? It’s easy to foresee citizens also getting caught in the mix. He’s also repeatedly talked about seeking retribution against the “deep state” and other political enemies. There’s a very real possibility that other anti-Trump undesirables, perhaps even members of the news media – the “enemies of people” – will be caught up in Trump’s purge.

• The other day, Trump told the NRA that he’d abolish all federal gun control laws.

• Trump endorsed a 15-week national abortion ban that would, by definition, greatly restrict abortion services in blue states, on top of the existing red state bans, further subjugating women.

• Worst of all, Trump told his supporters last weekend that he would encourage a Russian invasion of Europe. We can assume, before that happens, that he’d withdraw all support for Ukraine and allow Putin to annex the entire nation. After that, we know Putin has ambitions to invade Poland and other former-Soviet bloc nations in eastern Europe. It’s even possible Trump would provide military aid to Russia, placing the United States in league with the villains in what could easily escalate into World War III.

Now tell me that this doesn’t describe the end of the United States as we know it. I won’t even get into the secession fever that seems to be sweeping some of the reddest states.

The thing is, Jon Stewart and other multi-millionaires will be just fine. They’ll buy their way out of trouble or easily move around to safer parts of the world because they have the resources for it. The rest of us will be stuck here, hoping Trump’s goon squads – be they military or white supremacist MAGA militia members – won’t pound on our doors in the middle of the night.

Some of you might be saying this is crazy talk, but I ask in response: what has Trump done to earn the benefit of the doubt? What leads you to believe Trump will exercise restraint for the first time in his life and stop short of fascist idiocracy? Please tell me in the comments. Meantime, I don’t believe Jon Stewart has enough influence to convince enough Biden voters to stay home, changing the outcome of the election, but are we really in a place where we can risk such an outcome? This isn’t the olden days when Republicans were wrong but relatively sane. 

Democracy is a cliffhanger these days, and undermining the only party that’s acting like grownups right now, while breeding exasperation with the democratic process, will only help shove it over the ledge.

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Tucker Carlson Claims Ben Shapiro Wants To Kill His Children. Yes, Really.

Tucker Carlson is taking his lies about Ukraine to entirely new levels.

by Ben Cohen

An interesting conflict is brewing in Alt conservative media, mirroring the in-party fighting in the GOP over the war in Ukraine. Ben Shapiro, who supports funding Ukraine, is now in open conflict with Vladimir Putin’s favorite presenter, Tucker Carlson:

Shapiro, along with 22 Republicans in the Senate, take the view that defending Ukraine is critical to US interests. Carlson, and now the majority of the Republican Party in both chambers, are content to let Russia destroy Ukraine and reshape the global balance of power. Why? Because apparently, Tucker Carlson’s kids are at risk. More on this later.

Trump’s attack dog

Under Donald Trump, the GOP has gone under a radical ideological transformation. It has moved far away from the neoconservatism that dominated the party from George W. Bush to John McCain and Mitt Romney towards outright nativism. Tucker Carlson has been at the forefront of this movement, recognizing very early on that Trump’s popularity was a sign that America was having a fascist moment. Carlson was always more of a traditional conservative, but as a performer keen to make as much money as possible, he saw a unique opportunity to cash in on the trend.

Carlson’s schtick has been to lend a veneer of credibility to Trump’s neo-fascism, taking to the airwaves nightly and providing his audience with clever, mind bending distortions of reality. Carlson’s speciality….

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