Jon Stewart tackled the presidential assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Monday’s episode of The Daily Show.
The comedian’s monologue took the approach of pointing out the litany of absurdities related to the WHCD, including before, during and after the event. “The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is supposed to be an evening of fun and merriment until, like most things in America, it was interrupted by gunfire. This is why we can’t have nice things,” Stewart said. “To be perfectly frank, it’s not even a nice thing. Nobody wanted this dinner in the first place! Nobody needed [this]. We’re so fucked in this country right now. We can’t even pull off a dinner that shouldn’t have existed in the first place. ‘Hey, let’s celebrate the First Amendment with an administration that’s doing everything it can do to destroy it.’ Sounds great!”
He continued, “Should we hold the dinner in a secure location? Well, we could. Or you know what, why not just the Hilton? You know what, let’s not hold it in a secure location. Let’s go to the Hilton. You know the Hilton slogan, “More hard to defend entry points than rooms.””
Stewart has long disliked the WHCD, that is sometimes derisively dubbed the “nerd prom,” and has been outspoken critic of the coziness between journalists and politicians that events like this only reinforced. His monologue took shots at some of the attendees who seemed to use the shooting as a chance to create content. “In crisis situations like this, people tend to show you who they really are and who the elite of Washington DC are. Like this influencer, whose caption says, “shooter at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” but whose duck face says “Coachella.” ‘We’re all gonna die, Gucci.’”
Stewart spent a sizeable chunk of the segment on how people reacted when shots were fired and the Secret Service moved in to remove notable government figures from the ballroom. He reserved most of his incredulity for Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who on video is seen being rushed out of the room, but conspiculously leaves his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, behind.
“From JD Vance’s Dancing with the Stars quickstep exit to Pete Hegseth dropping a smoldering ‘Blue Steel,’ to RFK Jr. being whisked away by a Secret Service hive who apparently couldn’t spare one worker bee for, I don’t know, his wife,” said Stewart before freezing the video clip. “Do you see right there? There’s a group of men carrying another man out of the room, and then there’s a woman. A woman who appears to be… desperately reaching out for someone to care, [someone] to help her. That’s a woman reaching up in agony and fear. That’s RFK Jr’s wife. How fucked up is that scene?”
Stewart then showed the clip again in slow motion and asked the audience to pay attention to the foreground where White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, a man not known for his empathy or compassion, is shown escorting his pregnant wife out of the ballroom. “[There’s] Stephen Miller carefully protecting his wife. See, turned out, that’s an option! You can protect your wife instead of, I don’t know, beating her to the escape pod. And the guy who outshined you [RFK Jr.] is Stephen fucking Miller. That’s who was more chivalrous. Stephen Miller, a guy who probably jerks off to the new Faces of Death movie. And now for the rest of your life, for the rest of your life, your wife is gonna ask you a question no one’s ever asked before, ever: ‘Why can’t you be more like Stephen Miller?’”
Driving his point home, Stewart added, “Looks like we got a new addition to the ‘Kennedy family abandoning women to their fate’ Wikipedia page.” After groans from the crowd, Stewart shot back, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Too soon or, or too many?”
After mocking the much-derided FBI Director Kash Patel’s evening at the WHCD, Stewart moved on to Donald Trump’s post-shooting interview with 60 Minutes, picking out the more outlandish things the president said to CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell. Stewart played clips of Trump remarking repeatedly that he was protected by “very strong, physically strong, really attractive” law enforcement people, as well as the fact that the Secret Service “drew those guns so fast, it looked like, they looked like Matt Dillon.”
At this point, Stewart showed a picture on Matt Dillon from There’s Something About Mary up on the screen and said, “I know what you’re thinking: Matt Dillon? Is Donald Trump so old, he’s confusing the guy from There’s Something About Mary with Matt Damon from the Bourne movies. But it’s not true. Trump is actually so old, he’s not confused at all. He’s referencing Marshal Matt Dillon from the Gunsmoke TV show!”
Much like most of the internet, Stewart zeroed in on the ‘Jim from The Office‘ moment from Trump’s 60 Minutes interview, the moment the president looks straight at the camera as O’Donnell reads out parts from the WHCD shooter’s manifesto, notably the passage: “I’m no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog discusses the WHCD shooting on ‘The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.’
Comedy Central
The last section of Stewart’s monologue featured first hand WHCD testimony from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, The Daily Show‘s only representative at the event. Normally, with these recaps, it’s incumbent on the writer to pull out the highlights of a segment but the Triumph interview is genuinely hilarious must-watch TV, so on this occasion, The Hollywood Reporter will link directly to the relevant part on YouTube video here. Watch it, you won’t regret it.
