What To Know
- Jon Stewart mocked Donald Trump’s awkward and self-centered tributes to Lindsey Graham.
- Stewart highlighted Trump’s backhanded compliments as he memorialized the late senator.
- Graham passed away on July 11 at 71 years old.
Jon Stewart opened Monday’s (July 13) edition of The Daily Show by touching on the death of Lindsey Graham and President Donald Trump‘s rather bizarre tributes to the late senator.
“The big news from the weekend was the sudden passing of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina,” Stewart said at the top of his opening monologue. “Now obviously, I knew him a bit from lobbying down at Capitol Hill, but I didn’t know him particularly well. So I’ll let Lindsey Graham’s best friend memorialize the late senator.”
The late-night host then threw to a clip of Trump’s call-in interview with Fox & Friends. “He was a great guy, and he was a friend,” Trump said of Graham. “He would call me all the time. He would just… I’d say, ‘Stop calling me, Lindsey.’”
A shocked Stewart took a moment to gather himself before launching into his Trump impression, joking, “‘I’ll never forget the way that I always let him go to voicemail. It was our thing.’”
“Obviously, he’s just opening the eulogy on a lighthearted note. I’m sure the poignancy follows,” Stewart continued before cutting to more clips of Trump reacting to Graham’s death across various news networks.
In one clip, Trump said of Graham, “He loved playing golf. He loved being outside. It wasn’t that he was a great striker of the ball. He wasn’t… he wasn’t exactly perfect. He wasn’t Jack Nicklaus. He was not Tiger. He was totally against me. He said, ‘I’ll get you in South Carolina. I’m going to get you in South Carolina.’ That didn’t work out too well.”
“It was a nasty campaign. He was tough and nasty. I wanted to see the war with Ukraine end very quickly. I think he was more into, you know, keeping it going, frankly,” the president said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
In another, Trump stated, “He was a total workaholic politician. You know, some people don’t call that work. Some people call that a lot of talking.”
Stewart took another moment to compose himself before quipping, “Well, I think the president has zoomed through the first five stages of grief and gone straight to number six: ‘F*** that guy.’”
“By the way, it takes a lot of balls for Donald Trump to gently roast someone for yapping too much,” the comedian added. “He’s the one who toasted his friend on Meet the Press, CNN’s State of the Union, Fox & Friends… Trump was everywhere, remembering Lindsey Graham, even when the host of the show appeared to not want him to.”
Stewart then played a clip of Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones trying and failing to ask Trump a question while the president ranted on and on about ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ and mail-in ballots.
“‘I’m sorry, Mr. President, the TV station is going through a tunnel,’” Stewart mocked while pretending to hang up the phone.
You can watch Stewart’s full monologue in the video above and let us know your thoughts below.
The Daily Show, Weeknights, 11/10c, Comedy Central, Next-Day Streaming on Paramount+