‘Whatever’s Wrong with Him, We F*cking LOVE It’: The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic Marvels At Trump’s Success
In its first episode since former President Donald Trump was reelected, The Daily Show avoided a morose or somber tone in favor of a more exasperated one, courtesy of host Desi Lydic.
Lydic opened the segment by submitting that America had elected its first criminal president before it elected a woman:
Yeah, it’s official — America has elected its first criminal president before electing its first female president. What a day for proud felonists! What the actual fuck, America? We have had two qualified, accomplished women nominated for president and both times they lost to the worst man in the whole country.
Later in the segment, Lydic went into the demographic groups who either favored Trump or made gains:
LYDIC: America voted this guy out in 2020. And what has he done since then? He tried to overthrow the government. He was convicted of 34 felonies. He spent an entire campaign promising vengeance against his enemies. And if you’re wondering who, after all of that, would want to back him up? Well, buckle up. It’s a long list.
PUNDIT 1: The former president winning with a coalition driven by White voters, men, and first-time voters.
PUNDIT 2: Young men in union households.
PUNDIT 3: Those older voters.
PUNDIT 4: Voters age 45 to 64.
PUNDIT 5: Those younger than the age of 30.
PUNDIT 6: Black men, Latino men, suburban women, Arab-Americans, and White men.
LYDIC: Sooo, all of America. All of America. You just listed all of America. Seems the only groups you can’t blame for Trump’s victory are Black women and people in comas. Oh, and puppies. Or puppies in comas. Goddamn it, I just made myself more sad.
Still trying to understand how Trump won, Lydic turned to how Vice President Kamala Harris lost and the many, many conflicting explanations offered by the commentariat:
PUNDIT 7: I think Democrats went way too far to the left.
LYDIC: Got it. Okay. Kamala was too far left. Didn’t embrace centrists.
PUNDIT 8: It is perhaps the strategy so forcefully embracing Republicans like the Liz Cheneys.
LYDIC: Okay. Sorry. I see she embraced centrists too much. What else?
PUNDIT 9: She wouldn’t really stand and back the Israelis.
LYDIC: Uh-huh, she wasn’t pro-Israel enough. All right.
PUNDIT 10: The base of the party that cares about Gaza and they… By not bringing a Palestinian on stage at the DNC. … These are not the values, the base values of the Democratic Party.
LYDIC: Or pro-Palestinian enough. Okay. Was that it?
PUNDIT 11: I think that Kamala Harris had this albatross around her neck and it was Joe Biden. She couldn’t distance herself from Biden and couldn’t think of anything that she would have done differently.
LYDIC: Right, right, right, right. I see it now. Kamala didn’t distance herself enough from Joe Biden. And let me guess–
PUNDIT 12: It is probably not the best idea that Democrats orchestrated a very public stab-fest, a proverbial stabbing in the front, of the sitting President of the United States of America and then didn’t use him in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
LYDIC: Okay. So she betrayed Joe Biden, but was also too close to Joe Biden. This is all making sense if I just put all the pieces together — WHO FUCKING KNOWS?? Who knows??
But when it came down to it, Lydic just wanted to understand not how Harris could lose, but how — after nearly a decade on the political stage and near-constant news coverage — Trump could have won again:
Honestly, I don’t really care why she lost. I care why he won. We have spent so much time diagnosing Donald Trump and what his actions say about him. He’s a dictator. He’s a fascist. He’s a malignant narcissist whose blood type is fryer oil. But it’s pretty clear that America is the one that needs the diagnosis because whatever’s wrong with him, we fucking love it. In this moment, Donald Trump is holding up a mirror to the American people, and it might be time to take a good fucking hard look.
Watch the full segment via The Daily Show on YouTube.
