On The Daily Show Wednesday night, Trevor Noah took on the John Fetterman interview that “has everyone talking” this week. And he made it very clear where he stands on the Democratic Senate candidate’s ability to serve the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania despite still not having fully recovered from his stroke.
After playing an extended clip from the NBC News interview, in which Fetterman was open about the need to use a live closed captioning system to read the questions as the reporter was asking them and could be seen stumbling over the word “empathetic,” Noah addressed those on the right—and elsewhere—who are saying this means he’s “not fit” for the Senate.
While he understands that political figures will “jump on any weakness” of their opponent, Noah said, “Let’s be real, people: If stumbling over a word every now and again disqualified you from politics, America wouldn’t have had a president for the past six years.” And while Fetterman stopped to correct himself, the host joked that Biden “wouldn’t have noticed” and Trump “would have tried to convince us that he got the word right.”
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Noah also didn’t find Fetterman’s need to read captions a “deal breaker,” saying, “I think America needs more people in politics who actually know how to read,” as photos of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Herschel Walker appeared on the screen.
But the host’s most impassioned argument came when he explored what the “questions” about Fetterman’s health say about America’s attitude toward disabilities more broadly.
“I’m not vouching for Fetterman over Dr. Oz or anything like that,” he insisted, “but I do think that this whole debate is veering into the territory of saying that people with disabilities can’t be lawmakers, which is trash.”
And that is especially true, Noah added, because America has disabled lawmakers in Congress right now, pointing to both Republicans like Dan Crenshaw, who lost an eye, and Democrats like Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs. “And Mitch McConnell, who’s literally melting all the time,” he joked. “But has he let that hold him back? No!”
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