Jon Stewart reacted to the first presidential debate of 2024 live during his Thursday monologue on The Daily Show, and, like many other commentators on the night, the late-night host was particularly concerned with Joe Biden’s performance.
Acknowledging that Biden’s main goal for the night was to “not look old and not have a senior moment,” Stewart showed the moment where a confused-looking Biden fumbled his response about Medicare.
“Need to call a real estate agent in New Zealand,” Stewart quipped, before attempting to do some damage control on Biden’s behalf: “OK, a high pressure situation. A lot of times you can confuse saving Medicare with beating it. I’m sure it’s not something that repeated throughout the debate, causing Democrats across the country to either jump out of windows or vomit silently into the nearest recycling bin.”
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But the footage of Biden simply reacting to Donald Trump talking didn’t exactly inspire Stewart either. “Not great,” Stewart said with a wince, still jokingly attempting to defend him. “A lot of people have resting 25th Amendment face.”
His frustration grew worse as he showed how Biden handled the topic of Roe v. Wade, which Stewart described as “Trump’s weakest issue.” Unfortunately, Biden responded to the topic of reproductive rights by swerving into a ramble about immigration, which Trump immediately used in his favor.
A defeated Stewart asked, “So how do we do this now? Do I take [Trump’s] car back to the White House tonight?”
The one bright side for Stewart was that Biden’s performance disproved the ongoing GOP conspiracy that he would take some sort of drug before his debate. However, it also made Stewart realize that performance-enhancing drugs wouldn’t be such a bad idea:
“Let me just say, after watching tonight’s debate, both of these men should be using performance-enhancing drugs. I’m sorry, both. As much of it as they can get, as many times a day as their bodies will allow. If performance-enhancing drugs will improve their lucidity, their ability to solve problems, and in one of the candidates’ cases, improve their truthfulness, morality, and malignant narcissism, then suppository away.”
Stewart ripped up his stack of papers in frustration, but not before ending his monologue with, “And by the way, if those drugs don’t exist, if there aren’t actually performance-enhancing drugs for these candidates, I could sure use some recreational ones right now. Because this cannot be real life. It just can’t.”
