“What a terrible fucking week,” Jon Stewart opined at the start of his Daily Show monologue on Tuesday. It was his first show back since the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump and Stewart had some strong thoughts on what happened.
Particularly, he focused on the online chaos in the shooting’s immediate aftermath, when people were still speculating (and spreading misinformation) on what happened and who did it.
“It’s this pattern I feel like we now have in the country, when we hear about a horrific event,” Stewart said. “You’re on pins and needles in this sort of reverse demographic lottery, to make sure that the psychopathic shooter doesn’t belong to one of your teams. You know, you just sit there going, ‘Please, no Democrats, no liberals, no progressives…’”
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The reality, Sewart reminded viewers, is that, “none of us knows what’s going to happen next. Other than there will be another tragedy in this country, self-inflicted by us, to us. And then we’ll have this feeling again.
“I remember it on 9/11, this disorienting, ‘holy shit, stop the world, I would like to get off’ feeling,” Stewart continued, “And in that moment, there will be some incredible Americans who, in the midst of it, for some unknown reason, rush towards it and get us back to some sort of equilibrium. And we’ll count on those folks to hold us together, again.
“And it does remind us that by a hair’s breadth, we dodged a catastrophe. But it was still a tragedy, because one of those first responders lost his life. His name was Corey Comperatore. He was a retired fire chief in the area. He had given his life in service to his community, and he died literally shielding his family. He’s a reminder that in those moments of crisis, there are helpers. And we can all make a choice to try and be one of those people,” Stewart said.
As a final moment of levity to a serious monologue, Stewart added, “Or you can be one of these guys...” He showed an article from Forbes right after the shooting, titled “Will Surviving Gunfire Be Donald Trump’s Next Appeal to Black Voters?”
Stewart responded simply with, “Not helping!”
