Trevor Noah began Monday night’s Daily Show by defending Hillary Clinton’s Grammy Awards cameo. In response to Donald Trump Jr., who smugly mocked the “consolation prize” for losing the election, the host said that he “may be too stupid to realize that he’s actually made a great point.”
“Being able to go on the Grammys and talk shit about Trump because you feel like it, that literally is the consolation prize,” he said. “That’s exactly what Hillary should be doing.”
But just as Noah’s audience was cheering him for standing up for Clinton, he took a hard turn, pivoting to a less favorable story about the former Secretary of State that broke this week. “Last night’s theme was #MeToo, #TimesUp,” he said of the Grammys, “which is a message Hillary Clinton found herself on the wrong side of over the weekend.”
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The New York Times reported on Friday that during her 2008 campaign, Clinton chose not to fire a top adviser who had been accused of sexual harassment, instead putting him on a temporary leave and reassigning the woman who made the accusation.
“Look, there’s a few areas that I don’t necessarily expect Hillary Clinton to nail it,” Noah said. “Managing emails, visiting Wisconsin, you know, weaknesses. But I won’t lie, I expected standing up for a woman on her staff to be one of her strengths.”
Noah said he found the story about Clinton “disturbing” and didn’t find her non-apology any better.
“A story appeared today about something that happened in 2008. I was dismayed when it occurred, but was heartened the young woman came forward, was heard, and had her concerns taken seriously and addressed,” Clinton tweeted over the weekend. “I called her today to tell her how proud I am of her and to make sure she knows what all women should: we deserve to be heard.”
“Yeah, ‘women deserve to be heard,’” Noah said, “and then quietly reassigned.”
The host acknowledged that this incident happened a decade ago, when “maybe the world was a different place.” But in 2018, “with everything we’re learning about now,” he thought Clinton might come out and admit she was “part of the problem” in the way she handled the woman’s complaint.
“It feels like Hillary’s not only trying to dodge all the blame, she wants to present herself as having always been on this woman’s side, which doesn’t fly,” offered Noah, “because not only did the woman get reassigned, but this guy, Burns Strider, he went on to get another job in Democratic politics—where he got fired for doing the same thing to other women. So you could argue that if Hillary had fired him, she would have been protecting many women, instead of just herself.”
