Tuesday night’s three-hour Democratic presidential primary debate was somehow still wrapping up when Trevor Noah went live on The Daily Show to offer up his comedic response. He began by talking about just how “super-sized” the night was with 12 candidates on stage.
“Candidates aren’t supposed to multiply as the debates go on,” Noah said. “So, please, America, remember to have your candidate spayed or neutered, we can’t handle any more!”
After briefly touching on the mostly conflict-free impeachment discussion, the host tackled former Vice President Joe Biden’s answer to questions about his son Hunter’s business dealings with foreign companies. “I think I get where he was going, but it took a while for him to get there,” Noah said.
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Biden insisted that his son “did nothing wrong” despite the fact that Hunter acknowledged his own “poor judgment” in an interview with ABC News earlier that morning. Biden then quickly pivoted to make a point about George Washington.
“OK, one minute he’s talking about his son, then George Washington, then something about the seventeenth?” Noah said, attempting to recap the bizarre answer. “Joe Biden is the only candidate who remixes his speech while he’s giving it,” Noah added, imitating the vice president’s odd vocal tics.
Later, moving on to the foreign policy section of the debate, Noah jokingly went after Biden for calling Donald Trump an “erratic, crazy president who knows not a damn thing about foreign policy.”
“Hold on, you may not like Donald Trump but you can’t say he doesn’t know a damn thing about foreign policy,” the host said. “Unlike Trump, not one of these Democrats has calculated the country of Nambia on their health-care system. And maybe because there’s no country called Nambia, but that’s not the point. The point is not one of you can find it on a map!”
Noah also found time to mock the debate’s moderators for the way they asked about Bernie Sanders’ recent heart attack, but then asked several other candidates age-related questions to make it seem less awkward. That included a question for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) about potentially being the youngest president ever elected.
“I get the part about asking people about being too old, but asking Tulsi Gabbard about being too young? Is that really a concern?” he asked. “‘Tulsi, are you too fit and vibrant for the presidency? Is it possible you might die of young age?’”
But the “weirdest part” of the night, Noah said, was when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) “started a real-life Twitter beef” with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) over Twitter’s refusal to ban Trump from its platform.
“I’ll be honest, I kind of understand Warren’s point here,” he explained. “We need Trump on Twitter. It’s the only way we can monitor what he’s up to. Otherwise he’s doing that shit in secret. You’ve got to think of Twitter as a presidential baby monitor. The whole time you’re looking, you’re like, ‘Hold on, he’s awake and wants to nuke a hurricane, I gotta go!’”
And finally, Noah zeroed in on the biggest theme of the night: Everyone attacking de facto frontrunner Warren. After playing a montage of the hits on the Massachusetts senator, he said, “Damn, Elizabeth Warren might have an even bigger target on her back now than Joe Biden.”
“And it makes sense,” he continued. “I mean, she’s risen to the top of the polls and, now, her competitors have their sights set on her. And that really was the big takeaway of tonight. They’re coming for you, Elizabeth. And all I can say is, I hope you’ve got a plan for that.”
