Trevor Noah opened Thursday night’s Daily Show with breaking news from the presidential race. “Brand-new policy proposals have just come out from Donald Trump where he spoke—” But then he stopped himself and said, “Just kidding, it’s some more sex stuff.”
“Yes, people, in the last 24 hours, six women have come forward with their personal stories about allegedly being assaulted by Donald Trump,” Noah added. “And who would have thought the guy who says he forces himself on women actually forces himself on women? I guess he really does tell it like it is.”
But instead of turning his ire on the candidate himself, Noah focused on the surrogates whose only job is to defend him on cable news. So far, their main argument has been that the whole thing is nothing but “he said, she said.”
“You have to admit, these guys are not totally wrong,” Noah said. “This is a version of ‘he said, she said,’ only in this case it’s he said, she said, then she said, then she said. Oh, and most importantly, he said he did it in the first place! He said, he said! He said it himself!” In fact, it was the video of Trump’s groping boasts and his subsequent denial at the second debate that he did the things he said he did that made the women speak out in the first place.
One of the most specific and painful details in the various stories came from Jessica Leeds, who told The New York Times that Trump lifted the first-class armrest between them and reached up her skirt. “That’s all Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson needed for the most ridiculous excuse you will ever hear,” Noah said, before showing the clip of Pierson’s claims that the first-class seats at that time had “fixed” armrests.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you will find bullshit here and here, right over here, right over here,” Noah said, imitating a flight attendant. “You know how you know your argument is ridiculous? When every single person on the panel is trying not to laugh at what you’re saying. Including you!” He added, “Johnny Cochran would be so proud. ‘If the armrest don’t flip, you must acquit!’”
“But Trump isn’t even counting on people believing he didn’t grope women, because his strategy in this campaign is not to prove he’s not a bad person but rather to show he’s in good company,” Noah added, pointing to the campaign’s stated attempt to “turn Bill Clinton into Bill Cosby.”
“Whoa, turn Bill Clinton into Bill Cosby? What kind of sick person thinks we need two Bill Cosbys?” Noah asked. “I’m disgusted by what Trump allegedly did to these women, but in a way I’m even more disgusted by the people trying to protect him, because think about it: Trump says he does the thing, women say yeah, he did the thing, and then all of a sudden people are, like, well, no, it’s not real.
“With Cosby, it took 20 women before people started believing it was real,“ Noah said. “But, the difference was, it was Bill Cosby. Before his victims came forward, Cosby hadn’t spent his entire career bragging about what he had done.”
Bill Cosby “wasn’t doing that,” Noah concluded. “Trump was.”