The Daily Show host Trevor Noah made an astute observation on Monday night about the complaints from Roger Stone and his conservative allies that he was “terrorized” by the FBI when they took him into custody at dawn last week.
“It was really interesting to see how his supporters, and Trump supporters on the right, reacted to the way he was arrested,” Noah said, showing clips of Sean Hannity, Mike Huckabee and others criticizing the officers for using excessive force to apprehend the 66-year-old political operative. Or as Stone himself put it, “These are Gestapo tactics.”
“You have Trump and his people lambasting the police for what they did,” the host said. “For how many years have black people been saying, police in America are extreme?” And every time they do, “What do they say on Fox, what do they say on the right? They always say, ‘Well, that’s the law. Blue lives matter! You’ve got to respect the police, they’re doing their jobs!’”
Now that “one of them gets arrested,” Noah imitated Stone saying, “Did you see how he held me? He put my hands behind my back! You can’t do anything when your hands are behind your back. I’m a 66-year-old man!”
“Yeah, but look at what police do to young, black kids,” he added. “‘Gestapo?’ Really? When the cops arrest you, they’re Nazis? And then when they go after black people, you’re like, ‘Well, that’s the law. You shouldn’t have gotten on the wrong side of the law.’”
All of that being said, Noah explained that he actually “agrees” with Roger Stone. “I think that the amount of force that the police used to arrest him did seem excessive.” But he also doesn’t “blame” the cops, because they were “just following orders from the top.”
With that, the host cut to the 2017 clip in which President Trump told a group of police officers not to worry so much about potentially injuring suspects during arrests.
“Poor Trump,” Noah said. “He thought that rough policing would only apply to MS-13. Who knew they would also be using on the MAGA 6?”