SUPREME LEADER

‘Daily Show’s’ Trevor Noah Exposes President Trump’s North Korea-Style ‘Propaganda’ Machine

‘Trump is trying to create his own little North Korea while the rest of us are like, “Yo, we’ve got the internet, we know the truth,”’ Trevor Noah said.

If a “normal” administration were facing as much scrutiny upon its return from a foreign trip as President Donald Trump’s has been, Trevor Noah said Wednesday night that it “would work hard to defend itself” and address the substantive concerns. “But this is the Trump administration,” he explained. “They didn’t get here by being normal.”

From there, the Daily Show host played a montage of Sean Spicer lauding his boss’ “incredible,” “historic,” “semi-revolutionary” adventure abroad. “Wow, did you see how incredible that was?” Noah asked. “Not only is the administration ignoring all of the criticism of the trip, they’re basically saying it was the greatest presidential trip of all time.”

“What gives Sean Spicer the confidence to go out there and say straight-faced that Donald Trump is now the patron saint of diplomacy?” Noah asked. “Well, it’s because he knows that a large part of the population—you may know them as Republicans—believe that Donald Trump is far more credible than most news outlets.”

“So if Trump says millions of illegals voted in the election, they believe it,” he said. “If Trump says Obama wiretapped him, they believe that, too. If Trump says ‘covfefe,’ look, they don’t know what it means, but damn it, they believe it.”

“Trump’s whole political career has taught him that he doesn’t need anyone’s reality but his own,” the host continued. “And that’s why his staff isn’t just praising him as the world’s greatest diplomat, now they are praising him as the world’s greatest human.” On a recent statement from White House spokesperson Hope Hicks that claimed Trump has a “great sense of humor and an amazing ability to make people feel special,” Noah said that “sounds less like Donald Trump and more like Gandhi combined with Ellen.”

This type of “propaganda” is normal in places like North Korea, Noah offered. “But here in America it’s weird, because Trump is trying to create his own little North Korea while the rest of us are like, ‘Yo, we’ve got the internet, we know the truth.’”

Now, Noah added, “the strategy of defying reality has spread beyond the White House.” As an example, he pointed to that bit of nonsense that the president tweeted and left up on his account for more than five hours Tuesday night. “When ‘covfefe’ broke, one of Trump’s most loyal cable news advocates, CNN pundit Kayleigh McEnany, managed to spin a positive from what was, let’s face it, a plain old fuck-up.”

“According to her, not only did Trump not mess up, but he deliberately wrote ‘covfefe’ to drive his enemies crazy,” Noah said. “And clearly, this is the supreme leader’s new strategy. Trump didn’t screw up in Europe, he succeeded historically. He didn’t fall asleep while tweeting, he humiliated his enemies. ‘Covfefe’ isn’t a typo, it is a fantastic new word.”

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Matt WilsteinSenior Editor

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