Jon Stewart has had it with Donald Trump’s attempts to pull the wool over Americans’ eyes.
On Monday, the late-night host ripped into the 79-year-old president, who complained that he is unable to reach a peace deal with Iran because “political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping’” at him.
“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us,” wrote the president in a characteristic ramble on Truth Social on June 1. “But don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate when political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping,’ at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever.”
“Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end—It always does!” he signed off.
Stewart responded incredulously. “What?!” he asked. “You’re blaming this s--t on us? You can’t make peace unless everybody’s quiet? Is making peace like putting? Or peeing? Is that what this is? ‘Oh, the peace won’t come out unless everybody shuts up. If you stare at me, I can’t make peace.’”
The Daily Show then played clips of Trump boasting that he knows deals “better than anybody knows deals.” His signature brag was immortalized in a 1987 memoir and business book, The Art of the Deal.
Months into his Iran war, however, the president said he hasn’t been able to strike a deal because he has to maintain “a very difficult balance” between the countries.
“If only there was a word for closing that gap, a person who could help close it,” Stewart responded. “I dunno, a ‘gap-a-close-anator.’ But that’s the dirty little secret in all of this, isn’t it? Donald Trump isn’t actually a master ‘gap-a-close-anator.’”
“Negotiation is about bringing parties of disparate interests into an agreement that understands each other’s positions and resolves those differences with compromises that advance shared goals. Donald Trump’s gift is in not doing that,” he continued.
“Trump’s singular gift is in manufacturing the animus and division that actually makes negotiated settlements so difficult, yet so necessary, in this world. That’s his happy place.”
The war in Iran, which began at the end of February, has been at a stalemate since a ceasefire was initiated on April 8th. Iran and the U.S. have yet to come to an agreement. “You know, maybe the problem isn’t us, who didn’t want this f---ing war in the first place,” Stewart said.
He concluded, “Maybe the problem is a president who talks out of both sides of his mouth, lies like most of us breathe, and whose pronouncements cannot be trusted because they will inevitably be undercut by the very same person pronouncing them.”
