Jon Stewart compared Donald Trump’s version of celebrating America’s 250th anniversary to a “long-running” Broadway show—and not the good kind.
The host made the brutal analogy on Wednesday’s episode of The Weekly Show podcast when a fan asked whether Trump is a “fitting or disturbing” president at this point in the country’s history.
“What? Fitting?” Stewart said incredulously. “Trump as president is not befitting of a country,” he began. “We just talked about this grand experiment of exceptionalism, of a creed that a people must strive morally and aspirationally…And now we’re just a subsidiary of Trump Enterprises.”
Then Stewart made a more damning analogy for 250-year-old America under Trump. “You know what it reminds me of? We’re like a long-running show, like a Broadway show,” he said. “We’re like, ‘It’s 250 years of Cats.’ But now, instead of like the big stars that we were there, now, it’s just like ‘From Summer House...,’” he quipped of the Bravo network reality show.
“That’s where we’re at. We’re at the replacement-level, reality TV star taking over a hallowed institution,” he continued. “And the audience is on their phones going like, ‘I remember when I saw this with Matthew Broderick. It was great. And now this guy doesn’t even know how to sing!’”
Stewart explained earlier in the episode his view that Trump’s vision of America—embodied in part by his UFC match on the White House’s South Lawn—is at odds with what Independence Day celebrations have previously embodied.
“That would never happen here, sir,” he joked to his show’s guests. “The idea that on the lawn of the people’s house, half-naked men would grapple. Seems absurd.”
“What’s somewhat confusing, for me, about this 250th celebration is one of the things that we were always taught about: this idea of American exceptionalism. And that American exceptionalism was about the creed. It really was about the Declaration of Independence. And all men are created equal. And that is what’s separated,” he said. “And to go back to blood and soil feels like an admission of defeat. It feels like we’re then saying, ‘Actually, we’re not exceptional. We’re not a shining city on a hill. We’re just like every other nationalist movement in the history of the world.’”
He concluded, “Perhaps nothing else better embodies the absurdity of the moment that we’re having.”
