Jon Stewart mocked President Donald Trump’s contradictory statements about his new war on The Daily Show with a fake “expert panel” made up entirely of real Trump clips.
“To clear up all the confusion about this war, I’ve assembled an expert panel to help explain what the war is actually about in a lucid and clear-cut way,” Stewart announced during his monologue. “So please welcome to the program, President Donald Trump, Donald J. Trump, D.J.T., and John Barron.”
As four clips of Trump appeared on screen, Stewart opened with the basics. “There’s been some confusion over whether or not we’re even at war,” he said. “Can you clarify for us if America is at war?”
The four on-screen Trumps—in clips drawn from real recent footage—could not agree. The conflict was “just an excursion into something that had to be done,” said one. It was “a little excursion, and I think it’s only that,” said a second. It was also a situation in which “we’re winning the war by a lot,” a third said. And finally, definitively, a fourth said: “It’s both—it’s an excursion that will keep us out of a war.”
Stewart pressed on the timeline. One Trump was unambiguous: “Combat operations continue at this time in full force and they will continue until all of our objectives are achieved.” A second Trump was equally unambiguous in the opposite direction: “We won. We won. In the first hour, it was over.”
“That was two weeks ago!” Stewart replied. “So the objectives—if we won, and our objectives are met, and that was two weeks ago, why are we still at war?”
A third Trump offered a resolution of sorts: “We already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough.”
“Motherf---er!” said Stewart.
He pressed further, introducing a fifth Trump as “Don from Palm Beach” and asking him to define exactly when the country would know it had won enough. The answer was immediate: “When I feel it. When I feel it in my bones.”
Stewart was not reassured. “All due respect to your bones,” he said, “but should we really be giving them more responsibilities? Seems like they’ve got enough on their plate with the getting you up and down the stairs thing.”
The segment aired Monday night as the administration offers shifting and often irreconcilable public accounts of the scope, duration, and objectives of the Iran war.
The “feel it in my bones” comment came during a Fox News interview in which Trump also touched on the market turmoil created by Iran blocking the oil flow out of the Strait of Hormuz.
“This will bounce right back when it’s over, and I don’t think it’s going to be long when it’s over,” he said in the phone interview. Still, concern has persisted, and the price of a barrel of oil has floated at more than $100 for days.
