The Daily Show returns to talk Donald Trump and racism
By Jeremy Dick
After a two week hiatus, Trevor Noah returned to The Daily Show last night to share his thoughts on Donald Trump and accusations of racism.
An awful lot can happen in just two weeks, as Trevor Noah just found out. By the time he returned to The Daily Show yesterday night, he had quite a bit to catch up on. After tensions between neo-Nazis and their counter-protesters resulted in deadly violence, Donald Trump has been defending the “alt-right”, leading to accusations of him being a white supremacist himself.
Catching up as quickly as he can, Noah shows a montage of clips of some of the worst moments in this fiasco. This includes Trump constantly saying there’s blame “on both sides”, adding that there are “very fine people” in the alt-right movement. Noah just can’t get over Trump defending the neo-Nazis after one of them murdered a peaceful protester. “Even a mediocre leader says things to unite the country, to calm them, not inflame them… and especially not express sympathy for Nazi sympathizers,” Noah stresses.
This leads Noah to talk about Apartheid in South Africa, which placed restrictions on black people (institutionalized segregation). Noah explains that during that time, a “full-on Nazi organization” wanting to rid South Africa of black people called the AWB were having hate rallies. But even South Africa’s Apartheid government was quick to denounce them, basically saying they like racism as much as the next guy, but Nazis are just taking things too far.
Meanwhile, in present day America, Trump is standing up for white nationalists. Noah says that he thought this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but, evidently, “we have a lot of camels”. He reveals that about 67% of Republicans support the way Trump handled the Charlottesville tragedy, which baffles Noah.
“I know it sounds crazy to say this, but that is the shocking part for me,” he explains. He compares it to complimenting someone for passing gas. But the scary part, as Noah explains, is that if so many of his supporters are willing to “give Nazis the benefit of the doubt,” then that means there’s no line they won’t cross.
“And no cross that they won’t burn,” he adds.
The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11 PM EST on Comedy Central.