On Tuesday night’s episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart compared the recent insane statements by two men who have completely worn out their welcome — Donald Sterling and Karl Rove. In Sterling’s case, Stewart brought up the interview of Sterling that was conducted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper and aired on Monday night. As for Rove, Stewart brought up the recent story of Rove insinuating that Hillary Clinton has brain damage and spent a month in the hospital for a “traumatic brain injury.” This was in reference to her falling at her residence and sustaining a blood clot in December 2012.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Stewart began with Sterling first. Of course, we got clips from Sterling’s interview with Cooper. Stewart played a clip of Sterling claiming that Magic Johnson is a bad person because he has “those AIDS.” Stewart had to reiterate that Johnson does not have AIDS, he is HIV-positive. The Daily Show host was then beside himself due to the fact that he was fact-checking a lunatic. This led to Stewart then pointing out that Sterling’s main reason for doing this interview was to apologize for making racist statements. However, Sterling followed up his apology with “textbook, categorical, old-fashioned racism.” This was then followed by a clip of Sterling telling Cooper that “some of the African Americans — maybe I’ll get in trouble for this — they don’t want to help anybody.”
To this statement from Sterling, Stewart so perfectly exclaimed, “Maybe! Maybe you’ll get in trouble again!” This was followed by Stewart miming Sterling’s craziness and proclaiming that perhaps Sterling was just auditioning for the “Literally Deaf Comedy Jam.” At that point, he told Sterling that he can go bye now. Stewart then wondered who could possibly take Sterling’s place in the unforced error spotlight.
Yep, Karl Rove. We were shown news clips of Rove’s statement about Hillary Clinton at a conference last week, where he said the following:
“Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.”
After making fun of Rove for saying “what’s up with that,” Stewart corrected the record and pointed out that Clinton was only in the hospital for four days total. Rove apparently ‘unskewed’ the numbers regarding that. A clip was then aired showing Rove on Fox News Tuesday morning attempting to clarify his statement. After showing Rove say he never actually said brain damage, Stewart ridiculed Rove by pointing out that he only said that she was wearing “traumatic brain injury eyewear.” We were then played more footage from Fox News where Rove drifted into conspiracy territory over Clinton’s whereabouts during that period of time.
In response to Rove’s trip down crazy lane, Stewart said that this all leads to “#brainghazi!!!!” Rove was then mocked for claiming that he is concerned about the mental acumen of those who serve in the White House. This was the perfect setup for Stewart to rip former President George W. Bush for sustaining a knock on the head when choking on a pretzel. Stewart then offered the following takedown of Bush to wrap up the segment:
“Dude blacks out. Next thing you know, he’s starting an unprovoked war in Iraq. Now he spends his days eating applesauce and painting his feet!”
This was an extremely entertaining segment, as it gave Stewart another opportunity to take aim at one of his favorite targets at the end — George W. Bush. Also, he’s always been able to get quite a bit of comedy out of Karl Rove’s antics. In this instance, he was able to combine Rove and Bush with the continued racist idiocy of Donald Sterling.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
