Jon Stewart Lays Out the GOP Hypocrisy on Guns

Jon Stewart took the opportunity on Monday’s episode of The Daily Show to lay out “a quick state of play” on the upcoming presidential election in November, while also debunking the GOP narrative of crime in major cities.

“I guess the election has basically boiled down to each candidate accusing the other of having soup where there should be brain,” Stewart declared in his opening monologue (back in February, the host roasted both Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for their age-related blunders).

Stewart rolled a clip of the president during a skydiving demonstration “seemingly staring at what could only be considered ghosts or out-of-frame paratroopers,” and “somehow getting pulled back into frame, somehow giving the impression someone has just quantum-leaped into his body.”

The host then quipped, “As for Trump, basically it’s Trump tripping over his own dick any time he tries to capitalize on Biden’s age.” He then played a video of Trump at a Turning Point USA event claiming Biden “doesn’t even know what the word inflation means” before touting his own mental fitness and getting the name of the doctor who administered his cognitive test wrong.

“Does everyone know Ronny Johnson, congressman from Texas? He was the White House doctor,” said Trump, who most certainly meant to say Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician during the Obama and Trump administrations.

Stewart then roasted the former president for calling Milwaukee a “horrible city” ahead of the Republican National Convention that will be taking place there next month, and called out Trump’s attempts to walk back the claim by saying he was referring to the crime in the city.

The host proceeded to slam the Republican narrative that crime in major cities is out of control, despite the FBI showing a 15 percent drop in violent crime at the start of 2024. “The balls of these right-wing mother fuckers talking about how there’s too much gun crime and chaos in our Democratic cities,” said Stewart. “When Republicans are the ones who’ve enabled the flood of illegal weaponry into our cities.”

“It’s almost as though Republicans must have a secret plan for this, funded by their billionaires, to flood our cities with illegal, undocumented guns, pouring them over our state borders in the hopes of killing off reliable Democratic voters. The great displacement theory,” Stewart said, mimicking conservative anti-immigration language.

“93 percent of the illegal guns used in crimes in New York City aren’t from here,” he continued. “The guns come from states like Florida and Georgia and South Carolina where the laws are lax, and trust me, Florida is not sending us their best guns. They’re bringing guns for drugs and crime and rapists, and some, I assume, are good guns.”

“So, there’s only one real solution. Unfortunately, for the borders of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, we have to — what’s that word?” he concludes, before sharing a clip of Trump supporters at a rally yelling, “Build that wall!”