Sarah Silverman is pretty sure she knows why recruitment for the U.S. Army is at its lowest point in years. On Tuesday night, the “Daily Show” guest host joked-but-not-really-joked that it’s because kids already have to face the prospect of being shot at school, so they don’t exactly want to volunteer to go to a war zone.
During her headlines segment, Silverman first touched on the latest development in the 2024 presidential race, noting that former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley became the first Republican to officially declare themselves as a challenger to twice-impeached former president Donald Trump on Tuesday.
The comedian added that, obviously, whoever wins the 2024 election will become commander-in-chief of the military. But, there’s a caveat there. “Based on how recruiting is going lately, that’s gonna be, like, 20 people,” she joked.
According to recent reports, the Army missed its recruitment goal for last year’s fiscal period by 25%. In a news segment called up by Silverman, officials noted that the struggle is due to “traditional hurdles” — the top of that list being the fact that “young people don’t want to die or get injured.”
“These Gen Z kids are just like, ‘Why would I go get shot in the Middle East when I can get shot in the comfort of my middle school?’” Silverman mocked.
In that same video segment Silverman cited, it was noted that wokeness is in fact not a concern about the military, as some Republican figures have claimed. Silverman struggled to even come up with ways the military is woke at all, saying that “soldiers are still soldiers.”
“Only Republicans would have the freaking lips to blame the lack of army recruitment on wokeness, when the number one reason [is] that people really like not dying,” she said.
You can watch the full segment from “The Daily Show” in the video above.
