“The Daily Show” correspondent and guest host Jordan Klepper took Donald Trump to task on Wednesday, saying that the former president doesn’t really have a right to be upset about NBC’s dismissal of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel.
“Trump can’t be too mad about it,” he said. “The only reason she was available in the first place is that he fired her from the RNC a few weeks ago.”
The 2024 Republican presidential nominee reacted on his Truth Social platform Tuesday to the news that, after widely publicized blowback to NBC News’ decision to hire McDaniel as an on-air correspondent, the network fired her.
“Wow! Ronna McDaniel got fired by fake news NBC. She only lasted two days, and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear,” Trump wrote. “It leaves her in a very strange place, it’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”
But Klepper argued that NBC News’ decision to listen to the outcry from staffers like Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow could be a blueprint for how to deal with “Jan. 6-ers trying to get back into the mainstream.”
He lambasted the way Trump, far-right representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Republican Party at large are “rewriting” the convicted insurrectionists, hailing them as hostages, patriots and “literally choir boys.” (Indeed, Trump has begun starting his rallies with a recorded rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by imprisoned rioters.)
“We can’t normalize this. Do you remember when we wasted three months of our lives being mad at Colin Kaepernick for kneeling for the National Anthem?” Klepper said. “Now [Trump is] saluting rioters, insurrectionists, and even worse, a cappella singers — and the f—ker didn’t even take off his hat. But that’s where we are now.”
“This is not just a fight for how to remember the past,” Klepper continued, drawing the “Daily Show” headlines segment to a conclusion. “The people who did Jan. 6 are trying to get back in power. If they lose, they’ll do Jan. 6 again. Hell, if they win, they’ll probably still do Jan. 6 again just for old times sake.
“The rest of us need to decide: Are we just going to let them? Or are we going to draw the line at treason and tell them that in this country, there is still justice and democracy, and these are the values we not only stand behind, we also salute them.”
Watch the full “Daily Show” segment in the video above.
