Jeff Bezos announced this week that he plans to give away most of his $124 billion fortune during his lifetime, marking the first time the Amazon founder has committed to doing so. But Trevor Noah is pretty amused by who Bezos has already selected as a recipient, considering she’s a millionaire all her own.
On Saturday, Bezos and his girlfriend announced a $100 million grant for singer and philanthropist Dolly Parton as part of an annual gift, the Bezos Award for Courage and Civility. In short, the country icon is getting the money for her “good deeds,” as Noah put it. While he didn’t think Parton was undeserving, he did think Bezos is unclear on what charity actually means.
“Imagine being so rich that you think it’s charity when you give money to millionaires,” Noah mocked. “He’s like, ‘Oh, you poor thing, you don’t even have a spaceship do you? Aw, here, let me break you off some.’”
To be fair, the money was given to Parton to put toward her own various organizations and charitable efforts. But, Bezos has noted that he’s been struggling with figuring out how to divvy up his fortune.
“The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way,” he told CNN. “It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy, is very similar. And there are a bunch of ways that you could do ineffective things.”
Watch Noah’s full “Daily Show” segment, which also zeroes in on the Democratic Party’s continued control of the Senate majority, in the video above.
