As the leaked Supreme Court draft decision continues to dominate the news cycle, Trevor Noah criticized the media on Wednesday for focusing more on the details of the leak than on the consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade.
“Many people are horrified — not that women and half the country would lose their rights over their own bodies, but rather that this information got leaked, which is weird. It’s like running around the deck of the Titanic trying to figure out who yelled, ‘We’re sinking’ instead of focusing on the iceberg,” he said during “The Daily Show.”
He added, “Chief Justice John Roberts has announced an immediate investigation to identify the leaker. Cable news doesn’t have time to wait around, so everyone knows who really did it.”
The show then ran clips of several of the major news programs, including Inside Edition and Fox News, as the hosts speculated about who could have leaked the draft decision. While some were convinced it must have been a law clerk for a left-leaning Justice looking to change the minds of the five Justices who appear to have voted in the majority, others said it was likely a conservative Justice’s clerk looking to lock the others into their vote.
“Or, maybe, it was the butler. It’s always the butler,” Noah joked. “But while everyone on regular cable channels was playing the least horny version of ‘Knives Out,’ Newsmax had already cracked the case. It was the Black woman.”
In the clip that ran next, Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield said he found it “suspect” that the leak came after Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the Court, adding: “She would be my first suspect.”
Noah, however, wasn’t having it.
“And my first suspect for asshole is you,” he said. “Bravo, detective. Bravo. Look at you, using the tried and true investigative technique of, ‘The Black person did it.’”