The Daily Show has undergone a lot of turmoil in the two-and-a-half years since Trevor Noah shocked even his closest colleagues by giving up the host chair. And even Michael Kosta can’t quite believe that he has emerged as one of four rotating hosts—along with Jon Stewart on Monday nights.
In his return to The Last Laugh podcast, Kosta talks about his experience taking the reins of the long-running political late-night show every few weeks and how he’s striving to make it more than just a mouthpiece for the #Resistance. Kosta also discusses learning from Jon Stewart, the backlash to his recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and his new memoir Lucky Loser, which tells the story of how he went from a semi-successful professional tennis player to achieving his wildest comedy dreams.
“My dream has always been to sit in a chair in late-night,” Kosta says, before joking that it’s “the dumbest dream of all, because there are only four chairs and no one ever leaves.” But now, because of a creative solution to The Daily Show’s inability to find a permanent host, the number of chairs has expanded and Kosta has one of them.
As we talk, he’s just come off a run in that chair that began with Donald Trump threatening a third term and ended with him crashing the global economy with his trade war.
“I was a little bit annoyed Tuesday because we didn’t have much,” Kosta admits. “But then Wednesday came, and it was an embarrassment of riches.” One highlight came in the form of a pre-planned segment around Trump’s bizarre obsession with the word “groceries” that all of a sudden became even more relevant than expected when he repeated the riff once more during his big tariff announcement.
“That was right in my sweet spot,” Kosta says. “It was beautiful the way it worked out. And this is what I always have to remind myself. You might be frustrated on Tuesday, but it’s like, man, just relax, it’s going to be OK. And Wednesday, he was in the Rose Garden, giving his dumb tariff speech with the bulletin board he made, and then he said a grocery thing again! So the headlines worked in my favor.”
Among the rotating hosts, Kosta says he’s probably been most resistant to constantly talking about Trump on the show. “I was usually the one that was like, ‘Do we have to talk about Trump today?‘” he remarks. “I was very aware of Trump fatigue, and if we treat every little thing he does with so much gravitas, we’re going to wear everybody out.” But he also recognizes that Trump is once again the president, which makes everything he says and does “important” on some fundamental level.
But that being said, Kosta admits that sometimes The Daily Show “gets it wrong.”
“We always are trying hard to get it right and make people laugh,” he says. “But there are times when I watch a piece we did, and say, ‘God, that feels a little too ‘resistance’ to me. If I just say, ‘Trump is stupid,’ the audience is gonna clap. That’s not good comedy. That’s not unique. We’re not pointing out hypocrisy. We’re not building an argument. So we have to be aware of that. And it can feel good as a comedian if you get the audience to clap or laugh. But that doesn’t mean that you’re doing a good job at comedy.”
Go too hard at Trump, of course, and you risk receiving his wrath—something that does occur to Kosta as he is figuring out what he wants to say about the administration on TV. We’re talking just after comedian Amber Ruffin was fired by the White House Correspondents’ Association as its annual dinner MC for calling Trump’s inner circle a “bunch of murderers” on an episode of The Daily Beast Podcast.
“I am a tiny bit trepidatious,” Kosta admits. “And there’s a part of me that wonders if we are making jokes while the Titanic sinks, while Hitler’s invading Poland. And there’s also a part of me that can very optimistically appreciate that the Constitution is 270 years old. This is not the first egomaniac we’ve had as president. It doesn’t always feel like they’re working, but there are checks and balances. That’s the space I’m trying to live in.”
As a “white male American citizen,” Kosta says it’s easy for him to take comfort in the First Amendment and democracy as we’ve known it for centuries.
“Now, there are people in an El Salvadorian prison right now that are like, we didn’t even see a judge, and there’s been no due process followed at all,” he adds. “So it is scary. But as a comedian it is my responsibility for as long as I can to try to make fun of who is in power.”
Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
The post ‘Daily Show’ Host: We Have to Do Better Than ‘Trump Is Stupid’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
