Jon Stewart broke down why Donald Trump’s “gold cherubs” in the Oval Office undercut his “f—ing wrongheaded” idea that “Americans just have too much.”
During Thursday’s Weekly Show podcast, the Daily Show host admitted he was still “hung up” on Trump’s latest interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. “He continues to float this idea that Americans just have too much—that in this new world order that he is creating, that it is important for children to learn gratitude and simplicity,” Stewart said while quipping about Trump’s penchant for quantifying Americans’ so-called excess “in terms of the amount of dolls.”
“He seems to be stuck on 30 to 37 dolls as the magic number of what spoils a child,” Stewart continued. “I’m not sure there is a child that has received 30 dolls in the span of a year, unless they are a Trump child.”
Trump’s own need for extravagance, Stewart said, “gets us really to the crux of how f—ing wrongheaded” his ideas are. “He sees no value in moderation for himself…He is not leading through the exemplar of a dignified and less consumerist life. As you can see, every time there is another press conference within the Oval Office, another gold cherub gets its wings. Another gold cherub and another gold leaf frame, until there is no wall space left in the Oval Office.”
While discussing his “all gold” makeover of the White House with Fox News in March, Trump told Laura Ingraham the office “needed a little life.” As for his cherubs, he told the network, “They say angels bring good luck… And we need a lot of luck in this country with what they have done over the last four years.”
Stewart slammed the hypocrisy of Trump’s opulence and his “not for thee” attitude toward the rest of the country on his show Thursday: “F— that, f— you for telling the American people, ‘Oh, you know what? Your kids have to go without.’ Why don’t billionaires? Why doesn’t he ever say, ‘Hey, you know what? Maybe you don’t need $350 billion. Maybe you just need $10 to $12 billion. Maybe, maybe you don’t need any of those things.’”
“Why isn’t his scolding of excess in any way self-reflective and turned around to the people who have bought and sold this country to all the interests that are making it more difficult for people to live better lives?” he went on. Trump is finger-wagging at “people who are buying pencils for their kids,” he said, referring to the president’s Meet the Press comments that kids “don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”
“Why not say the same thing to the profits of the insurance companies and to the banks?” Stewart went on. “That’s what’s out of control, those people,” he added sarcastically, “not him in his Saddam-like palace, saying ‘You know what? What if you had 10 golden toilets instead of 20?’ Or the font on the giant Trump sign was slightly smaller?”
What’s even worse, Stewart concluded, is that “Congress just stands slack-jawed as it all goes down.”
The post Jon Stewart Nails the Real Problem With Trump’s Moderation Rant appeared first on The Daily Beast.
