Jon Stewart Jokes Trump Will Have Press Corps Tasting His Food for Poison After Decoy Flight Backlash

Jon Stewart couldn’t help but weigh in on the controversial Air Force One flight used as a decoy to protect President Donald Trump from an alleged assassination threat from Iran last month.

The flight, which while leaving the NATO Summit in Turkey saw Trump sneaking out via catering truck to fly separately from White House press corps and some members of his staff, came under scrutiny this week after The Washington Post reported that those left behind on Air Force One did not know of the change in the president’s location and were later lied to about the ploy.

In light of the controversy, which was separately confirmed by The New York Times this week, “The Weekly Show” producer Brittany Mehmedovic asked host Stewart on Wednesday’s podcast episode if the White House press corps “is cool with taking a bullet or a surface to air missile for Trump.”

“Absolutely,” Stewart quipped in response. “Of course they would say to themselves, ‘If we can be the decoy — sir, if killing us makes you safe, however that would be.”

The comedian then ran through a list of increasingly silly scenarios that would see members of the press bending over backwards to sacrifice themselves for the president.

“Do you want one of us to put on the Trump wig? Do you want us to put on the red tie and do that?” he joked. “Whatever it is you want us to do, sir. Do you want us to taste your food to make sure that it is in no way contaminated? Although now, with Kennedy running DHHS, you don’t know if it’s contaminated because of a foreign act of assassination or there’s just diarrhea parasites in everything.”

Stewart noted that CNN’s Kaitlin Collins reported after the bombshell that it “is not unprecedented that a president has had to change plans based on a certain threat and it wasn’t until afterwards that it was explained to the people who remained on the targeted conveyance.”

“Hey, by the way, just wanted to let you guys know now that we’re here safely, there were a lot of lasers being pointed,” Stewart riffed.

He also went in on the president’s escape route from Air Force One via a catering truck, which brought Trump to an undisclosed plane nearby. Stewart envisioned the whole charade as “very Clouseau,” nodding to comparable gags from “The Pink Panther.”

“Here’s the question: Did he have to put on the cater waiter outfit?” Stewart mocked.

And when it came to the president’s insistence to press after the fact that “if I go, you go,” indicating that they were all in danger together — even when he wasn’t — Stewart added, “Actually that was, ‘If they go, they go’ … ‘If I go, I go — and you don’t go.’”

Watch the full segment below:

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