Jon Stewart roasted President Donald Trump’s swollen ankles as he mocked the escalator breakdown that forced the president and first lady to climb stairs at the UN.
On his Weekly Show podcast Thursday, Stewart said “the escalator” was his “favorite part” of Trump’s United Nations visit.
It’s only fitting that the escalator play such a “pivotal” role during Trump’s appearance on Tuesday, Stewart said.
“The escalator is his vehicle, his triumphant chariot as he came down from what appeared to be a Barnes & Noble, down towards what was the food court where he delivered his first message in 2016,” he said, referencing Trump’s campaign announcement speech at Trump Tower.
“To have that chariot fail him at the UN and to have to go back to use it at its most primitive form, which is, of course, the stair,” inspired more than a few chuckles from the Daily Show host.
He also joked that the public should ignore the UN’s defense that the escalator stopped due to a built-in safety mechanism, not “sabotage,” as Trump alleged.
“Why get in the way of a perfectly good conspiracy about the United Nations wanting to force a cankled man to scale the heights of Mount Escalator to find his way into the general assembly?” he quipped.
After the teleprompter also went down during his remarks Tuesday, Trump accused the UN of “triple sabotage” and ranted on Truth Social. “Wow, first the escalator event, and now a bad teleprompter. What kind of a place is this?’” he wrote. “All security tapes at the escalator should be saved, especially the emergency stop button. The Secret Service is involved,” he continued.
He also called for an investigation, writing, “The people that did it should be arrested!”
Stewart thought the threats only made the whole thing funnier. “To blame the UN for subterfuge… and meanwhile they’re like actually, I think you had like a camera dude who tripped up one of the things and that it was a safety alarm and that’s why it stopped.”
The White House is still not laughing, however. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X Tuesday, “If we find that these were UN staffers who were purposefully trying to trip up—literally trip up—the president and the first lady of the United States. Well, there better be accountability.”
But the technical difficulties were not the only eyebrow raising parts of Trump’s UN visit for Stewart. “As s—ty as he is to all of us, he just walks into the UN and goes, ‘I’m right about everything and you live in hell holes,’” he added incredulously.
Meanwhile, MAGA has already found a way to spin the embarrassing gaffes for the Trumps’ benefit.
“Look how great Melania was,” said Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Thursday as she praised the first lady for simply walking up the stairs of the stalled escalator. “She is unfazed. She walks on it. It stops. She turns around to the president, and she just leads the president up and walks.”
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