Jon Stewart on JD Vance’s rhetoric on immigrants: ‘cornerstone and intentional strategy’

Late-night hosts mocked JD Vance’s apology for “imperfect” rhetoric condemning immigrants, riots in France and Katie Zacharia’s extremely brief tenure as White House press secretary.

Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart opened Monday’s Daily Show with a segment on Vance, or as he called him, “Vice-President Jeffrey Dahmer Vance”.

Vance recently participated in a televised town hall, where a woman “politely, concisely, powerfully” confronted the vice-president on his “let’s call it, record of dehumanizing rhetoric towards immigrants”.

The woman asked: “Why are you scapegoating immigrants for the issues you’re supposed to be solving as the vice-president?” Vance then apologized for his “imperfect” rhetoric regarding immigrants.

“Aww, is it your rhetoric?” Stewart mocked. “Pobody’s nerfect! Sometimes you incite violence against vulnerable communities and then later on, you apologize. I mean, we all read Mein Bad.”

Stewart continued with mock surprise: “So the dehumanizing rhetoric against immigrants, which all of us thought was a cornerstone and intentional strategy of both Donald Trump and JD Vance’s rise to power – including falsely accusing an entire community of Haitian people of eating people’s pets, which Vance admitted was just a useful lie – actually, that wasn’t intentional. It was all just sloppy word choice. That was all on him.”

Stewart then turned to Europe, where “Paris is burning, and … not in the good, fun way”, as riots erupted over the weekend. French officials have said that violence and looting has had nothing to do with immigration or Muslim communities, but Vance still tweeted that “western liberals imported the third world into France”.

“Are you seriously suggesting that immigrants have brought a culture of revolution and protest to France?” Stewart fumed. “What are you talking about? Have you ever been to the theater? Can you not hear the people sing?”

Stewart also took aim at Emmanuel Macron, the French president who on Friday, the day before mass protests planned in France, attended a Céline Dion concert in Paris with his wife. “First of all, who goes to a concert with their actual wife?” Stewart joked next to a photo of the viral Coldplay concert cheating scandal. “And second of all, Céline Dion concert? A little on the metaphorical nose, yeah, Mr President? As your country falls apart, you stand on the deck, enjoying the dulcet tones of the theme song from Titanic.”

The protests owed, in part, to rising costs of living, including fuel costs spiked by Trump’s war in Iran.

“Holy shit! In France, they’ve burned down an entire city because of a war they didn’t start and aren’t even any part of,” Stewart said. “And here in the country that started the war, we’re not even sure we’re going to get to take back the House.”

“I mean, we’re so mad about this war, we might vote,” he joked. “Our country happens to be flame-retardant. Or one of those two … even I would cancel me for that.”

Seth Meyers

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers had to laugh at how his week off coincided with the entire tenure of Katie Zacharia’s beleaguered run as White House press secretary. “Well, we were only on hiatus for one week, and we missed an entire White House press secretary,” he said. “Five day, that’s how long she lasted. She got hired, gave one press briefing and then got fired so fast the melon in her ‘welcome aboard’ Edible Arrangement was still safe to eat.”

“She got fired so fast, I can barely remember her name,” he added. “I don’t even remember where she came from or how she got the job. All I know is that judging from her first and only briefing, her previous gig was crew member on Below Deck. She looks like a cruise director about to tell passengers that norovirus ain’t no big thang.”

“The only other thing I know about her is that she’s a lawyer? Maybe? Just not here? In America?” he continued, referring to one particularly notorious clip in which Zacharia answered questions on where she passed the bar exam with “when I moved to China”.

“Donald Trump hired as White House press secretary a person who thought she could tell the press that she passed the bar ‘when I moved to China’ and reporters would just move on to the next question,” Meyers laughed.

Zacharia lasted just long enough, however, to announce the departure of Kimberly Guilfoyle as Trump’s ambassador to Greece. The former Fox News anchor and ex-fiancee to Donald Trump Jr was fired after reports that she sought payment from a Trump donor in exchange for access to administration officials.

“Do you know how much corruption you have to be doing for it to be too much corruption for Donald Trump?” Meyers marveled. “That’s like getting your yum yucked by Hannibal Lecter.”

Even crazier, “Guilfoyle got fired during what scientists call the incredibly tiny Zacharian window,” he added. “Guilfoyle got fired, and then the person who announced her firing also got fired. It’s like a Russian nesting doll, if each doll was being escorted out by security.”