Trevor Noah had Tomi Lahren on The Daily Show last night. If you don’t know who Tomi Lahren is, you are a lucky duck! Ms. Lahren is what happens when Fox News and Breitbart is mixed with the age and narcissism of Milo Yiannopoulos and the race-baiting of Megyn Kelly. It will make you sad because she’s young and dumb and it’ll make you angry because she’s young, dumb and mean. Tomi Lahren has her own show on The Blaze where she just spews right-wing rants that are basically a semi-snarky-entertainment repackaging of Republican and Trumpian political points. They’re racist and about liberals being “babies,” and they’re about protestors being paid off by the “media.”
Noah opened with a clip showing one such rant where Lahren attacks everybody on the left. Below is the full extended interview which, when you have time, I suggest you watch because it’s serious and funny. Noah deconstructs every one of Lahren and the Right’s talking points without being snarky or mean. He makes a few jokes here and there but he is disarming in how he goes about obliterating the intellectually deficient arguments Lahren and people like her make. Here are some highlights:
When Lahren tries to deflect Trump’s “pussy grabbing” sexism and what that means to women in this country by talking about Clinton’s support for Saudi Arabia’s ruling elite, Noah brings her back in.
You don’t need to go that far when you’re in a country where every single day women are being beaten and raped. You’re going far when you have issues in your own country, and when a President says things like that I would assume—maybe I’m not seeing it from your point of view—I would assume that you would be able to see that. You say you call people out on their bullshit. Isn’t that a situation where that was bullshit?
Lahren’s had a big bone to pick with the Black Lives Matter movement and people like Colin Kaepernick as she has taken the racist angle that the Black Lives Matter movement is a terrorist organization of some sort, not unlike the Black Panthers before them. Her race pieces have been some of her more viral videos and Noah asks her what she’s trying to do there. After Lahren talks about Black Lives Matter being about looting and riots, Trevor Noah gets her to say that she can blame one individual for ascribing the Dallas police officer shooting to the Black Lives Matter movement. To which Noah very calmly replies:
Because you’re the same person who argued on your show that just because Donald Trump has supporters from the KKK doesn’t mean he’s in the KKK.
The laughs and claps that this interview elicit are not just cheerleading. They are young people clapping their appreciation for Mr. Noah’s sober deconstruction of what in essence is a hate and race-peddler. Lahren uses boring rhetorical tricks like creating false arguments that she is debating and Noah just shrugs her off with a well placed joke.
Lahren: Because I criticized a black person or the Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t mean I’m anti-black. It doesn’t mean I don’t like black people or that I’m racist. I don’t see color. I go after Hillary Clinton and she’s as white as they come.
Noah: You don’t see color? So what do you do at a traffic light?
It’s a long interview but it’s worth at least watching in pieces. Trevor Noah is a bright light int he world of comedy these days. He is smart as all get out and has a life history of interacting with poisonously bigoted people.