Since the beginning of the year, The Daily Show has been running a series of guest hosts, each of whom has one week at the desk. The hosting duties are taken up by both comedians and other entertainers, giving a fun variety angle to the long-standing political entertainment show. One thing The Daily Show has been able to keep consistent through the years is that, while it continues to be entertaining, it remains one of the better sources of news and politics on the traditional dial channels.
On Monday, former Sen. Al Franken took the hosting responsibilities of The Daily Show. He’s an easy fit since his time as a writer on Saturday Night Live included a lot of political satire and a desire to host the “Weekend Update” segment. Franken began his night by remarking, “You know, last week, I was thinking, ‘there's not going to be much news when I host.’ But oh, boy, it's going to be an exciting week.”
Franken threw to a montage of news reports and speeches about the potential indictment of Donald Trump by New York prosecutors. Afterward, Franken said: “According to Donald Trump himself, Donald Trump may actually be indicted this week!” After the audience cheered, Franken added, “And I've got just one thing to say about that—finally!”
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After making a couple of jokes about pandering to the liberal-leaning audience, Franken nailed down the best joke of the night. “And I got to say, who would have ever thought that Donald Trump would be brought down by a porn star?” Giving it a few beats, Franken punched the line, “All of us, right? It was pretty, pretty predictable.” He followed that up with another classic one-two: “Donald Trump paid Stormy Daniels to keep this story quiet, and here we are, still talking about it seven years later.” Give it a beat. “So that would be another failed Trump business venture.”
Franken then did a bit about how an indictment would lead to an inevitable mugshot (watch below). He continued by talking about some of the online chatter that Trump followers planned a “Patriot moat” to block an inevitable arrest of the Donald, leading Franken to wonder aloud who has the kind of time and lives that they can just up and leave whatever they are doing to become “a human moat.”
Sen. Franken then segued to Trump’s biggest potential Republican primary rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis had been “conspicuously quiet all weekend,” but finally spoke about the possible indictment of the former president with the most transparently backhanded defense one could give a person.
Franken did a pretty spot-on impression of DeSantis’ manufactured gesticulating style while repeatedly saying the phrase “pornstar hush money” to drill home how oafish a response DeSantis gave. Enjoy!
Franken’s guest was Sen. Lindsey Graham (who Franken has always maintained was the funniest politician he worked with in D.C.), and while that interview was not nearly as entertaining in the way one might have hoped, it was informative if not only to see how someone as acutely hypocritical as Graham has been able to charm enough people to remain a senator for two decades.
I’m not going to analyze the interview, which is long, but if you are interested, you need only get through about three minutes of true awkwardness before the interview settles down into entertainment.
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