By Alex Lumley
 |
| Trevor Noah took Donald Trump to task after the election, roasting him for backpedaling on many of his major platforms so soon after being elected. |
Well.
That happened.
After 17 months of laughing at him, the viewers of Trevor Noah's Daily Show fell silent
last Wednesday morning, as Donald Trump was declared victorious over Hillary
Rodham Clinton, securing over 70 Electoral College votes more than the former
Secretary of State and thus being named the President-Elect of the United
States of America.
Wow.
 |
| Noah's prediction of what America might look like after four years of a Trump presidency involved all major news outlets being shut down and replaced with "TNN." |
Needless to say, Trevor Noah had spent the better part of a year
vigorously opposing Trump. Just a week before Election Day, Noah released an
out-of-studio package about what life might look like in 2020 as the potential
President Trump runs for re-election. Noah's vision of such a future is bleak
and hopeless, putting a very clear emphasis on what he thought would happen
should Trump have been elected.
Noah went live the night of Tuesday, November 8th while precincts
across the country were still reporting in. By the time his broadcast went live
late in the night, things weren't looking good for Hillary. Noah stayed
optimistic throughout the live show, but even he could realize that he might
wake up Wednesday morning to President Trump.
Which of course, he (and the rest of the country, whether they
liked it or not) did. Noah spent Wednesday night’s show wrapping up hiscoverage of the election. He repeated several times how shocked he was that
Trump was able to win, particularly disparaging the Electoral College system
and the fact that Clinton had at the time won 200,000 more votes than Trump (a
lead that has since grown to over one million) and yet still lost the election.
Noah was surprised, however, that Trump’s victory speech was as
gracious and positive as it was. Given the numerous incidents of negative
attacks Trump displayed throughout his campaign, Noah had imagined his victory
speech would have been much more arrogant and triumphant.
And though Trump’s upset was far and away the biggest story to
come out of election night, Noah took a moment to acknowledge the passage of
recreational marijuana usage in several states, and noted how strange it is for
voters to be choosing their next President and asking for weed to be legal at
the same time.
Several days into the post-Election 2016 era, Noah had some harsh words for Trump, saying how disappointed he’d be had he been a supporter of
his. Noah argues that Trump built his campaign on three major talking points:
“Build the Wall,” “Lock Her Up,” and “Drain the Swamp,” and that Trump has
already backpedaled on all three of those points. In a “60 Minutes” interview
shortly after the election, President-Elect Trump said he’d accept a “fence in
certain areas” instead of one large wall, that he doesn’t want to hurt the
Clintons because “they’re good people,” and balked when accused of stacking his
entire transition team with the same kinds of people he’d promised to remove
from the political process. While some of this may come as a relief to his
detractors, Noah thinks that his supporters must be livid that the man they
chose as their President has backtracked on the main reasons they voted for him
less than a week after the election.
Regardless of what happens to the country over the next four
years, I’ll be counting on Trevor Noah and his Daily Show staff to keep me appraised of everything I need to know,
and making me laugh a little along the way, even when things get dark. Unless,
of course, his prediction for 2020 has come true and he’s been taken off the
air long before then, in which case I’ll be doing my very best to stay tuned to
his intermittent illegal broadcasts.
No comments:
Post a Comment