Jon Stewart on Donald Trump's Claim of Being Unaware About His Own MRI: 'That’s Not Physically Possible'.
Late-night television hosts recently trained their comedic fire on former President Donald Trump, criticizing his employment of a derogatory term and what they described as feeble efforts to address growing questions about his cognitive health.
The Daily Show's Pointed Commentary
Beginning his monologue, Jon Stewart focused on a controversial post in which Trump described Minnesota Governor Tim Walz using a widely condemned slur. "On the holiday?!" Stewart remarked. "Did you mix it up with your own personal grievance airing day?"
When asked later if he regretted the remark, Trump reportedly intensified his attack, stating there was "a genuine problem" with the governor.
"The issue is with him? With him?" Stewart responded. "You sat with your family at Thanksgiving, stomach full of turkey and pie, surrounded by the love of your extended crime family, but your initial instinct was to post an insult at Tim Walz? And there’s something wrong with him?"
The host then turned to Trump's bizarre explanation of a recently revealed MRI. In an attempt to downplay worries, Trump claimed he had "zero knowledge" what part of his body was even scanned, remarking it "wasn’t the brain" because he "took a cognitive test."
"That is an impossibility," Stewart shot back. "To have no idea, it’s not possible. What could you possibly say to the doctor? ‘Wait, stop, don’t tell me. I want to find out at my scan unveiling celebration.’"
He added, "Good grief, man, were you not curious at all? When they laid you down in a tube for a half an hour, you didn’t want to know what they might be doing? Or did you just think to yourself, ‘This is a noisy tanning bed’?"
Stewart also mocked Trump's boast of a "perfect score" on the scan. "That’s how they score the MRIs," he joked. "It's either a big stamp, ‘Perfect,’ or you get in red ink, ‘We need to talk.’"
The Late Show's Witty Observations
On his own program, Stephen Colbert pointed out increasing frustration among some former supporters. "Maga folks are starting to notice that Trump views them like meat animals," he said, referencing anger about funding a gilded event space over tackling affordability concerns.
"Elsewhere, Trump celebrated Thanksgiving in his traditional way – with racism," Colbert noted, alluding to an anti-immigrant rant from the weekend. "Somewhere in all of that nonsense," he summarized, the president also used the ableist slur against Governor Walz.
After Walz challenged him to "Make the scan public," Trump said he would release them, despite his stated unawareness of what was scanned.
"Uh, here’s a theory: maybe the part that’s broken is the part that’s meant to retain that information," Colbert suggested.
He then poked fun at the subsequent White House justification—a doctor's letter stating the MRI was for preventative screening. "OK, fair enough," Colbert said. "Men in his age group also benefit from retiring, so … can we write that prescription next?"
Jimmy Kimmel's Blunt Assessment
Jimmy Kimmel also condemned Trump's use of the slur. "See, he can be presidential when he wants to be!" he remarked sarcastically. "I wonder why he didn’t get that Nobel peace prize. It defies all logic."
Regarding Trump's subsequent statement that he thinks "there’s something wrong" with Walz, Kimmel was blunt: "yet another profound insight from the president of the middle school."
Kimmel also addressed Trump's insistence of record-high approval ratings. "Which means it’s not just books he can’t read," Kimmel remarked, noting survey data showing significant disapproval. "You can find gas station bathrooms on Yelp with higher approval ratings than Donald Trump right now."
The host finished by criticizing Trump's pledge to pardon a imprisoned former Honduran president. "Now some have pointed out the unbelievable hypocrisy of Trump taking a hard line in one instance, while simultaneously pardoning a man who shipped a million pounds of cocaine to this country," said Kimmel. "Such individuals are just detractors, you know? Lighten up!"
"When he was running, Trump made it perfectly obvious: his top priorities were a) pardoning drug kingpins and b) constructing a venue to ballroom dance," he added. "Promises made, promises kept."