Sept. 26 Debate
The Daily Show discovered Donald Trump's big debate weakness
The first debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was on Monday night, and on Monday night's Daily Show, Trevor Noah breathed a sigh of relief. "The waiting is finally over," he said. "After a year of subtweeting each other on the campaign trail," he said, "finally, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton went head-to-head." After all the debate prep and head games, the debate lived up to expectations, getting pretty fiery at some points, with Clinton and Trump just shouting over each other. "Welcome to the real-life version of Twitter, people," Noah said. "You know that at that point, Lester Holt wasn't even moderating anymore, he was just eating popcorn with everyone else."
Noah spent most of his instant recap focused on Trump, and some Trump statements really stood out, like when Trump appeared to brag about avoiding taxes, saying paying zero federal income tax "makes me smart." "I'm sorry, what?" Noah said. "Dude, taxes are a responsibility not something to evade. You know, you're running to be the No. 1 citizen of a country, you shouldn't brag about ways you found to get around the rules.... You know who else found a way around the rules? O.J. No one likes him."
When it came to race relations, Noah said, "this might have been my favorite part of the evening — it turns out, the only way Donald Trump can truly relate to any issue in America is by whether or not he has a property in that place." After playing a few clips, he said, "Donald Trump relates to America like he's playing a game of Monopoly — 'Yeah, I have that street, I know what it's like there.'"
Finally, Noah pointed to Trump's Achilles heel, "a little thing I like to call Truth Trump." Whenever Trump speaks, Noah explained, "every now and again, Truth Trump comes out — he can't control it." He used as an example Trump saying he doesn't run negative ads "because he's trying to save the money — not because he's a good person," as he should have said. Noah demonstrated by acting out a split personality, Gollum-like: "'Truth Trump, shut up!' 'I can't control it. I need to build a wall in my mind folks!'" He arched an eyebrow at Trump's sniffing, but said "we didn't watch the debate just to make jokes about it. We wanted to do our part to keep the candidates honest." Still, when he asked Senior Campaign Correspondent Roy Wood Jr. to fact-check the debate, things got out of control fast. Watch below. Peter Weber