The Daily Show imagines America after 4 years of President Trump, and it's pretty dark


Candidate Donald Trump dishes up a heady mixture of entertainment and soul-draining fear — sort of the presidential equivalent of a post-apocalyptic movie. On Monday's Daily Show, Trevor Noah ran with that and created post-apocalyptic fan-fiction about the end of President Trump's first term. The backstory is the cautionary tale you'd expect — the Hillary Clinton emails! (which turn out to be 650,000 Anthony Weiner "dick-pics") — but after four terrifying years, Noah is back in the crumbled remains of the Daily Show studios, pirating the airwaves from the lone broadcast network, TNN, where everything is awesome all the time.
Post-Trump America is based on Trump's actual policy proposals plus his personality, and Noah managed to rope in several of the correspondents to show how Trump's reign of terror has affected each. As fiction, it's pretty entertaining and certainly something different for The Daily Show, but the message isn't all that subtle: If you don't like Trump but plan to vote for him to blow apart the system or set up President Elizabeth Warren in 2020 — well, you can vote for "the Woman of the Woods" but she won't be on the ballot in Trump's America. There is a great John Oliver cameo and an amusing snippet of the new national anthem, and you can even enjoy a little schadenfreude at the fate of CNN. Watch below. Peter Weber
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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