Trevor Noah wants you to cut the outrage over Obama's $400,000 Wall Street speech

Trevor Noah sticks up for Obama
(Image credit: The Daily Show)

"Obama's back, and so are the haters," Trevor Noah said on Thursday's Daily Show. The former president is taking a lot of heat for giving a speech to Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald for a fat paycheck, but Noah wasn't buying the outrage. "Obama's getting $400,000 to be a keynote speaker," he said. "He's probably going to give a very important policy speech entitled 'The Four Boats I'm Going to Buy.' Now look, I know that people may say that it weakens public trust when politicians cash in immediately after leaving office, but at least Obama waited until he left office, unlike [President Trump], who's using the White House like an ATM machine. And yeah, don't get me wrong — I agree that the system must change, but it doesn't change with Obama. People are like 'Why doesn't he not accept the money?' No, f— that!"

"So the first black president must also be the first one to not take money afterwards?" Noah asked. "No, no, no, no, no, my friend. He can't be the first of everything. F— that, and f— you." Go ahead, he added, "make that money, Obama." Noah did start to make a broader point: "Instead of focusing on how Obama can make so much money from Wall Street for a speech, maybe we should be asking why Wall Street has so much money to give people for a speech: the loose regulations, the intensive lobbying and favorable — you know, the truth is, we can't get into all of this, there's too much, there's too much else that's going on that we have to talk about today."

He spent the next four minutes on quick takes of two events: Ann Coulter vs. Berkeley ("they should just let her speak, because you realize she doesn't actually want to speak, she wants to be stopped from speaking") and the odd all-Senate White House field trip to be briefed on North Korea, which turned out to be a mostly substance-free dog-and-pony show. "Donald Trump just called them there," Noah said, laughing, "and I wouldn't be surprised if just brought them to be, like: 'Did you guys know there are two Koreas? It's a lot more complicated than we thought, folks, a lot more complicated, a lot more.'" There's some slightly NSFW language. If that doesn't bother you, watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber

Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.