The Daily Showdown
Trevor Noah is baffled by GOP tax politics, trickle-down economics, has a plan to thwart Republicans
Now that Thanksgiving is over, President Trump is packaging the massive GOP tax bill hurtling through the Senate this week as a Christmas president to Americans, Trevor Noah said on Monday's Daily Show. "Donald Trump is such a divorce dad. He spends his whole year golfing, breaking his promises, and then he thinks he can just buy our love with one big Christmas present." But whether you like his gift "depends on what kind of person you are: human or corporate," he said, or rich or not rich — because starting in a year or so, low-income and then middle-class Americans would be worse off than under current law.
"It's pretty convenient that average Americans won't be seeing those tax hikes until after the next election — that's really slick," Noah said. But Republicans insist that permanent large tax cuts for corporations and gifts for millionaires will actually help the middle class — a concept, trickle-down economics, that Noah found confusing: "This is weird to me. They want to help ordinary people, so they're giving money to corporations because maybe, eventually, it will get down to ordinary people?"
Oh, and the tax bill would add $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit, Noah added, playing clips of Republican leaders warning — when Barack Obama was president — that the federal deficit was America's biggest and most ruinous problem. "Every single time they say they hate something," Noah said, "they go and do the thing that they said they hate." Seriously, he added, "what else have Republicans just been pretending to hate? Like right now, I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that all Republicans are secretly black." But Noah had a plan to get Trump to turn against giving tax cuts to the wealthy, and all you have to do is tweet. Watch below. Peter Weber