Trevor Noah recaps the 1st Democratic debate, picks some winners, explains why Trump was bored

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/The Daily Show)

published 27 June 2019

The first 2020 Democratic presidential debate was Wednesday night, and it gave some of the lesser-known of the 10 candidates a chance to "go from 'Who is that?' all the way to 'Oh yeah, that guy — no, I'm not going to vote for him,'" Trevor Noah said on Wednesday's live Daily Show. "The biggest name on the state was Elizabeth Warren, polling in the lead, and she knew that she was the frontrunner," he said. "So basically it was up to everyone else to try and figure out a way to stand out."

Beto O'Rourke landed on a surefire way "to spice up a bland affair," Noah said, impressed at Beto's Spanish. "Look at how shocked Cory Booker was when Beto switched to Español. ... And while Beto O'Rourke was wowing the crowd with his fluent Spanish, Amy Klobuchar came prepared with zingers that were going to destroy the crowd. But every time she tried to land them, her time was up."

"So Warren was cruising, Beto was fluent, Klobuchar was being her moderate self, and everyone else was just figuring out how to get noticed," Noah said. "Poor Jay Inslee, he spent the night trying to order a drink from a bartender who didn't realize he was there." Policy-wise, the Democrats were mostly on the same page, though "all hell broke loose" when moderators brought up health care, he added. But "to be honest, it was a lot more exciting than most people thought. And I know Trump tweeted that it was boring, but he would always think that policy was boring, because these people had ideas, they had plans for how they were going to do it, and they had information about how they were going to run themselves from the White House."

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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.