Jon Stewart was left speechless by President Donald Trump’s bizarre choice of subject for his final election-eve pitch to voters.
The 80-year-old president gave a speech outside the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday. With only one day to go before voters decide which party will control the House of Representatives and the Senate, Trump spent 23 minutes talking about his renovations to the pool.
Stewart noted in his monologue that Trump’s event took place near the site where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of his most famous speeches.
“In the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, with the echoes of Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, please lay out for the American people what you think is most important for them to know,” Stewart told Trump.
Stewart played a few clips of Trump rambling at length about the pool. When the montage ended, Stewart stared ahead in disbelief.
After another beat, The Daily Show host simply said, “Good night, everyone,” and walked offstage.
Stewart soon returned to his desk and explained exactly why Trump’s rambling remarks stunned him so much.
“I just want to be clear: that is not AI,” Stewart said. “That was not artificial intelligence. Or really, I think you would agree, any kind of intelligence.”
Stewart summed up Trump’s speech: “No symbolism, no metaphors, just straight up pool maintenance. That was Donald Trump’s ‘I Had It Cleaned’ speech, if you will.”
“With the president’s priorities so badly misplaced,” Stewart said, “it is no wonder what the expectation is for tomorrow.”
As of Monday night, polling and election forecasts pointed to Democratic gains in the House, while several prominent forecasting models also showed a possible Democratic takeover of the Senate.
Polling expert Nate Silver gave Democrats a roughly 80 percent chance of taking the Senate—his highest estimate for the party this election cycle.
That forecast is particularly concerning for Republicans, given how favorable this year’s Senate map is for them. To flip the chamber, Democrats would need victories not only in purple states like Georgia and North Carolina, but also in traditionally red states like Texas, Kansas, Ohio, and Alaska.
Few experts would have predicted a year ago that any of those four states would lean blue in the polls, let alone all four.
Stewart, however, ended his monologue with a warning to viewers that polls are not guarantees of election results. He also pleaded with the media to stop spending so much time covering poll numbers at the expense of candidates’ policy positions.
“Cable news media, I am begging you: please reconsider spending so much of your valuable pre-election airtime hyping up polls that you know to be unreliable,” Stewart said. “I can’t think of anything more corrosive to your viewers’ well-being.”
