Jon Stewart is warning that people shouldn’t be “naive” about what Trump may do if the midterms don’t go his way.
In the last episode of the host’s Weekly Show podcast before the election, Stewart said it’s possible that Trump could pull another “January 6″ if Democrats “win big” during the midterms. The host said he thinks it’s possible that Trump and Republicans in power may “just not seat the representatives and senators.”
He added, “We’ve seen over the past episodes... I am not a man known for my lighthearted vision of the future.”
And though it would be “hard for him to imagine” that scenario, the host admitted that it’s well within the realm of possibility. “It may be a failure of my imagination, as January 6th was too, by the way,” he conceded. “I remember watching it in utter disbelief. But it is hard for me to imagine... But God knows, I could be very f---ing naive.”
Stewart added, “I am optimistic at my core about people, but people exist in systems that are designed by, I guess we’ll call them, a--holes.”
Political analysts, including those on Trump’s favorite network, Fox News, have predicted humiliating defeat for Republicans in next week’s midterms. Trump has tried everything from telling voters to pretend he’s on the ballot, to race-based insults, and offering money to get his supporters to turn out and vote ahead of the next elections.
Stewart pleaded for his fans to cast their ballots. “I just want to urge everybody out there to please, please, for the love of God, get out there and vote and express your political opinion,” he said.
“I’d like to frame it as a ‘However you’ll vote,’ but I don’t mean that,” he continued. “I mean it as, ‘Please send a message to this reckless s--t show of an administration that enough is enough; that we have had it, that it is time for someone to step up and provide—I believe the framers referred to them as ‘checks and balances’—on this utterly imperious administration.”
While Stewart expressed pessimism that those in power will go quietly if handed election losses, he said he believes that if Trump decides not to honor the election outcomes, “People will go to the streets.”
“I do think there is a point where people will go to the streets and those elections—and I don’t mean it in a January 6th way,” he explained. “I mean it in a, ‘We are protesting an authoritative power grab’ kind of a way, I do think these are the fulcrum points where a society decides it’s enough already. And we are no longer gonna play this game.”
