“Daily Show” host Jon Stewart on Monday called out President Donald Trump and his supporters for claiming he knows the “art of the deal.” But in reality, the president can’t get the job done ― especially when it comes to ending the 3-month-old war on Iran.
Stewart broke out the receipts by playing weeks of clips featuring Trump insisting he was on the verge of a deal. Yet that optimism seemed to fall apart this week when Trump complained on Truth Social that it was difficult for him to make a deal when “political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping’” at him.
“What?!” Stewart asked. “You’re blaming this shit on us? You can’t make peace unless everybody’s quiet? Is making peace like putting? Or peeing? Is that what this is? ‘Oh, the peace won’t come out unless everybody shuts up. If you stare at me, I can’t make peace.’”
Stewart then played clips of Trump and his insiders talking him up as a master dealmaker.
“I know deals, I think, better than anybody knows deals,” Trump said in one clip.
Stewart shot back in a mock whine: “Unless somebody makes noise! And then I get scared!”
Next, Stewart showed how Trump had not only failed to reach a deal with Iran despite claiming he’s close, but also failed to make peace between Russia and Ukraine ― something he vowed would happen on the first day of his presidency. In one clip, Trump said he hadn’t been able to make that deal because of the “very difficult balance” between the two sides.
“If only there was a word for closing that gap, a person who could help close it,” Stewart said. “I dunno, a ‘gap-a-close-anator.’ But that’s the dirty little secret in all of this, isn’t it? Donald Trump isn’t actually a master ‘gap-a-close-anator.’”
Negotiating, Stewart said, means getting two parties with different interests to reach an understanding and make a compromise.
“Donald Trump’s gift is in not doing that,” he said. “Trump’s singular gift is in manufacturing the animus and division that actually makes negotiated settlements so difficult, yet so necessary, in this world. That’s his happy place.”
Check it out in his full Monday night monologue: