On Monday night’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart gave audiences a comedic rundown of the recent developments in the relationship between Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping following Trump’s hosting of Jinping in Washington, D.C., for what was called a “reciprocal state visit” by the White House.
Stewart kicked off his monologue by introducing the two and setting the scene of their time together.
“Last week, a young man by the name of Donald Trump picked up a young man by the name of Xi Jinping, Chinese president, at the airport for a pivotal three-day visit to Washington. Now, as with any monumental meeting of superpowers, with profound repercussions for global safety and stability, it began with ‘House Tour,’” sang Stewart, before cutting to news videos of Trump pointing at a number of different areas.
“Trump spent most of Xi’s White House visit just pointing at shit, while Xi did his best effort to pretend to be impressed. Although I’m sure they talked about issues of national importance,” said Stewart, then alternating to news clips of Trump speaking to the press: “We had a great meeting, and he has great interest in granite,” he said.
“Does he? Does he love good granite?” asked Stewart. “Is that his ‘I love good granite face?’ Because it looks like his ‘I’d rather be standing in front of a tank in a square face… Like President Trump, I’m sure you’re proud of your new circular granite helicopter parking spot, but just so you know, this is Shenzhen, China. They’ve got a fully autonomous magnetic levitation train. Pretty sure he’s not blown away by carved rock in the shape of a circle.”
Stewart continued, pointing out that Trump must understand “the seriousness of the competition between our two nations” and would not undermine America’s national security. “I mean, national security is the whole reason we’re paying $600 million for this ballroom, right? So you’ll keep that behind the curtain, yeah?” Not quite — Trump invited the couple “through that beautiful curtain,” making them the first people to set foot in it. “Maybe Trump’s just trying to sell Xi Jinping on renting the ballroom out for his next big function,” joked Stewart.
He then brought up recent developments in China-U.S. relations, playing news clips explaining that China had been sending Iran weapons. And not only did this topic not appear to come up between the two presidents, but it seemed as though Trump offered to sell American weapons to China.
“How does America even stay on the map sometimes? I don’t even. How do we not just slide into the sea? All right, I had to have misheard that. I got to hear it from the president himself.” The show then cut to a clip of Trump denying this, saying that China probably would like to buy weapons from the U.S., though, “because we do make better equipment.”
Check out the entire monologue below.