To mark the first day of Sen. Bob Menendez‘s corruption trial, Jon Stewart took the opportunity during Monday’s episode of the Daily Show to point out how painfully unnecessary the whole thing was and joked that the whole thing could have been avoided if the senator had been properly educated on “legal corruption.”
Last September, Menendez was indicted alongside his wife Nadine Menendez for allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for the senator’s influence. Stewart revisited the alleged crimes in the case including accusations that the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had accepted gold bars, $480,000 in cash, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and other bribes from businessmen tied to the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
The clip went on mention The New York Time‘s reporting that lawyers for Menendez cited his “traumatic” past experiences as a reason behind his stockpile of cash. “These are simply my emotionally support gold bars,” Stewart joked in an impression of the senator. “Whenever I’m not with them, I get anxious and support to drama in different ways.”
Stewart continued, “But perhaps the dumbest thing about this entire, not-quite-believable, ‘real housewives’ episode, is how unnecessary it all is.”
“You, sir, are an elected official in America’s most respected legislative body. It’s like a license to print money. You don’t need to break the law so cartoonishly when the legal corruption in the Senate is so fucking lucrative,” the host said, before introducing the show’s latest segment and asking: “Senator Robert Menendez, ‘How dumb is you?’”
After calling Menendez’s alleged attempts to promise “favors to foreign entities for a little chump change on the side” mere “bush-league,” Stewart outlined all the other ways he could have financially exploited his position in the government. The Daily Show host proceeded to school the senator in insider trading, embarking on “luxury lobbying vacations,” and writing laws that benefit a side business, “like the way Senator Chuck Grassley netted $370,000 in farm subsidies.”
As he ended the monologue, Stewart had one final question: “Robert Menendez’s gold bars in exchange for favorable legislation is obviously cartoonishly corrupt, but for anyone out there who thinks the status quo of government patronage and influence is of an entirely different species than Menendez … How dumb is you?”