Jon Stewart took to The Daily Show desk on Monday to assess President Joe Biden‘s bumbling performance during the first 2024 debate in June. Stewart played an array of video clips of both Biden and his allies offering a litany of excuses following the debacle.
“For a campaign based on honesty and decency, the spin about the debate appears to be blatant bullshit, and the redemption tour hasn’t gone that much better,” Stewart said. “We’re told that the threat of Trump is so great and the stakes are so high that even bringing up these absolutely legitimate concerns about the president’s ability to do the most vigorous job in the world for the next four years is enabling fascism.”
“Authoritarianism and Donald Trump aren’t the only threats our democracy faces,” the host continued, slamming Biden’s campaign for being “unable or unwilling to respond in any way to the concerns of voters who just received new and urgent information about their candidate.” Stewart warned that the “arthritic status quo” also “erodes confidence and faith in the system of government borders.”
As an alternative route, Stewart suggested Democrats “stress test this candidacy.”
“I am in no way saying Biden’s got to drop out,” he said, before asking, “Can we open up the conversation? Do you understand the opportunity here? Do you have any idea how thirsty Americans are for any hint of inspiration or leadership, and a release from this choice of a megalomaniac and a suffocating gerontocracy?”
Stewart then spit-balled the idea of bringing together potential Democratic candidates to Chicago, where the 2024 Democratic National Convention will conveniently kick-off in late August, to challenge Biden. “All we want is for someone to keep it 100, the percentage, not the age.”
The host proposed that at the convention, “anybody who wants to [can give] their sales pitch of how they can make democracy more responsive to the people it is supposed to serve… The winner could move on to the next round and then face Biden.”
“Feel free to ignore any obvious weaknesses in your team’s existential fight for freedom and democracy and then just white-knuckle this thing till November, or take the advice of your own candidate,” The Daily Show host said, before rolling footage of Biden at a press conference.
In the clip, when asked if any other Democrat could defeat Donald Trump, the president looked back and frankly replied, “Probably 50 of them.”