Jon Stewart returned to The Late Show for the first time since the day before Election Day to mock President Donald Trump and his string of jarring executive orders.
Stewart began the segment with a red, dead animal fixed atop his head. I thought this is how men dress now. The president sets mens fashion, he said before joking that Trumps impending executive orders includes a demand that, rather than building a wall on the Mexico border, China send us the Great Wall of China.
This is the genius, Stewart said. When the Wall arrives on the southern border, we shut the lights, we pretend were not home. Its C.O.D. Mexico has to sign for it. Boom. They pay for it. Done.
Another forthcoming executive order: The official language of the United States of America is now Bullshit. (In Stewarts final Daily Show monologue, he ominously cautioned about the dangerous spread of bullshit.) I, Donald J. Trump, have instructed my staff to speak only in bullshit, Stewart read. Bullshit, all the time. Immersion, its the only way to be fluent.
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Before reading the last of the executive orders, Stewart lamented, It has been 11 days, Stephen. Eleven fucking days. The presidency is supposed to age the president, not the public.
Stewart then read the executive order, as Trump: The reason I, Donald J. Trump, is exhausting is because every instinct and fiber of my pathological self-regard calls me to abuse of power. I want no, deserve not just your respect but your adoration. Parades with the tanks and the synchronized dancing, and why cant they train 10,000 doves to spell out Trump in the clouds? How hard can it be, theyre already flying?
It is going to take relentless stamina, vigilance and every institutional check and balance this great country can muster to keep me, Donald J. Trump, from going full Palpatine with the lightning coming out of the fingertips, Stewart said, referencing Star Wars villainous mastermind.
Stewart ended on a rallying cry for what promises to be a long four years:
We have never faced this before. Purposeful, vindictive chaos. But perhaps therein lies the saving grace of I, Donald J. Trumps presidency, he said. No one action will be adequate. All action will be necessary. And if we do not allow Donald Trump to exhaust our fight, and somehow come through this presidency calamity-less and constitutionally partially intact, then I Donald J. Trump will have demonstrated the greatness of America, just not how I thought I was gonna.
Donald Trump signed an executive order on the construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines. Watch here.