It’s been a good eight years since Jon Stewart departed as host of The Daily Show, handing the reins over to Trevor Noah. Noah himself left last year, and since then instead of choosing one replacement, they’ve had a revolving door of week-long guest hosts. This week went to current correspondent Roy Wood Jr., whose second day on the job let Stewart make one of his periodic returns, however short-lived.
Stewart’s reunion with his longtime show came on a special day: Tuesday was when Donald Trump was set to make an appearance in a Manhattan courthouse so he could be arraigned. Stewart was very excited about this, but he wound up not doing some lengthy schtick about it. That’s partly because Wood had already done a fine job making jokes about the historic day.
Instead the two got caught up trying to explain his outfit. Stewart emerged mysteriously, dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi. The two spent so long imagining who was cosplaying as which Star Wars character that by the time Stewart started talking about the importance of “jurisprudence,” Wood had to cut him off because they ran out of time. (But not before Wood, whose tenure didn’t begin until Noah took over, quipped, “The Daily Show had a white host?”)
As mentioned, Wood did Trump duties himself. “We were preparing for the craziest day in New York since the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man came to town and busted a nut on the whole city,” he said. As for all that white substance that got all over the city, he added, “That wasn’t marshmallows.”
Wood marveled at the grim demeanor Trump rocked in the courtroom. “Look at how sad Trump looks. My man looks like someone told him his dog died or Mike Pence is still alive,” he said. “You cant talk all the sh*t you want, I’m telling you, baby, the moment you in that court room that sh*t gets real. Trump’s sitting there like, ‘Wow, you’re really gonna do this to me, huh?’”
He also lamented how Trump didn’t get to experience the legal system as most people do. There was no mugshot, no handcuffs, no perp walk. (“With Trump it would be a perp waddle,” Wood said.) To him, that was an indictment of how America works when the one being indicted isn’t a former president with a volatile base.
“I’m disappointed, because today shows you how humane our courts could be. So many people get dragged into this legal system, and it’s humiliating. You get handcuffed, you get gawked out. You wait days, sometimes months for an arraignment,” he said. “My point is, for the sake of this country, I hope that Donald Trump gets a swift trial. But that doesn’t mean he gets to use the TSA pre-check lane.”
Still, Wood saw a silver lining: “The New York investigation is just one of many into the former president. So we’ll have plenty of other opportunities to get him arrested correctly.”
You can watch the segment in the video above.