Jon Stewart admitted Friday that liberals are shocked that President-elect Donald Trump so easily won reelection fair and square, saying bluntly, “F—k us, f—k me — I was wrong.”
On his podcast “The Weekly Show,” the seasoned political comic said the most shocking thing about Trump’s spectacular comeback victory is that he achieved it through a legal democratic process.
“I feel like we were prepared for all scenarios and in each one of those scenarios it was, how is Donald Trump going to finagle his way back into the [White House]? How is he going to use undemocratic principles?” Stewart said in the episode, which aired Friday.
“What measure of intimidation and underhanded [shenanigans] will this man use to worm his way back into the Oval Office?” he asked of conspiracies soon proven wildly unfounded.
“And it turned out he used our electoral system as it is designed. And in that moment, I thought, well, f—k. I’m not sure we have a team of lawyers for that,” he quipped with a glum inflection.
Stewart conceded it was dizzying how he and other liberals could get it so wrong.
“F—k us, f—k me — I was wrong, will continue to be wrong,” he said.
“I love to sit back and think about the autopsy and where you move from there, but I think I still feel as though I’m in that moment of vertigo to some extent.”
In his reflective rant, he also slammed the Kamala Harris team’s boots-on-the ground method of campaigning as a massive flop.
“By the way, I don’t ever in my life want to hear about our vaunted ground game will put us over the top. It’s a 50/50 tossup race, we’re sure of it, but the vaunted ground game — turns out that people knocking on other people’s doesn’t get them to do what you want them to do as, I believe, vacuum and Bible salesmen have probably known for many, many centuries,” he said.
Stewart, 61, described Trump’s 2016 win as a “gut punch” but said it feels “different” this time, and wrapped up the segment on a positive note.
“I still believe in this country, and I still believe in individuals, and I still believe in the power of change and organization, goodness, competence. I mean, for God’s sake, the Mets made the playoffs,” he said.
