Dave Chappelle & Jon Stewart on Comedy & Trump

DAVE CHAPPELLE: You know, I’m a Black American, so we’ve — these feelings that people felt right after the election, we felt that many elections consecutively. And I think that, to some degree, people overreacted. Like the alternative to giving him a chance was storming the streets and if something’s good on television they’re doing it. I just feel like —

JON STEWART: HBO has a lot of offerings right now to keep you from storming.

CHAPPELLE: Yes. “Game of Thrones” is on?

STEWART: That’s what I think.

CHAPPELLE: Can’t make the riot tonight. But I don’t know. Is he doing a good job? Am I happy with what he’s doing? No. It’s been very difficult to watch the last couple of years.

STEWART: Harder than I thought it would be in that there was a part of me that thought when you’d get in that room and it’s nighttime and there’s no one around and Teddy Roosevelt and Abe Lincoln and everybody’s up on the walls and staring at you that that brings a certain cognitive weight to what you’re feeling. And I imagine he walked in that room, he’s like, “Take that down. Take that down. Take that down. Put up dogs playing poker.” Kind of felt like, “Get some French fries around here.” You know, I think that oddly enough he transformed the White House and the White House wasn’t able to transform him.

AMANPOUR: Back in 2015, when he announced for president, you didn’t take it entirely seriously.

STEWART: The man came down an escalator.

AMANPOUR: Can I just play what you said?

STEWART: Oh, sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: Like many of you, I heard some interesting let’s call news today about a certain, let’s say, gift from heaven, entering the presidential race because apparently Huckabee/Santorum wasn’t farfetched enough. I got to tell you, the world right now is Whites are Black. Trump’s running for president. Like —

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Should you have taken him more seriously? I mean, you’re the oracle, Jon.

STEWART: Yes, now. I didn’t think — I thought America was going to go, “Is that an escalator in in a mall? I’m not going to vote for that dude.”

Like I didn’t think — A, I didn’t think he meant it. And when he gave that speech, quite frankly, I really thought when he said, you know, “Mexico sends us the worst, rapists and murderers,” I really thought he had disqualified himself.

AMANPOUR: Not to mention what he said about women.

STEWART: About women, about everything that he said there. And I thought, “This is disqualifying,” for me, though. And clearly, I don’t speak for — you know, he’s been very effective at like what Dave said, surfing the waves that have been — I’m watching the midterms. Man, you would think the country is Mad Max Thunderdome. This guy is like — they’re coming from Guatemala, they’re coming from Mexico. There’s a liberal mob that’s coming. Muslims. And you would think everybody in the country’s just like, to the bunker. To the ramparts.