The Daily Show host Jon Stewart couldn’t help himself from mocking Elon Musk‘s appearance at a Donald Trump rally over the weekend, using his show’s opening segment on Monday to break down the billionaire’s enthusiasm for the Trump campaign and what Stewart says is hypocrisy around Americans’ First Amendment rights.
“Ooh, dark MAGA?” Jon Stewart quipped on Monday’s episode of The Daily Show, taking a swipe at Musk, who showed up to the rally in a black “Make America Great Again” hat. “I didn’t know it came in flavours! I wonder if for the holidays they’ll come out with peppermint bark MAGA. Or pumpkin spice MAGA.”
The Tesla CEO and owner of X (formerly Twitter) was mocked widely online for hopping around on stage with his hands over his head, and Stewart joined in the pile-on with his own jokes.
“He’s acting like a guy who won a radio contest. ‘Oh, I can’t believe I get to bid on the washer-dryer!’” Stewart said.
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Jokes aside, Stewart zeroed in on the speech Musk delivered to the Butler, Pa., crowd, which focused on the First and Second Amendments.
“The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech,” Musk said. “You must have free speech in order to have democracy. That’s why it’s the First Amendment.… The Second Amendment is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment.”
The comment had Stewart particularly rankled.
“The guns don’t protect our free speech. Our free speech is protected by the consent of the governed laid out through the Constitution. It’s not based on the threat of violence,” he said.
“Guns, from what I can tell, seem to mostly protect the speech of the people holding the gun. It’s a tool of intimidation. It is a tool of intimidation and one that I think is actually being irresponsibly and recklessly invoked because some people in your crowd thought they might have been shadowbanned by Facebook.
“I mean, for God’s sakes, you guys are in Butler, Pennsylvania,” Stewart said. “The whole reason you’re there is because some f—ing a–hole with an AR-15 tried to permanently litigate his vision of this country’s ‘free speech.’ That’s why you’re there.”
He also took offence with Musk applauding Trump’s commitment to free speech, pointing out that the former president threatened legal action about the upcoming biopic about his life, The Apprentice, after his team called the movie “election interference.”
“It’s not free speech if only Trump’s admirers get to do it without consequence,” Stewart said. “That’s just not how it works. It doesn’t go that way.”
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