On Monday on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart dismantled Donald Trump’s recent trip to China, arguing that a visit billed as confrontation with Beijing returned as theatrical fawning. Stewart opened by reminding the audience that “nobody is tougher on China than Donald J Trump,” then asked the central question of the night: “Sometimes you get more flies with honey, so what did you get?”
Stewart built his case with television. He showed a montage of clips in which Trump criticized China and Xi Jinping, then cut to a clip of Trump on the trip saying, “I think the most important thing is, uh, relationship. It’s all about relationships.” Stewart seized on that contrast and punctured it: “So nothing? You got nothing!” he asked, and then mocked the apparent trophy of the trip: “All you came back with was his Instagram?”
The comedian paired the clips with blunt asides. He reminded viewers that Donald Trump University is a fraud and got shut down and replayed a sequence of handshake montages, as if to underline the performative over the substantive. Coverage noted the obvious figures: The Daily Beast described Stewart as 63 years old and Trump as 79 years old as the nightly back-and-forth unfolded after the president’s return from China following a recent visit that included discussions of trade and Taiwan.
Context for Stewart’s roast was immediate. Stewart’s remarks were part of late-night coverage of Trump’s recent trip, which touched on trade, Taiwan, and the claim that Xi Jinping called America “the hottest country in the world.” Xi’s public comments before reporters underlined Beijing’s priorities: “The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations,” he said, warning that mishandling could put the two powers “on the road to war” and that “‘Taiwan independence’ and cross-Strait peace are as irreconcilable as fire and water.” Trump, in his own words during the trip, walked a careful line: “I’m not looking to have somebody go independent. And, you know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war. I’m not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down.” This week Xi welcomed Russian president Vladimir Putin, a detail Stewart folded into the late-night appraisal.
The tension Stewart exploited was plain: Trump, who he said “flew to China to personally confront China on escalating trade and geopolitical tensions,” repeatedly casts himself as the tough negotiator, yet Stewart portrayed the trip as a display of affection and optics. He mocked the idea that relationship alone amounted to leverage and urged viewers to imagine a job interview in which the candidate refuses to set terms: “I will take your fucking hand!” he said, demonstrating the handshake theatrics he’d replayed, and told viewers one should set the terms of the battle in the interview. He even coached a mock response — “I cannot stress this enough, make your answer cocky and super fucking weird” — to underline how Trump’s style can look like posturing without policy.
Stewart’s ridicule ended in blunt judgment. After cataloguing the clips, the follies and the soundbites, he asked, “How the f--- is this guy our president?” and, on Monday, said plainly that Donald Trump should not have the job of president. That was Stewart’s conclusion: a televised comedian’s assessment, drawn from the trip’s footage and the president’s own words, that the China visit delivered a relationship and an Instagram rather than the hard results a trip billed as confrontation promised.
