Jon Stewart on the midterms: ‘Republicans running for Congress can’t defend Trump’s reckless record’

Late-night hosts mocked Donald Trump’s bizarre rally with Nicki Minaj as the clock ticks down to the US midterm elections.Jon StewartWith just a week to go until the US midterm elections, voters “are, for some reason, fixated on the economy, cost of living, the war in Iran”, said Jon Stewart on Monday’s Daily Show. “And Donald Trump is actually back out there on the campaign trail to make his closing arguments.“I imagine the president will be laser-focused on the issues that matter most,” the host deadpanned before playing a clip of Trump talking about the physical form of the Ohio Senate candidate Jon Husted: “I looked at his ass, and I’ve never done that with a man before. A man’s ass, his ass, the ass. His ass was like a big piece of muscle.”“And by the way, don’t feel left out, ladies, Trump’s got plenty of ammo left for you,” Stewart continued before playing another clip of Trump at a weekend rally in Michigan, where he introduced the rapper Nicki Minaj: “By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before – Nicki Minaj. That’s hard to miss.”“How the fuck is this real?” Stewart exclaimed. “‘Stand up, Nicki. Twirl around. Give us a look at that.’ Talk about inflation, my God!“Look at Trump’s face when Minaj is talking,” Stewart added. “Look at what he’s doing. He’s transfixed. He’s staring at her ass. He’s like Yogi Bear floating towards a pie on a windowsill.”Later in the segment, Stewart touched on Barack Obama’s roasting of the Trump White House. At a rally in Michigan for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, the former president joked that Trump’s renovations “got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory”.Stewart said he knew immediately that the joke would cause a firestorm: “As soon as I heard him say it, you can feel it already, what a shitstorm this is going to set off on the right, for Barack Obama to compare anything that Trump does to the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein?”He was right … sort of. Fox News host Martha MacCallum was indeed angry, but on behalf of the Cheesecake Factory. “The Cheesecake Factory comment … goes exactly to why Democrats lost the middle class, why they lost blue-collar voters,” she said. “He doesn’t respect your way of life and say: ‘That’s a nice night out.’” Network contributor Kaylee McGhee White called the comments “condescending to a popular food chain restaurant”.“The part of the comparison that bothered you was the Cheesecake Factory part? Not the Saddam Hussein part?” asked a bewildered Stewart. “You know the Cheesecake Factory is not an actual factory, right? We did not ship cheesecake jobs to China.“There’s a reason why Donald Trump and anyone representing his Republican Congress are distracting you,” he added. “Republicans running for Congress can’t defend Trump’s reckless record or their refusal to do anything to check his worst impulses.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers checked in on the midterm campaign trail. “Usually, this is when candidates try to cement their closing message with something simple and hopeful that leaves voters with a sense of optimism and motivates them to get to the polls, he said, citing the famous example of Obama’s closing message in 2008, where he offered voters a chance to “turn the page”.“The GOP’s closing message is, let’s say, slightly less elevated,” he noted. “In Ohio, they’re running an ad exploiting the childhood trauma of a gubernatorial candidate. In Michigan, they’re calling the Democratic Senate candidate a jihadist. They’re using an anti-trans slur against the Democratic Senate candidate in South Carolina. And in Texas, they’re making gross, homophobic jokes like this.”Two weeks ago, at a campaign stop in Texas, JD Vance told the crowd: “I love you too, sir, in a totally platonic way … I’m the vice-president, not James Talarico.”“Hold on, I’ve gotta tell all my friends at the fifth-grade lunch table about that one,” Meyers mocked.“This is how desperate and gross they are,” Meyers added. “They’re stooping to gutter bigotry and homophobia.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel looked at potential malfeasance with the election process this year. “There are shenanigans afoot this time around,” he said, as Trump filed a lawsuit in California to interfere with vote counting in the state, “as if he has any chance of winning”.Trump also ordered the Department of Justice to block certification of the Senate race in Alaska in the event that the Republican candidate loses. “It would go like this,” Kimmel said. “If the Democrat, Mary Peltola, wins in Alaska, the election was rigged and the result would be overturned, but if the Republican wins, never mind. All is good. Remember when the Russians were the ones trying to interfere with our elections?”The shenanigans were another distraction tactic, Kimmel argued, because “Trump has failed on every count. He’s kept none of his promises. Not only has he made a mess of this country, he’s made a mess of the whole world. So what do you do when your presidency crashes and burns and may very well take Congress down along with it? You make a phone call to the totally stable Nicki Minaj.“Horny Donald is my least favorite Donald of all of them,” Kimmel said after the clip of Trump praising Minaj’s “beautiful ass”.“Can you imagine what would happen if Joe Biden said that?” he added. “How would Fox News handle Joe Biden saying: ‘Nicki Minaj has a beautiful ass?’ Steve Doocy would have to eat the Bible on camera.”