‘The Daily Show’ Lampoons Trump For ‘Butt-Tariffing’ Uninhabited Islands | Video

“The Daily Show” dedicated an entire 10-minute segment Thursday night to President Trump’s new global tariff plan. “Yesterday Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs across the entire globe — Asia, South America, Narnia, Arendelle, Wakanda, Bachelor Nation,” host Michael Kosta joked. “If you can imagine it, Trump slapped a tariff on it.”

Kosta then tee’d up a reel of news anchors from different networks and programs all reporting on the stock market drops that have occurred this week as a result of Trump’s tariffs. “Economists say we could be on the verge of a recession,” Kosta noted. “So things are looking scary right now.” The “Daily Show” host later lampooned the Trump administration for even slapping tariffs on places like Heard Island and the McDonald Islands, which are uninhabited by humans.

“Yeah, we put a 10% tariff on an island that only has penguins. Trump would have been better off tariffing that island Tom Hanks got stranded on [in ‘Cast Away’],” Kosta remarked. “I know old people butt-dial strangers all the time, but this is the first time I’ve heard of someone butt-tariffing an entire country.” 

You can watch the full “Daily Show” segment yourself in the video below.

Earlier in the segment, Kosta took aim at a Trump post from Thursday in which the president compared his tariffs to a life-saving surgery. “The thing is, the patient didn’t need major surgery. We just needed a teeth cleaning, keep it clean and shiny,” Kosta responded. “No one wants to wake up from heart surgery to their dental hygienist shouting, ‘I think he’s going to live!'”

“Look, you could argue that it’s bad that my retired 78-year-old mom is polishing up her resume now,” Kosta continued. “But to Donald Trump, it’s all worth it because we’re correcting a grave injustice.” The “Daily Show” host was, of course, referring to Trump’s insistence that he is simply imposing “reciprocal” tariffs to match those that other countries levy against America. 

Kosta specifically took issue with a board Trump held up on Tuesday that claimed to list international tariffs that are charged to the United States. “It’s very simple in that it is simply not true. The reality is that the numbers on his board are not the tariffs other countries are charging us,” Kosta explained. “They actually represent the trade deficit between the U.S. and those countries, meaning we buy more stuff from them than they buy from us.”

“That means we’re basically punishing other countries for selling us stuff that we want. This is like me going to John Varvatos and beating the s—t out of him because I like his socks,” Kosta joked. “That’s really what’s going on. It’s not actually about tariffs. It’s about other countries not buying enough of our stuff.”

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