Trump’s tariffs sure made the American economy great again—if “great” refers to the stock market having its worst three consecutive sessions since 1987, that is. It’s hard to think of anything that would make this situation better—well, other than having a president who actually understands basic math—but Jon Stewart’s increasingly disappointed direct-to-camera stares are a good salve in the interim.
Stewart took on the tariffs in this week’s Daily Show monologue, in which he characterized our current situation as follows: “Our economy is in the midst of a beautiful metamorphosis, turning from a simple caterpillar into a dead caterpillar.” Yeah, that grade-school science lesson sounds about right, especially given the fact that Trump seems to have used similarly advanced math to come up with the tariff formula in the first place. Stewart points out that the equation used to come up with each country’s tax rate was just “trade deficit divided by U.S. imports,” which, when called out, Trump tried to obscure with “some ridiculous fucking calculus problem that’s just shapes” and boils down to the same old basic math anyway.
The least Trump could have done, Stewart suggests, is attempt to soothe the nation—especially the members of Congress worried about their precious stock portfolios. Alas, we couldn’t even get a good Trumpy nickname out of the whole ordeal. “Panican?” Stewart rants, in reference to the president’s recent Truth Social post. “The genius who gave us classics like ‘Sleepy Joe’ and ‘Crooked Hillary’ just shit out, ‘You’re a Panican’?… Did the overseas factory you had been sourcing your nicknames from get shut down during the tariff war?” Thank goodness Stewart’s writers’ room hasn’t.
