Among the more persistent narratives in 2016 was just how odd it was to have a presidential election where The Daily Show felt largely inconsequential. There are a lot of reasons for that—not least the fact that there were essentially four Daily Shows this year, with alumni Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Larry Wilmore, and Stephen Colbert all offering their own spins on that same satirical catharsis. But most critics have laid the blame, naturally, on new-ish host Trevor Noah, whose lighter, jokier approach lacks the informed, needling, barely sublimated outrage of Jon Stewart, and who—just over a year into the job—still hasn’t been hardened and calcified into a gray-haired crank by the insanity of it all nearly fast enough for our liking.
But just as with Stewart, it will take a combination of time and finding the right sparring partner. If the grindstone of a Donald Trump presidency can’t sharpen Noah, nothing can. And that honing may have begun in earnest during last night’s talk with Tomi Lahren—an interview that’s already being called Noah’s best so far, and one in which he definitely seems to age several years over the course of its 26 minutes.
If you’re not familiar with Lahren, she’s the proudly self-proclaimed “millennial” conservative commentator for The Blaze—think Ann Coulter run through a sunny Instagram filter. As Noah notes, she has a massive presence on Facebook, where she delivers fast-talking video commentaries peppered with all-caps outrage, railing against Democrats, Muslims, the Black Lives Matter movement, Colin Kaepernick, and—her favorite target—“whiny snowflake liberals,” all in the angry, sarcastic tone that is our new National Anthem, from sea to shining Starbucks rant.
The human equivalent of one of those “Liberal Tears” mugs, Lahren isn’t an obvious choice to enter The Daily Show “lion’s den,” as she calls it. But to her credit, she did it anyway, and Noah similarly rose to the occasion by engaging her in a thoughtful debate, one where he neither soft-pedaled on confronting her, nor allowed her to sidestep his questions. Best of all, they both managed to talk without yelling over each other—no mean feat, given that Lahren delivers her commentaries at a volume pitched to angry grandpas.