Jon Stewart used the latest episode of The Daily Show to hammer Donald Trump over his trip to China last week, mocking what the White House cast as a good meeting with President Xi Jinping. Stewart framed the visit as a long flight for very little, saying Trump came back with only a relationship and declaring, “You got nothing!”
Trump met with Xi in China last week in a round of talks the White House said were productive on international trade and the war in Iran. Stewart ridiculed the president’s pitch as if it were proof of a diplomatic breakthrough, joking, “As we all know nobody, and I mean nobody, is as tough on China, rhymes with vagina, than Donald J. Trump,” and, “He’s like a bull in a China shop.”
The comic then turned to Trump’s own language about the trip, saying the president had essentially returned with a souvenir instead of results. “What did you get Mr. President? Trade barriers down? Help with Iran? Some of them delicious rare Earth metals?” Stewart asked before answering himself: “So nothing?” He added, “You flew to China. What is it, 400 million miles? I don’t know how far it is to China. It’s far!”
Stewart’s criticism landed against a broader backdrop of rising trade and geopolitical friction between the United States and China, with the White House trying to present the talks as constructive. Trump, meanwhile, described Chinese restaurants in America as outnumbering the five largest fast foods in the United States all combined, a line Stewart twisted into a joke about returning home with little more than a social-media connection. “All you came back with was his Instagram? ‘The tariffs are in place, but we’re on the Close Friends story now!’” he said.
The segment was less a policy analysis than a public indictment of Trump’s diplomacy, and Stewart did not soften his judgment. “How the fuck is this guy our president?” he said, before concluding, “He should not have this job and yet he does.” For Trump, the test now is whether the China trip produces anything beyond the White House’s praise and his own claims; Stewart’s verdict was that, so far, it has not.
