Jon Stewart launched a stinging new round of criticism against Donald Trump on Monday, calling the presumptive Republican presidential nominee a thin-skinned hypocrite who ridicules political rivals and minorities but implodes when faced with even a minor slight.
“He is a man-baby,” Stewart told David Axelrod during a live taping of “The Axe Files,” a podcast produced by CNN and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. “He has the physical countenance of a man and a baby’s temperament and hands. … (Vanity Fair editor) Graydon Carter did a joke about Donald Trump’s hands 25 years ago, he’s still not f—ing over it.”
If Trump really wants to engage a politically incorrect debate, Stewart said, he should tell voters, “The problems in this country are not because of Mexicans and Muslims.”
Stewart also talked about Trump’s likely opponent this fall, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
He described the former secretary of state as “a very bright woman without the courage of her convictions.”
“That’s not to say that she is not preferable to Donald Trump,” he added, “because at this point I would vote for Mr. T over Donald Trump.”
Stewart pinned some of the blame for Trump’s rise on what he described as the failure of Democrats to transform the public sector into a more dynamic actor.
“The door is open to an a–hole like Donald Trump because the Democrats haven’t done enough to show people that government, that can be effective for people, can be efficient for people,” he said. “And if you can’t do that, then you’ve lost the right to make that change and someone’s going to come in and demagogue you.”
Stewart also took aim at the political class, asking, “Why are we so good at campaigns and so bad at governance?”
“The government we have is hard to move,” Axelrod responded, defending his former client and boss President Barack Obama and the current administration. “We moved a lot in the first two years when Obama was president.”
