Jon Stewart used his latest The Daily Show opening monologue on Monday to excoriate President Donald Trump for holding a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. At the same time, millions of Americans continue to struggle due to the government shutdown.
Taking issue with House Speaker Mike Johnson describing Trump as “big-hearted” and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins claiming he is focused on the public “20 hours a day,” Stewart recalled the president recently posting an AI video of himself dumping a plane-load of diarrhoea on No Kings protesters, commenting: “It feels somewhat dismissive.”
Pivoting to the Gatsby bash, which owed more to Baz Luhrmann than F Scott Fitzgerald and featured a scantily-dressed showgirl writhing in a giant rotating Martini glass and revellers dressed in Roaring Twenties finery, Stewart was in dismay.
“That’s what he was doing this weekend!” he fumed. “He wasn’t working for the American people. That was just some Hollywood Babylon s*** that once and for all shows Donald Trump doesn’t give a f*** about even looking like he gives a f***.”
He continued: “On the very night SNAP benefits ended, Trump threw a Great Gatsby-themed ode to decadence and hedonism that even Jeffrey Epstein would have thought was a little over the top… The theme was apparently gross income inequality.”
Pointing out a sign that read, “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody,” Stewart asked: “Did you even read The Great Gatsby?! Spoiler alert: The party killed somebody! Two somebodies!... I knew that and I’ve only read the Cliff Notes!”
Adopting a graver tone, Stewart said: “Usually in a time of national suffering, there is a generally accepted principle in leadership that you at least pretend to feel the pain of the people that you represent but this president seems to go out of his way to let struggling Americans know that he is doing very well.
“Your premiums may be going up, tariffs may be shutting down your small businesses, you may be losing your food assistance but it’ll all be OK because Donald Trump is building a ballroom that looks like the inside of Marie Antoinette’s vagina.”
For a further example of the president’s insensitivity, as Stewart saw it, he cited Trump’s makeover of the Lincoln Bathroom at the White House, which he has redecorated in marble and gold and which he posted about six times on Truth Social over the weekend.
On the expiration of SNAP, which looks set to hit more than 42 million Americans reliant on food stamps this month, Stewart scoffed at clips of Speaker Johnson and Transport Secretary Sean Duffy claiming they could do nothing to help because they needed to follow “the rules of the road.”
“You guys have been grand theft f***ing auto this entire presidency!” he wailed. “‘We’re just going to take a quick break from unauthorized Caribbean boat bombing and sending hairdressers to El Salvadorean prisons to remind everybody: No passing on the right.’”
He became even more incensed by footage of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying the administration would be deferring to “the courts” for guidance on SNAP, howling at the “disingenuousness” of a Trump official suddenly bowing to judges after the president has spent years disparaging them as “activist, radical left, lunatic, Trump-hating, biased, highly partisan, unhinged, agitators.”
After dwelling on conservative news anchors entertaining overtly racist tropes to discredit benefit recipients and Trump’s willingness to bail out Argentina and buy up its beef because of his friendship with Javier Milei, Stewart rounded off with his thesis.
“He is for you if you are a personal friend,” he said, illustrating each point with press clippings as he went.
“Or if you donated a lot of money. Or if you enriched his memecoin businesses or you enriched his sons’ cryptocoin businesses. Or if you beat up police officers on his behalf. Or if you bought him a plane. Or if you probably promised not to reveal anything incriminating about him. Those are the yous, it turns out, that he was for and if you’re one of those yous, life’s pretty sweet. But for the rest of us, we’re on the outside.”
Stewart was not the only person infuriated by Trump’s party. His fellow late-night host, John Oliver, covered it in detail on his show on Sunday. At the same time, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “He does not give a damn about you,” and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said, “The way he rubs his inhumanity in Americans’ face never ceases to stun me.”
Responding, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Independent that Democrats “are full of it.”
“President Trump has consistently called on them to do the right thing and reopen the government, which they could do at any time,” she said, arguing that the opposition “would rather push healthcare for illegal immigrants than save American citizens from suffering.”
