The fruit does hang awfully low these days.
On Monday’s Daily Show, Trevor Noah harvested the fruit of Donald Trump’s “stable genius” tweets, arguably Trump’s stupidest yet (yes, even including covfefe). For those who missed the president’s stupefying Saturday morning tirade, Trump tweeted this in response to doubts raised by White House insiders—according to Fire and Fury, that is—about his mental stability:
How stupid does someone have to be to tweet that they are, like, really smart? The answer is, like, really stupid. It’s also “like, really funny,” added Noah.
Where does one even begin with a tweetstorm so unstable it claims stability not once but twice? “Only Donald Trump could defend himself and in the same sentence completely undermine his whole point,” joked Noah. “Do you know how delusionally confident and unself-aware you have to be to go on Twitter and declare yourself a stable genius?”
“Stable” and “genius” are two words no one ever would have thought to put together, but now that Trump has declared himself one, “stable genius” has joined the internet lexicon forever. But what exactly is a stable genius? Perhaps, suggests Noah, it’s like if Einstein owned a comb.
Trump definitely isn’t, like, a genius but perhaps he has the stable part right, says Noah. After all, Trump leads a fairly consistent life: “Twitter, golf, bedtime, cheeseburger, yum yum yum yum.” “If anything, Trump is stable, and he’s made everyone else unstable,” Noah added.
When Trump tweets that he’s stable and smart, he at least thinks he’s telling the truth. But when Republicans say the president is fine, it’s just plain insulting. Soundbites from Mike Pompeo, Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, and Rex Tillerson—“the grownups around him”—saying that the self-proclaimed Stable Genius is of sound mind show just how much the GOP are willing to lie to defend their lunatic.
“If I hadn’t had a year to get to used to this, I’d be really pissed off right now,” said Noah, suddenly serious. “Because these people aren’t just saying that Donald Trump is of sound mind. They’re basically saying that all of us are mentally unstable for questioning him.”
Noah continued his pivot from silly to sobering, leaving us on this powerful note:
“I guess what the Republicans are saying is this: ‘Yes, Donald Trump was a deranged lunatic unfit to be president, but once he won the electoral college then he became a stable genius.’ Because everyone knows, nothing turns a man sane like absolute power.”
