During Wednesday night’s broadcast of The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart mocked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ginning up “racist fears of minority turnout for short-term political gain” in order to push his Likud Party to electoral victory on Tuesday. Stewart pointed out that really is an American thing and that Bibi should be subject to copyright infringement. The Daily Show host also took Fox News to task for making the election out to be between President Obama and Netanyahu, ridiculing the network for questioning why POTUS hadn’t called Netanyahu to congratulate him on his victory.
The comedian began the segment by showing video clips from the election. This segued to Fox News discussing the election results within the context of Obama and how the White House isn’t happy with the results. Stewart noted that Fox was apparently thrilled that they finally found a conservative who could defeat Obama, considering that they believed that the President was Netanyahu’s opponent. More clips of Fox were then played showing pundits lamenting that Obama hadn’t conceded to the Israeli Prime Minister yet, leading to Stewart exclaiming that Obama wasn’t going to call someone who came to the United States Congress against his wishes just to “sh*t on a nuclear deal” the President had been working on for years.
The host moved on to discussing how Netanyahu won the close election despite polls showing him in trouble days before ballots were cast. After showing video of Netanyahu appealing to the extreme right using racist fear-stoking and promising that Palestinians will never have their own state, Stewart made the comparison between American conservatives and Netanyahu. He also highlighted how after Netanyahu had declared victory, the Prime Minister pretended like he never said any of those things and tried to appeal to all the people of Israel in his post-election remarks.
The lesson to be learned from all of this for the GOP is to just own your id and embrace racially divisive remarks that are made in private that somehow make it into the public sphere. Stewart pointed out that if Mitt Romney just owned his infamous 47% comments in 2012 and used it during his Presidential campaign, he would be sitting in the White House now.
Below is video of the segment, courtesy of Comedy Central:
The Daily Show going after Bibi for playing on his base’s inherent racism comes on the heels of the New York Times attacking Netanyahu for that exact same thing. Meanwhile, conservatives in this country continue to make the Israeli election a referendum on Obama and are openly supporting a foreign leader over the President of the United States. The celebration of Bibi’s victory has yet to slow down from the American right. This is how pervasive Obama Derangement Syndrome is among Republicans and conservatives.
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