Jon Stewart's Pre-Midterm Trump Segment Drew 2.8 Million Views. The Opponent Was Trump

The midterms are Tuesday, and the most-watched political comedy on YouTube this weekend was a 19-minute Daily Show segment titled, in full, Trump Faces His Biggest Enemy Ahead of the Midterms: Himself. It went up Sunday morning and had 2,845,494 views by Monday afternoon. That's more than SNL's Weekend Update segment about Trump, which had about 2.6 million, and nearly double the 47-minute Stewart and Jordan Klepper episode the show posted Saturday, which sat at 1.44 million. The people have spoken, and what they said was 'shorter, please.'

Going by the show's own description, Jon Stewart and the news team covered the president's abuse of female reporters, his 'joke' about canceling the midterms, his continued insistence that he won in 2020 and his efforts to put distance between himself and Jeffrey Epstein. Then, with grocery prices high and artificial intelligence coming for everybody's job, the president's attention turned to the real menace of our time, which is daylight saving time. I've seen a lot of men lose an argument with a clock. Usually they're in a nursing home, and somebody has the decency to take the clock away.

The title is the whole thesis, and it's a good one, because it happens to be the only campaign strategy the Democrats have left. For two years the opposition has tried running against him and found it doesn't work. So the comedians have settled on a new approach, which is to stand back and let the man run against himself, the way a farmer lets a bull fight a fence. The fence usually wins. The bull never notices.

The view count is the more interesting story. Stewart is on one night a week, and he's 63, and he keeps outdrawing the rest of the lineup by doing the same thing he did in 2004: playing a tape, making a face and asking how any of this is legal. A man finds what works, and then he does it until he dies or they cancel him, and in television those are the same day. He's back at the desk tonight with Michael Lewis, the author, for one last pre-election show.

It's worth saying that none of this will change a single vote. Nobody has ever watched a 19-minute YouTube video, slapped the desk and decided to switch parties. Late-night comedy on the eve of an election is a sermon for the choir, and the choir is mainly there for the singing. But nearly three million people chose to spend Sunday morning watching it, which is more than you can say for most churches. Folks will always turn out to hear their own opinions said well. It's the only thing a preacher and a comedian have in common, besides the collection plate.