Jon Stewart Reacts to Trump Shooting: “We Dodged a Catastrophe”

Jon Stewart has weighed in on the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. The Comedy Central host detailed his thoughts during his first time hosting The Daily Show since the weekend’s dramatic events.

Stewart said that the country “dodged a catastrophe” and even compared the feeling of watching the Trump shooting to 9/11.

“[It] was obviously terrifying and disorienting,” Stewart told his audience. “I have a slight confession to make, and I’m not proud of this in any way, shape or form. But I’m following social media during all this to find out who did it because it’s this pattern I feel like we now have in the country. When we hear about a horrific event, you’re on pins and needles in this sort of reverse demographic lottery to make sure that the psychopathic shooter doesn’t belong to your teams. You sit there going, ‘Please, no Democrats or liberals or progressives.’”

“And we’re all doing it,” he continued. “We’re all doing it because we have to know what our posture will be on the tragedy. Will it be an ‘I told you’ or perhaps a circumspect, ‘But let’s not rush to judgment, we shouldn’t generalize.’ And then it ends up being someone we can’t even figure out in the first place — [the shooter was a] bullied loner, white guy, registered Republican, donated to a blue PAC, argued conservative causes … I don’t know what’s going on with this guy. We don’t know yet who’s got dibs, who wins, and none of us knows what’s going to happen next — other than there will be another tragedy in this country, self inflicted, by us to us., and then we’ll have this feeling again.”

Continued Stewart: “I remember it on 9/11, this disorienting ‘holy shit, stop the world, I would like to get off’ feeling. And in that moment, there will be some incredible Americans who, in the midst of it, for some unknown reason, rush towards it and get us back to some sort of equilibrium. And we’ll count on those folks to hold us together again. And it does remind us that, by a hair’s breadth, we dodged catastrophe. But it was still a tragedy. Because one of those first responders lost his life. His name was Corey Comperatore. He was a retired fire chief and he had given his life in service to his community and he died literally shielding his family. He’s a reminder that in those moments of crisis, there are helpers and we can all make a choice to try and be one of those people. Or, you can be one of these guys.”

Stewart then played a news clip of a viral Forbes story that used the unfortunate headline, “Will Surviving Gunfire Be Donald Trump’s Next Appeal to Black Voters?”

Stewart was previously scheduled to host The Daily Show live from Milwaukee on Monday. But after the shooting, Comedy Central postponed the show a day and did Tuesday’s show from New York instead.

The Daily Show will also air on Wednesday hosted by the News Team. In addition, Thursday’s show will be live following the closing night of the RNC, where Trump is expected to make his speech accepting his party’s nomination for president. That show will be hosted by the News Team instead of the previously announced Stewart.