During the July 21 airing of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart told President Barack Obama he needs to act quickly if he’s going to “take away Americans’ guns and declare martial law.”
Obama walked out to sit beside Stewart amid rousing rounds of applause. The two exchanged niceties amid laughter, with Stewart pointing out Obama has “about a year” left in office and Obama responded by saying he is going to issue an executive order forbidding Stewart from leaving The Daily Show. (Stewart previously announced he is leaving the show in August.)
According to Deadline, Stewart then began making observations and asking questions based on Obama’s limited time in office.
Stewart said, ““You don’t have that much time to take away Americans’ guns [and] declare martial law… if you’re going to do that, you better get started.” The audience chuckled and Stewart added, “There’s an ebb and flow to every administration, to every president. It appears that you’re feeling it right now.” Stewart then suggested the “deal with Iran” is proof.
Obama said, “A lot of the work that [his administration] did early starts bearing fruit later and it just so happened over the last couple of months that seeing some of the work that we started way back when I first came in.” He pointed to the Obamacare and the Iran deal as proof of this.
After talking about the Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare, President Obama said, “So, the way I’m feeling right now is. I’ve got 18 months and that are a bunch of other things we want to get done.” He then listed climate change as one of those things.
Stewart then asked Obama to explain the Iran deal, if he would, and Obama said, “They’re an adversary. They’re anti-American, anti-Israel, they sponsor terrorist organizations like Hezbollah.” But he said, “You don’t make peace with your friends.”
Obama added: “When you hear critics talk about, ‘Well it’s a bad deal and we could have gotten a better deal,’ you ask them, ‘Well, what represents a better deal? What is it you think could happen?’ Typically they’re vague and they fall back on, ‘Well, if you’d beat your chest a little bit more or if you’d brought Dick Cheney to the negotiations.”
by Awr Hawkins
