Jeffrey Toobin is back, baby! And Trevor Noah just can’t look. But as his job sort of requires it, The Daily Show host steeled himself and watched through his fingers as Toobin made his triumphant return to CNN on Thursday, where he sat down to chat about recent legal news with CNN Newsroom co-host Alisyn Camerota. But first—in what we can only presume was a condition of his return—Toobin and Camerota spent some time talking about… The Incident. Noah shared a cringe-y clip from the sit-down, and no doubt washed his hands after handling the footage.
For those of you with short memories or who have wondered where The Toobs has been: Eight months ago he was barred from public view after a roomful of Zoom users at The New Yorker saw more of Toobin than anyone who isn’t Mrs. Toobin would ever want. Put less delicately: He jerked off during a Zoom meeting when he apparently thought his camera was off and the other meeting attendees were in another Zoom room. But it wasn’t, and they weren’t—at least not all of them. Hasn’t this guy ever heard of a bathroom? Or just a closed door? Hell, we’ll take a towel! Or just logging off for chrissakes!
At any rate: Camerota gave a quick rundown of the course of events as we know them to Toobin, who confirmed that the details were indeed correct. But he did underscore the point that he “didn’t think other people could see me.” He went on to say how he has spent the past several “miserable” months working on making himself a better person through therapy and public service, including working in a food bank, in order “to become the kind of person that people can trust again.”
After a few seconds of screaming and hiding behind his hands, Noah said that “I cannot think of anything more awkward to watch than that interview. Ok, maybe one other thing…” He also admitted that he didn’t really understand the connection between literally being caught with your pants down and working in a food kitchen. “If anything that’s just unfair to the people at the food kitchen.
But the real losers here were the viewers. Because while watching someone talk about the time he got caught masturbating on camera is as awkward as you’d think it might be, the rehearsed and very straightforward tone of it all made it even more squirmy. It sort of felt like Cersei Lannister’s “Walk of Shame” in Game of Thrones, except we—the viewers—were the ones being pelted with sh*t. On the bright side, Toobin made it all the way through the interview without having a wank. So there’s that!
You can watch the full clip above; the Toobin segment starts around the 6:20 mark.
