During Thursday’s January 6th hearing, we learned that 150 members of the Department of Justice were prepared to resign en masse had Donald Trump gone through with his plan to appoint Jeff “Whatever You Say, Mr. President” Clark as acting attorney general in order to complete his attempt at dismantling democracy. And sure, it would be easy to call those folks “heroes.” But Jordan Klepper is equally deserving of hero status.
On Thursday, The Daily Show posted Klepper’s latest “Fingers on the Pulse” segment, in which he traveled to a Trump rally in Mississippi to share footage from the hearings and get the MAGA take on whether the former president may have lied about that whole election fraud thing and/or acted just a teeny weeny bit shady. Unsurprisingly, the attendees—who paid anywhere from $9 to $4,000 for their tickets—weren’t having any of it.
While not everyone was aware of the attacks on the Capitol (!!) or clued into “January 6th” being anything more than just a random date of the year (yes, really), those who did witness the violence of that day seemed far more offended by the hearings themselves. “An abomination,” “McCarthyism,” and “a witch trial” were a few of the terms used to describe the hearings, while one Trumpster was convinced that Nancy Pelosi planned the Capitol riots. When Klepper asked why Pelosi would “plan to get attacked by a mob of Trump supporters,” the answer was obvious: “Because she wanted to be able to blame it on the Trump supporters and have something bad to say about them.” When Klepper suggested that we should probably investigate that, the woman wholeheartedly agreed. When Klepper guessed that she must be watching the hearings then, her response sounded something like a cat coughing up a hairball, which we’ll assume was Trumpspeak for “no.”
Instead, Klepper decided to bring the January 6th hearings to the rally. While many people refused to watch even just a few seconds of the clips he had with him, those who did had a range of reactions—all of them stupid. Several people cheered on Bill Barr’s declaration that any claims of election fraud were bullshit—until Klepper explained to them what Barr was saying (at which point, he had clearly been paid off). As for Ivanka Trump saying she believed Barr, one man suggested “it might be one of those, what they got clones out there these days.” Which sounds totally reasonable.
You can watch the full clip above.