Jon Stewart Calls Trump Shooting ‘Terrifying and Disorienting’: ‘We Dodged a Catastrophe’

Jon Stewart likened the mood after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to the aftermath of 9/11, a “disorienting, holy s— stop the world, I would like to get off feeling” in a commentary on Tuesday’s “The Daily Show.”

And noting that “we dodged a catastrophe,” Stewart drew attention to the shooter’s other victims, including a man who “died literally shielding his family,” and urged viewers to “try and make the choice” to be more like the “helpers” in “moments of crisis.”

Leading into this commentary was an extended look at the first night of the Republican National Convention. Stewart explained that due to increased security measures in Milwaukee following the shooting, it was no longer feasible for “The Daily Show” to hold its planned series of shows on location in that city. He vowed the show would return in the future, and then jumped into a look at the RNC itself, a look that consisted of pointing out a great deal of hypocrisy by several of the Republicans who spoke on Monday.

Stewart then turned to the interview Joe Biden gave to NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday, which included an amusing moment when he became exasperated when Holt admonished Biden for accurately describing Donald Trump’s rhetoric as somehow contributing to the problem of violent rhetoric in America.

Watch the full clip below:

Which brought Stewart to the shooting, He noted that the discussion of “rhetoric is happening because of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump over the weekend at a rally in Pennsylvania, which was obviously terrifying and disorienting,” which led him to comment on how people tend to react to this kind of event through a partisan lens.

“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 one of your teams. You know, you just sit there going, please, no Democrats, no liberals, no progressives,” he said.

“It’s because we have to know what our posture will be on the tragedy. Will it be a haughty or perhaps a circumspect ‘Well, let’s not rushed to judgment We shouldn’t generalize?’… It’s a jump ball, 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,” he continued.

“I remember on 9/11, this disorienting, ‘holy s—, 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 breath we dodged a catastrophe, but it was still a tragedy because one of those first responders lost his life,” Stewart explained.

“His name was Corey Comperatore, he was a retired fire chief in the area. 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. We can all make a choice to try and be one of those people, or you can be like this,” Stewart said as he ran a clip of news about a very unfortunate Forbes headline about the shooting.