Jon Stewart took aim Monday night at Donald Trump’s AI-generated meme that cast the former president as Jesus Christ, saying the man in the bed looked like him. As the camera zoomed in on the bottom half of the image, Stewart squinted and asked, “Wait… the guy in the bed…,” before adding, “Am I okay?” and then, “What the f*ck?!”
Trump had shared the image over the weekend, and by Monday morning he was saying he believed it was meant to show him as a doctor. Stewart was not buying that reading. “I mean, I know I don’t have the vigor and spunk of my MTV days. But I didn’t know we were here already,” he said, adding, “I didn’t realize my look had reached leper territory.”
The comedian then spun out the rest of the meme as if it were a family portrait. The woman on the lower left, he said, was his “darling wife Amy Lynne, hands clasped in prayer.” The man on the right became “My brother, Sergeant Chisel Jaw.” The figure in the back left was “Pappy Joe,” whom Stewart said had stormed the Capitol with him. The eagle at the top, he joked, delivered his mail.
That left Stewart to focus on the hand at the bottom of the image, which he said seemed to be taking advantage of his condition to touch his penis. “I’m just glad that Jesus Trump brought his healing orb!” he said. Stewart then widened the joke into a take on artificial intelligence itself, saying it could make fireworks, healing powers and even Jesus, but not change Trump’s weight. He quoted AI as saying, “I can give you the fireworks, and the healing powers. And I can make you Jesus. But you weigh what you weigh. Sorry. It just is what it is!”
He finished with a fake exchange that turned the meme into a punch line about the former president’s body. Stewart said Trump asked, “Make me 185 [lbs.],” and that AI answered, “Can’t do it. Sorry, chubs!” The setup was simple enough: Trump posted a religiously themed AI image, then said it was really a doctor. Stewart spent Monday night showing why that explanation did not survive contact with the picture.
