By Stephanie Merry for the Washington Post.
“The Daily Show” is trying to do something about the liberal media echo chamber. Trevor Noah invited conservative commentator Tomi Lahren on his show last night for a lengthy debate, during which the two hashed out everything from Black Lives Matter to the Affordable Care Act to Donald Trump’s hot-mic recording.
Lahren is the host of TheBlaze’s “Tomi,” and Noah showed a clip of her show to give his audience — who quite possibly had never seen her series — a little introduction to her viewpoints. Coming across as an enraged version of Hayden Panettiere, Lahren railed against protesters (“crybabies with nothing better to do”), Occupy Wall Street “brats” and “the militant” Black Lives Matter movement.
“Why are you so angry?” Noah asked after the clip rolled.
“I’m actually not that angry,” she responded. “It’s just that there are things that need to be said, Trevor, and a lot of people are afraid to say them.”
Lahren, who said that being on his show was basically coming into the lion’s den, seemed understandably more nervous than Noah, who maintained the same ultra-calm tone for most of the interview. The back-and-forth was more reasonable than most of the presidential debates, at least, with both sides giving impassioned responses to one another in comprehensible English.
Lahren admitted that what Trump said to Billy Bush about making unwanted sexual advances on women was indefensible, but she maintained that — even though she was a self-proclaimed “Marco Rubio girl” — once Trump was the Republican nominee, she had no choice but to support him.
“It was not a good day for Trump supporters,” she said of the tape release. “But I’m still comparing someone who said some nasty things, to a woman [Hillary Clinton] who has done nasty things.”
When Noah asked her what her intention was with hosting her show, the South Dakota native said she wanted to give a voice to the people ignored by the coasts, who might be too afraid to speak out for fear of being labeled.
“You can call me whatever the hell you want, I won’t back down,” Lahren promised.
But Noah got a few good digs in. When Lahren said she believed Trump was level-headed and reasonable, Noah asked, “Do you have Twitter?” And when she claimed she doesn’t see color — which stirred up the audience — the “Daily Show” host asked her what she does at traffic lights.
“For somebody who’s not racist, you have to spend a lot of time saying, ‘I’m not racist,’” he told her, but she maintained her cool. After a discussion of her criticism of Colin Kaepernick’s personal form of peaceful protest, she even offered to have the 49ers quarterback on her show.
The only time she seemed especially rattled was when Noah told her that, with Trump’s win, she was now part of the mainstream media. Of course, like every other topic, the two ultimately just agreed to disagree. Neither made much headway in convincing the other to flip-flop, and both held their own enough so that liberals could have seen Noah as the victor while conservatives could have claimed Lahren won.
When Noah asked Lahren if there was any misconception about her she wished she could clear up, she said, “I wish we could disagree with each other without [people] thinking that we are bad people or ill-intentioned folks.”
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