Despite Dem Wins, Daily Show Suggests Strikes To Combat 'Dictator' Trump

Alex Christy
November 5th, 2026 12:02 PM

Text to Speech

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Despite Comedy Central’s Michael Kosta’s preferred team winning on Tuesday, he welcomed Harvard Kennedy School Prof. Erica Chenoweth (pronouns: they/them) to Wednesday’s episode of The Daily Show, where the two strategized how to combat the “dictator” president. One tactic Chenoweth came up with was for “limited strikes.”

At one point, Kosta wondered, “Sometimes it can feel like taking on the president of the United States is too big of a task, but you've spoken before about, there are targets that are lower down the rung that can make as much of a difference. Am I saying that correctly?”

 

 

Chenoweth replied that, “I think most people who study civil resistance and nonviolent action would argue that it’s rarely possible to melt the heart of a dictator, but what you can do is constrain his options and begin to withhold the social, political, and economic power and the pillars that they need in order to do what they want.”

Kosta then further inquired, “It feels like protesting feels good and does send a message, but there's other shit we can do, right? That is this word I love: Mass noncooperation. Economic protests and boycotts. What are other examples of that?”

Chenoweth rewound to the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa and proposed strikes as an answer to Kosta’s question:

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Yeah, so during the South African anti-Apartheid movement, non-cooperation played a really important role in shifting the willingness of the business community there to basically support reformist politicians that were willing to do business with the ANC and begin to transition the country toward a democratic transition, and those included things like black townships refusing to buy for, you know, weeks or months on end and engaging in strikes. Limited strikes in order to really impact the economic situation there.

 

 

Republicans may have lost in a big way, but voters did not vote for Democrats because they want comedy show hosts and Harvard professors to encourage people to go on strike over politics. In fact, the fact that Democrats did win in such large numbers is evidence that Kosta and Chenoweth’s desire to portray America in the Trump era as a dictatorship has no basis in reality.

Here is a transcript for the November 4 show:

Comedy Central The Daily Show

11/4/2026

11:24 PM ET

MICHAEL KOSTA: Sometimes it can feel like taking on the president of the United States is too big of a task, but you've spoken before about, there are targets that are lower down the rung that can make as much of a difference. Am I saying that correctly?

ERICA CHENOWETH: I think most people who study civil resistance and nonviolent action would argue that it’s rarely possible to melt the heart of a dictator–

KOSTA: Right.

CHENOWETH:  –  but what you can do is constrain his options –

KOSTA: Wow.

CHENOWETH: – and begin to withhold the social, political, and economic power and the pillars that they need in order to do what they want.

KOSTA: It feels like protesting feels good and does send a message, but there's other shit we can do, right? That is this word I love: Mass noncooperation. Economic protests and boycotts. What are other examples of that?

CHENOWETH: Yeah, so during the South African anti-Apartheid movement, non-cooperation played a really important role in shifting the willingness of the business community there to basically support reformist politicians that were willing to do business with the ANC and begin to transition the country toward a democratic transition, and those included things like black townships refusing to buy for, you know, weeks or months on end and engaging in strikes. Limited strikes in order to really impact the economic situation there.

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