The Daily Show might have the week off, but correspondent and rotating host Ronny Chieng found himself on ABC’s Tuesday taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live! recalling Election Night, which he compared to watching a slow-motion car crash. Likewise, he longed for a conservativism that is not populated with “[bleep] morons.”
Kimmel asked about The Daily Show’s live Election Night special, “And you probably had it in your head that it would go one way or the other? Were you prepared for any eventuality at that time?”
Chieng affirmed “we were” before claiming that “covering the election live in America was both a dream come true as a political historian junkie, U.S. political history junkie, and it was also like watching a car slowly crash into the country. And there's not much you can do about it at that point other than make dumb jokes about it.”
Still, Chieng tried to avoid a sense of doom, “My thing is, if you look at history, right, America always swings between progressive and conservative over the three centuries of American rule.”
Chieng, who is originally from Malaysia, then lamented:
I come from a conservative country. There's nothing inherently evil or bad about conservative mindset. I just think that we would like to have conservatives who are not [bleep] morons. That's really what it is and, like, no, just intelligent, reasonable conservatism. I've got MAGA friends. I got friends who are MAGA now, that's how much I love America. I'm making friends with MAGA people, but sometimes my MAGA friends, like, their messaging is so convoluted, I can't get to what their core issue is because the surface-level messaging is so chaotic. Like, sometimes my MAGA friends will be like, ‘Ronny, China caused COVID, but COVID isn't real.’ I'm like, ‘Okay, well, I don't know how I feel about it now.’
You could say the same thing about The Daily Show. Over there, they constantly portray themselves as good liberals who support and defend women’s rights, but they also think any man who puts on a dress and a wig and calls himself a woman is a woman.
Here is a transcript for the November 26-taped show:
ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!
11/27/2024
12:28 AM ET
JIMMY KIMMEL: And you probably had it in your head that it would go one way or the other? Were you prepared for any eventuality at that time?
RONNY CHIENG: Yeah, we were. But I think we kind of knew where it was leading. Being people who have our fingers on the pulse, unfortunately. And it was — covering the election live in America was both a dream come true as a political historian junkie, U.S. political history junkie, and it was also like watching a car slowly crash into the country. And there's not much you can do about it at that point other than make dumb jokes about it and luckily we had Mr. Jon Stewart anchoring the thing—
KIMMEL: Right. Yup.
CHIENG: — because who better than the guy who invented modern American satire—
KIMMEL: Yes.
CHIENG: — to try to give us some context to it? And, you know, I don't know. I — my thing is, if you look at history, right, America always swings between progressive and conservative over the three centuries of American rule.
KIMMEL: That's right. Back and forth.
CHIENG: I think the vibes have been switching. I come from a conservative country. There's nothing inherently evil or bad about conservative mindset. I just think that we would like to have conservatives who are not [bleep] morons. That's really what it is and, like, no, just intelligent, reasonable conservatism. I've got MAGA friends. I got friends who are MAGA now, that's how much I love America. I'm making friends with MAGA people, but sometimes my MAGA friends, like, their messaging is so convoluted, I can't get to what their core issue is because the surface-level messaging is so chaotic. Like, sometimes my MAGA friends will be like, “Ronny, China caused COVID, but COVID isn't real." I'm like, "Okay, well, I don't know how I feel about it now."
