Evidently The Daily Show wasn’t the only stop on Jon Stewart’s late-night tour to push for Congress to renew the Zadroga Act, a law that provides health benefits for 9/11 first responders who became ill after the attacks.
On Thursday night, the comedian stopped by his old friend Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, on which Stewart is also an executive producer.
Stewart walked out in the middle of Colbert’s monologue to cheers from the audience. He started to talk about the Zadroga Act but Colbert wasn’t buying it and insisted that Stewart “Trump it up” to get his point across.
“Face it, Jon, the media won’t pay attention to anything at all unless you are Donald Trump,” Colbert said.
To help Stewart channel Trump, Colbert offered him a Trump-like wig and applied some Cheetos dust “makeup” to Stewart’s face.
After Colbert urged Stewart to “bring da Trump,” Stewart reprised the Trump impression familiar to Daily Show viewers, which he also brought back at last month’s Stand Up for Heroes event, to insist Congress re-up the law, “or I will glue Congress together dip them in gold and wear them around my friggin‘ neck.”
Calling the first responders, “the most top-notch, first-class, diamond-encrusted heroes America can produce,” Stewart, as Trump, instructed viewers to tweet at their congressmen with the hashtag, #WorstResponders. The audience cheered and applauded when Stewart was done and as Colbert claimed, “People heard that.” Stewart stuck around to add some Trump quips to Colbert’s introduction of his guests and offered the punchline for the host’s pre-theme song joke.
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The Zadroga Act, named after one of the 9/11 first responders who died at Ground Zero, first became law in 2010. It expired last month but has enough funding to last another year. Supporters are hoping to convince Congress to extend the law before lawmakers leave for the holidays. Stewart has gone to Capitol Hill to rally and personally try to persuade lawmakers to support renewal of the Zadroga Act.
