Trevor Noah Says He Has Found Silver Lining In Jussie Smollett Case
The whole world now knows Empire actor Jussie Smollett’s name “and for all the wrong reasons,” The Daily Show host Trevor Noah began in a searing send-up of the scandal.
Smollett was arrested Thursday and charged with felony disorderly conduct, for filing a false police report in which he claimed to have been attacked late at night in Chicago, by two MAGA-hat-wearing men.
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In a presser there, the city’s police superintendent said Smollett planned the attack because he was upset about his salary on the Fox series Empire.
“Are you kidding me, this dude may have faked a hate crime just to get a raise?” Noah marveled.
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Meanwhile, looks like Smollett and the two brothers who helped him stage the attack left no shortage of incriminating evidence, Noah snarked. Including, cops said, Smollett having paid his two accomplices by check.
“Even amateurs know if you commit a crime, you go all cash!” Noah raved. “No paper trail!”
“So if he did do this, Smollett did a horrible job with his fake crime,” the late night host deduced.
That includes word from the cops that Smollett wanted the incident to be caught on a camera that was pointed in the wrong direction at the time.
“You’re kidding me!” Noah fumed. “He didn’t know which way the camera was pointing? You’re an actor! That’s your only job!”
The actor could wind up in jail for a while, “and in his wake he has screwed everyone,” Noah observed.
Then Noah ticked off some of the list:
-Members of the gay community are emotionally terrorized over something that may turned out to be a hoax.
-Trump supporters are upset about being falsely accused.
-Democratic candidates are tying themselves into knots trying to walk back from statements in which they called this “a modern-day lynching.”
“Nobody won,” the South African late-night star concluded.
But, he insisted, there is a silver lining.
“When this started out, it was a story about people who hated Jussie Smollett because he was black and gay,” Noah said. “But now, people hate him because he’s an asshole.”
“In other words,” Noah continued, “they’re judging him on the content of his character.”
“And that, my friends, is progress.”
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