The Daily Show ’s Trevor Noah Unpacks Jussie Smollett’s Alleged Plan

Jussie Smollett has now turned himself in to the police and has been charged with felony disorderly conduct after allegedly staging a hate-crime attack against himself. And as more details come out, the whole story gets weirder and weirder, and it's clear that if Smollett did indeed stage the attack, he is by no means a criminal mastermind. Trevor Noah took a look at some of the details released by the Chicago PD, and oof, just what the hell is going on?

The main red flag for Noah seems to be that Smollett paid two Nigerian brothers $3,500 with a check, which, if you've ever watched a single mob movie, you know is not how this works. "Did he also write 'fake hate crime' in the memo?" Noah joked. Then there's the detail that Smollett apparently wanted the attack to be caught on security tape, but none of the cameras were pointing in the direction of the attack. "You're an actor!" Noah yelled. "That's your only job!"

It's worth noting that, regardless of the outcome of this case, the Chicago PD has seemingly spent more time and energy on Smollett than it did on the deadly shooting of Laquan McDonald (it took them 13 months to arrest officer Jason Van Dyke, and that shooting was on tape). Not only were the gory details of the attack possibly triggering, but now any stories of violence directed at the black and LGBTQ communities may be looked at with greater suspicion. "Nobody won in this thing," said Noah, but he joked about the silver lining: While people may have hated Smollett before because he's black and gay, "now people hate him because he's an asshole."

If Smollett did indeed do this for greater attention on Empire, it didn't work. The show has cut him from the final two episodes of its fifth season. Smollett's lawyers released a statement saying, “Like any other citizen, Mr. Smollett enjoys the presumption of innocence, particularly when there has been an investigation like this one where information, both true and false, has been repeatedly leaked. Given these circumstances, we intend to conduct a thorough investigation and to mount an aggressive defense.”