Jon Stewart opened The Daily Show with the other political criminal trial grabbing headlines Monday — that of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).
And, after ridiculing the ‘cartoonishly blatant corruption” he’s been charged with, the comedian schooled him in how he was perfectly placed in the U.S. Senate to enjoy corruption — without breaking the law.
Menendez was arrested in September last year on federal corruption charges involving taking bribes for political favors. Jury selection in his trial started Monday.
Among the details of the alleged crimes were that he stored $100,000 of gold bars in his house, had cash sewn into the lining of his congressional jacket and was the sole certifier of Halal meat exported from the U.S. to Egypt.
Then Stewart laid into Congress as a whole.
“But perhaps the dumbest thing about this entire, not-quite-believable, ‘real housewives’ episode, is how unnecessary it all is,” he said.
“You, sir, are an elected official in America's most respected legislative body. It's like a license to print money! You don't need to break the law so cartoonishly when the legal corruption in the Senate is so … lucrative!
“Which brings us to our new segment: Senator Robert Menendez, "How dumb is you?"
Stewart then detailed multiple ways members of Congress engaged in what Stewart called legal corruption.
“Promising favors to foreign entities for a little chump change on the side, it's bush-league, when, as a U.S. Senator, you can enrich yourself in so many different, let's-call-them-legal ways? For instance, the stock market!” he said.
The comedian ran through a laundry list of financial exploits that he said would be deemed corrupt in any other walk of life.
Among them were insider trading — accompanied by clips of several politicians avoiding questions about stock windfalls connected to information they’d gathered through their political positions.
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He went on, describing ways he said members of Congress got around rules meant to avoid corruption by banning the gifts or bribes from lobbyists — but letting organizations set up leadership PACs, “Where a congressperson can turn political donations from lobbyists into slush funds. A pharma lobbyist cannot buy a senator a panini and some Nyquil, but through the PAC, they can pay for five-star hotels for Kirsten Gillibrand, luxury resorts for Ted Cruz, and even golf lessons for Rand Paul.”
Stewart went on, “But are luxury lobbying vacations still too much work, Senator Menendez? 'Cause you could always write laws that directly benefit your side business, like the way Senator Chuck Grassley netted $370,000 in farm subsidies. Or the $5.3 million that California representative Doug Lamalfa got for his gentleman farm.
“Or you could leverage your stature in government to get lucrative lobbying positions for your wife and your three kids, like Missouri Senator Roy Blunt.”
"Someone should step in and stop Congress from being able to enrich themselves,” he said. “Perhaps the Supreme Court!
“Well, it will come as no surprise that the same guys who think it's fine to accept a luxury winnebago from a wealthy businessman have made it much harder to police corruption.”
He finished, “Robert Menendez's gold bars in exchange for favorable legislation is obviously cartoonishly corrupt, but for anyone out there who thinks the status quo of government patronage and influence is of an entirely different species than Menendez? How dumb is you?”
