Jon Stewart used his opening segment on Monday night’s episode of “The Daily Show” to break down Elon Musk‘s appearance at a Trump rally on Sunday in Butler, Pa. While the appearance was widely mocked online for Musk’s enthusiasm — he literally jumped around the stage — the content of his speech was focused on the First and Second Amendments.
“The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech,” Musk said. “You must have free speech in order to have democracy. That’s why it’s the First Amendment … The Second Amendment is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment.”
Stewart first spoke about the hypocrisy of Musk applauding Trump’s embrace of freedom of speech, given that the former president threatened legal action against the upcoming film about his life, “The Apprentice,” with his team referring to it as “election interference.”
“It’s not free speech if only Trump’s admirers get to do it without consequence,” Stewart said. “That’s just not how it works. It doesn’t go that way.”
Stewart then broke down Musk’s Second Amendment comment.
“Guns don’t protect our free speech,” Stewart said. “Our free speech is protected by the consent of the governed laid out through the Constitution. It’s not based on the threat of violence. It’s based on elections, organizing referendums, a judicial system. Our social contract offers many, many avenues to remedy these issues and allows sides to be heard and adjudicated.
“Guns, from what I can tell, seem to mostly protect the speech of the people holding the gun,” he continued. “It’s a tool of intimidation, and one that I think is actually being irresponsibly and recklessly invoked. Because some people in your crowd thought they might have been shadowbanned by Facebook. I mean, for God’s sake, you guys are in Butler, Pennsylvania. The whole reason you’re there is because some fucking asshole with an AR-15 tried to permanently litigate his vision of this country’s free speech. That’s why you’re there. The whole point of a society is guns don’t decide it. I would prefer at this moment not to trade in a government that offers me many remedies for my concerns, legitimate or illegitimate, for a situation where my rights are determined by how many militia members agree with me.”
Watch the full segment below.
