WATCH: The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper Has Bizarre Run-ins With Election Deniers and Even a Ukraine War Truther at SC Rally

 

The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper has a solid track record of patiently questioning people who hold all sorts of, shall we say, unusual beliefs to evoke wildly entertaining answers, and his chats with supporters of former President Donald Trump at his rally this weekend in South Carolina were no exception.

After a lackluster campaign launch, Trump held a pair of rallies in Salem, New Hampshire and Columbia, South Carolina on Saturday. Well, not quite a rally — as Klepper noted, the event was “originally permitted as  MAGA rally, but later downgraded to an ‘intimate event.'”

Many of the Trump supporters waiting in line seemed to be fine calling the event a rally or not a rally or a special invite-only event or a leadership team gathering or however the ex-president wanted to label it.

Among the highlights from Klepper’s roughly five-minute clip were the customary creative fashion choices of Trump rally goers, including one man with a sombrero festooned with Trump bumper stickers.

“I see a guy like this,” said Klepper about the man with the sombrero, “I think this guy has got two dates circled on his calendar: Cinco de Mayo and January 6th.”

“Yes,” agreed Sombrero Trump Guy with a laugh.

Klepper also encountered a guy wearing a hat that said “I COULD SHIT A BETTER PRESIDENT.”

Several people insisted that Trump was currently the president. Yes, the President of the United States. Currently.

“Donald Trump is president right now,” said one man.

“He’s currently the president?” asked Klepper.

“Absolutely,” the man replied.

“He is still president,” said a woman, claiming there were “a lot of things that this Biden person does not have, like the presidential seal and things like that that are pretty obvious.”

Klepper pointed out that when President Joe Biden speaks there is in fact “a presidential seal in front of him.”

“It’s not real,” the woman insisted.

These Trump supporters told Klepper that Trump was “in charge of the military,” which had been put “in charge of this whole thing” under an executive order Trump signed in 2018, and there were currently “two militaries,” a good one and a bad one, and Trump was in charge of the good military and Biden was in charge of the bad military.

An extended segment featured Klepper questioning a man about Trump’s claim from the New Hampshire rally that he could “solve” the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours,” regarding what exactly Trump could say that would get Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to back down but would not result in nuclear war — not sending troops but making a “threat of troops,” etc.

The video ends with Klepper’s conversation with a woman who was certain the war in Ukraine was fake because she gets her news on Newsmax and hadn’t seen any news reports on it.

“I think that there’s no war to cover,” said the woman. “I think the whole thing is fabricated.”

Klepper told her that he had spent time in Hungary and met Ukrainians who were fleeing the war. “They’re actual refugees fleeing what they said was a war zone. Were they lying?”

“I just think they might be actors,” she said. “As far as I know — I believe that they might be actors.”

“All of those people I met in Hungary, those aren’t refugees?” asked Klepper.

“I believe that the government is paying them to do that,” she replied.

“That’s a lot of actors,” said Klepper. “If that’s a SAG gig, that’s going to cost you billions.”

America was “in for a sweet, sweet ride” if this was how Trump’s non-rallies were going to go, said Klepper, as the camera showed some MAGA-branded honey from one of the merch tables, in a bottle designed to look like the former president.

Watch the video above, via The Daily Show.

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Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law&Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe. Follow Sarah on Threads, Twitter, and Bluesky.