Comedian and Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper ventured back onto the campaign trail to engage with former President Donald Trump's supporters, revealing their surprising willingness to embrace the "dictator" that Trump has admitted he wants to be on day one of his second term.
In December, Trump alarmed his critics when he told Fox News personality Sean Hannity that he plans to be a "dictator" on "day one" in the event he wins the 2024 election and returns to the White House.
Pressed about potentially taking retributive action against his adversaries if reinstated as president, Trump initially avoided a direct response. However, when probed again, he mentioned that he would adopt a dictatorial stance solely on the first day of his second term.
Klepper's candid interviews, featured in a segment on Tuesday's show, were...disturbing although not surprising.
You can watch what happened in the video below.
Jordan Klepper Takes on Trump & Haley Supporters | The Daily Showyoutu.be
At a rally in South Carolina, Klepper questioned a supporter about Trump serving as king, to which she unequivocally responded, "Yes." Despite the obvious sarcasm in Klepper's tone, the supporter affirmed that having Trump as king was as "American as you can get."
Another interviewee at the rally advocated for Trump to arrest half of the Justice Department on his first day, acknowledging that such actions resembled a "true dictatorship."
When Klepper suggested comparisons to historical dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, some supporters expressed varying degrees of agreement, with one man stating this "needs to happen" so Trump can "put people in their place."
Turning to one woman, Klepper asked:
“A dictator can do that, right? It can put people in place. The good people are over here. The bad people are over here in a gulag.”
The woman responded:
“At this point, it’s what America needs."
Even Trump's controversial statement about immigrants "poisoning the blood" found some defense among his supporters. One rallygoer attempted to justify the remark, suggesting that Trump speaks in allegories. In response, Klepper humorously commented, "It sounds much nicer in the original German," prompting agreement from the supporter.
Klepper later took to X, formerly Twitter, to opine that "Apparently, America loves a king."
Many were alarmed.
Trump has continued to face criticism for praising authoritarian leaders and repeating anti-immigration sentiment, making no secret about his feelings toward people he considers undesirable.
In December, he said that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," echoing fascists like the genocidal German Nazi Party Hitler, who wrote about "blood poisoning" in his book Mein Kampf.
Trump has ramped up his violent and inflammatory rhetoric in recent weeks, telling a crowd in November that his political opponents are "vermin" that he must "root out," a declaration that angered people on both sides of the aisle to say nothing of historians who've sounded the alarm about what the 2024 election could signal for the future of American democracy.
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