Daily Show part-time host Jon Stewart roasted Fox News after the network claimed that immigrants could use the recent solar eclipse as cover to illegally cross the southern border.
During Monday's episode, Stewart couldn't resist poking fun at the network's warning, remarking:
"The big news today, the world ended. I think. Are we even, are we still on?"
"The sun and the moon did the thing that everyone has been saying they were going to do for centuries now. The path got totality and now both planets...will go back to years of ignoring each other."
"But not everyone was happy about today's celestial seasonings."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Stewart then aired a clip from a Fox segment in which host Dana Perino claimed that a "rare celestial event collides with a policy failure on the ground" and that the southern border "will be directly in the path of totality today when the moon covers the sun for nearly four minutes."
Co-host Bill Hemmer expressed concerns about increased migrant activity during the eclipse, saying that "officials are bracing for higher traffic than usual, and that means a real opportunity for smugglers and cartels and migrants to come right in.”
These statements prompted Stewart to shut down the network's narrative completely:
"Or they [migrants] could just wait until nighttime."
"I've got to say though, is there nothing Fox can't tie to immigration? Of course, if you combine the dangers of today's eclipse with Friday's seismic activity in the Northeast, well, the more troubling picture emerges."
Many joined Stewart in mocking Fox's coverage.
Stewart later took a swipe at Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene for her assertion on X, formerly Twitter, that the eclipse, along with a recent earthquake, were divine messages urging people to "repent."
An X Community Note beneath Greene's post noted that there are "approximately 1700 earthquakes in the US every year, about 4 a day." It also pointed out that solar eclipses "occur approximately every 18 months." Moreover, predicting eclipses is standard; scientists do so "well in advance."
You can see her post below.
To all of this, Stewart humorously pondered:
"How do you know? How would you that that is what God meant? Why would God be so obtuse? Is this s**t really how God works?"
Conspiracies about the solar eclipse ramped up in the days leading up to celestial event.
Notably, the event stirred panic among conspiracy theorists, with many speculating that it might be a harbinger of the apocalypse. Many claimed the path of the eclipse would pass over seven towns in North America named "Nineveh," a city in the Bible that was described as "evil." They also insisted the event will plunge the world into darkness for seven days.
However, only two cities named Nineveh experienced the full totality of the solar eclipse, while other cities with the same name witnessed only a partial eclipse. Nevertheless, it's essential to note that the name of the cities holds no influence on the natural occurrence.
