Jon Stewart Delivers Powerful ‘Daily Show’ Monologue After “Terrifying And Disorienting” Trump Rally Shooting: “We Dodged A Catastrophe”

Jon Stewart‘s Tuesday night (July 16) return to The Daily Show — which came earlier than anticipated in the wake of the assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump — featured an emotional monologue from the host about the “obviously terrifying and disorienting” events of the weekend, per The Hollywood Reporter.

After sarcastically quipping that “the internet is a great source of information” in moments of crisis, he pulled up tweets spreading several false claims about what took place at the Pennsylvania rally. He then admitted a “slight confession” of his, claiming that he’s “not proud of this in any way, shape or form.”

“But I’m following social media during all this to find out who did it because it’s this pattern I feel like we now have in the country, when we hear about a horrific event. You’re on pins and needles in this sort of reverse demographic lottery to make sure that the psychopathic shooter doesn’t belong to one of your teams. You sit there going, ‘Please, no Democrats or liberals or progressives,” he explained, likening the phenomenon to the “Press Your Luck game.”

He added, “And we’re all doing it. We’re all doing it because we have to know what our posture will be on the tragedy. Will it be an ‘I told you’ or perhaps a circumspect, ‘Well let’s not rush to judgment, we shouldn’t generalize.’

He noted that “it ends up being someone we can’t even fucking figure out in the first place,” referring to the gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, whom he described as a “bullied loner, white guy, registered Republican, donated to a blue PAC, argued conservative causes, is a dude, but if you flip his picture upside down, kind of looks like an old lady.”

“I don’t know what’s going on with this guy,” he continued. “We don’t know yet who’s got dibs, who wins, and none of us knows what’s going to happen next — other than there will be another tragedy in this country, self inflicted, by us to us. And then we’ll have this feeling again.”

Stewart recalled experiencing “this disorienting, holy shit, stop the world I would like to get off feeling” on 9/11, and highlighted that “in that moment, there will be some incredible Americans who, in the midst of it, for some unknown reason, rush towards it and get us back to some sort of equilibrium.”

“And we’ll count on those folks to hold us together, again,” he shared. “And it does remind us that by a hair’s breadth, we dodged a catastrophe. But it was still a tragedy, because one of those first responders lost his life. His name was Corey Comperatore. He was a retired fire chief in the area. He had given his life in service to his community and he died literally shielding his family.”

Stewart cited Comperatore as ” a reminder that in those moments of crisis, there are helpers, and we can all make a choice to try and be one of those people. “

“Or you can be one of these guys,” he teased, as viewers were met with a Forbes headline that read: “Will Surviving Gunfire Be Donald Trump’s Next Appeal to Black Voters?”

“Not helping!” he exclaimed.

The Daily Show airs Monday through Thursday at 11/10c on Comedy Central. Watch Stewart’s monologue above.