John McCain Jokes About His Rivals On The Daily Show

NEW YORK — Of the Democratic presidential candidates, would Republican John McCain rather take on Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton?

"You know, Ron Paul is still in the race," McCain joked Wednesday during a taping of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

McCain deadpanned about the marathon race between the Democrats: "I hate to watch it. It's terrible. My heart goes out to them."

During the taping, McCain pretended to walk off the set when Stewart pressed him on whether President Bush is more of a liability for him than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is for Obama. Then McCain fiddled with his microphone and mouthed "technical difficulties" into the camera.

The all-but-certain Republican nominee did reveal a few tidbits. His Secret Service code name, he thinks, "is 'jerk,'" and his choice for a vice presidential running mate is Dwight Schrute, a character on the NBC sitcom, "The Office," played by Rainn Wilson.

Comedy aside, McCain used the opportunity to challenge Obama, who moved a step closer to claiming the Democratic nomination after Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. Stewart asked whether McCain really believed the Islamic terrorist group Hamas had endorsed Obama. McCain's campaign issued a fundraising letter after a Hamas adviser, Ahmed Yousef, said the group likes Obama.

"It's indicative of how some of our enemies view America," McCain said. "And I guarantee you, they're not going to endorse me."

Off camera, Obama's campaign said McCain should apologize for "repeating tired and divisive attacks about Barack Obama that he knows are flat-out untrue."

Comments

[Zentomato]

Anyone know just how many times that McCain has been on The Daily Show ?

[ragged]

McCain just seems bizarre. His responses were disjointed and weird. The guy's brain won't last four years.

[bushisguilty]

Ron Paul would be better than McSame for this country. You have a choice, spend money to build Iraq, or spend money here in the USA. (Well if Bush hasn't already made NAU undoable, while the country sleeps!) Don't forget also, McSame has gone over $54 million spent (illegally) & didn't he also take money from Europeans a couple of months ago. (When Lord Rothschild gave McSame his endorsement? Isn't that a conflict of interest? McSame will keep borrowing money from Rothschild's bank to stay in the Middle East. The Fed Reserve isn't OUR bank, it's an international bank!) Too bad we don''t have 'The Press' any more to expose this stuff (like Watergate), we now only have 'The Media' to sell bad ideas to the sheep! Infowars, Huffington Post, Prison Planet, can give real news, but isn't given enough credit for letting people REALLY KNOW what is going on!

[Titonwan]

Jon Stewart RULES John Mc100years! Shot dead full of holes but doesn't even know it. Good one.

[panderwatch]

Dwight Schrute (described by Riann Wilson as a "fascist nerd") is a curious choice for a running mate. I know we shouldn"t read too much into this but shouldn"t McCain do a little vetting before choosing a fictional character that has some of the most debase personality traits and political viewfound within his own party? His choice was an insightful bookend to the town hall meeting he moderated earlier in the day.

At Oakland University, McCain voiced his opposition to human trafficking and child pornography (tough issues to be get behind!) and emphasized his preference for appointing justices in the mold of Alito and Roberts - stricter law and order policies that would appeal to rules-obsessed Schrute.

Come to think of it, maybe it wasn"t a staffer who encouraged McCain to mention Schrute. Maybe McCain was inspired by one of Dwight"s many rants, including this one that pertain to a certain Vietnam war hero ¦

"A hero kills people, people that wish him harm. A hero is part human and part supernatural. A hero is born out of a childhood trauma, or out of a disaster, that must be avenged."

panderwatch.com

[4wehttam]

McWar said that he would be running a respectful campaign, yeah right. How's not passing deceptive letters linking Obama to Hamas not disrespectful???? Jon is right, you and Hellary belong together.

[whiteboyblues]

GRUMPLESTILTSKIN!

[PlanetKansas]

Note that the audience didn't laugh at McCain's jokes, nor applaud his plattitudes. Tough crowd. He acted like a puppet and everything seemed canned and groomed.

Though it is sad to see a moderate like McCain now kissing the ass of the far right, it took real guts to go on the Daily Show, though I doubt it won him any new fans.

[Kundera]

yeah the audience is made up of lefties. what a shock!!

[MinuteMan]

McCain is and never was a "moderate". It was true, that in the distant past he was not a complete rubber-stamp Republican, but by and large his voting record is unabashedly quite conservative. But, as you note, he is now pretty much another Bush/GOP rubber-stamp. The only difference between McCain and the other rubber-stamps is that he sometimes claims to be holding his nose while stamping—which if anything makes it worse: he knows he's doing the wrong thing but is doing it anyway for purposes of political expediency (i.e., he's a hypocrite and he knows it).

[RJII]

Mccain is a decent guy, but should not be president-- like stupid Bush.
Democrats need to wake up and unit before McCain slips in and America is forever screwed.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

I love Stewart, but the kid gloves treatment of McCain is too much.

Yo Jon -- you want some real laughs? Ask McCain to explain the difference between Sunni and Shiite.

[wagonjak]

I saw McSame on TDS last night, and it irritates me to no end that Stewart gives ole leatherneck a platform to look funny, sane and amusing...none of which qualities he actually posesses...

I feel the same way listening to Thom Hartman let a crazed right winger like Horowitz a platform to spread his poison...although Thom is pretty good at pointing out the fallacies he spouts...

If Stewart ever has McSame on again, he should ask him some hard questions and not give him such a free and easy ride...I know this is a comedy show, but there's NOTHING FUNNY about the McSame presidency bid!

[TheInsomniac]

John McCain is MY worst nightmare.

[cubalibre]

Obama is my worst nightmare. He hates whites
he hates America and he hates Jews. He is also
a duplicitous liar. He says he is now offended
by the philosophy of Rev. Wright. But he was
not offended by twenty years of sermons
that were always about his true beliefs. He
is trying to say he never realized this before
and now that its hurting his campaign it just
dawned on him, that this man is a hater.
Please I knew this three months ago and
I have never met the man. The comments of
Michelle Obama mirror this philosophy. Why
people think this man is honorable is beyond
me. What honorable man would sit and listen
to this litany of hate for twenty years?You are
being duped.

[osage]

McCain is a horrible candidate. The more voters see him, the more his ivory tower isolation, flip-flopping and challenges of knowledge, logic and memory will be apparent. His vulnerabilities are huge. He should be questioned on Bush"s policies relentlessly. Either he has to defend Bush, which is political suicide, or he has to disown him, which hurts him with Bush Republicans. And there"s the Iraq war and its trillion dollar debt, veteran"s education benefits he doesn"t believe they deserve, his associations with lobbyists, his wife"s money/jet/eight houses, his elitism, his campaign financing scam, his bomb, bomb Iran war-mongering, his associations with evangelical zealots Rod Parsley and John Hagee and his memory lapses and how they point to his age. Once McCain experiences the daily competition and scrutiny that Obama and Clinton have been facing, he will look increasingly unappealing. His inability to take the heat without looking like a bewildered and crotchety old political chameleon will be his undoing. I believe McCain will self-destruct and that Democrats will sweep the country with landslide victories in November. How Republicans are perceived has not improved since the 2006 elections; its gotten worse. And many Republicans loathe McCain as much as Democrats loathe Bush.

[pinkyboo]

McCain's a tool.

[Obinna]

When I look at John McCain's hand movements (especially in that rather embarrassing photo with George Bush) , I wonder if he is using a prosthetic arm.

Jon Stewart may satirize these politicians, but in the end, he is still a comedian. Therefore, there is no reason to expect him to not to make lighthearted banter with the guests on his show even if he disagrees with their politics.

[vulcan]

That's because of an injury he sustained while he was a POW, he can't lift his arms properly. John McCain has plenty of flaws but I won't and don't think any of us should make fun of that.

[gorgol]

I'm very curious on how "nasty" the Republican Machine is going to be and how much McCain will allow...being a flag waving war hero and all....just very curious...

[axt113]

Jon is not a news guy he's a comedian who jokes about the news, don't blame him for not asking the hardball questions, blame hardball and all the other news sites for not doing their job and making us hope that Jon will do it for them

[bartonfink]

stewart is a tool. he allowed mccain to spew the same old misinformation about al qaida's motive's- "they hate our freedoms!"- (nothing to do with our history of disasterous foreign policy in the middle east), and then engaged in a little himself, refering to obama's press-inflicted albatross the rev. jeremy wright and drawing an analogy to mccain's connection to whom? george w. bush!? what about mccain's relationship to his own religious superpsycho, the one who has made several outrageous statements regarding god's punishment of sinners (hurricane katrina) and the like? or the fact that mccain has repeatedly confused shiites and sunnis? or the he's stated we may be in iraq for a hundred years or will pull out immediately.
stewart wants it both ways. he can make fun of whomever he wants, but sits and holds hands with bush surrogate mccain for half his show. and who will call him on this? if he had a molecule of conscience he would judge his own "performance" with the same jaundiced eye he uses to view the media at large. like it or not, he's part of that apparatus. just how deeply he's imbedded is up to him