On this week’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart accidentally sliced his hand open while smashing a coffee mug on his desk. The gesture was made in anger towards the billions of dollars of federally funded pharmaceutical subsidies ignored by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
As an example of the U.S. government’s history of glaring inefficiencies, Stewart pulled a clip of former President Joe Biden celebrating negotiations to lower the price of 10 widely used pharmaceutical drugs. An enraged Stewart, who was pretending to “work for DOGE” with a coffee mug and calculator, deemed that hardly a reason to celebrate.
“The companies we subsidize with billions of dollars are allowing us the privilege to negotiate the price of 10 of their drugs,” Stewart said with phony excitement. “And ten is all of them, right? It would be embarrassing if it was a small drop in the bucket, and that the American people didn’t expect that we should negotiate for all their fucking drugs, because we have already paid for them with our subsidies! It is fucking insane!”
Stewart then spiked the mug on his desk, shattering it to pieces. He quickly realized he cut himself and moved his hand out of sight before joking, “I will be going to the hospital soon.”
Before the incident, Stewart played accountant and tallied up all the wasted government dollars DOGE could be saving instead of targeting the jobs of “200,000” federal employees.
“How about we just take $3 billion in subsidies we give to oil and gas companies that turn billions in profits,” Stewart said. “How long did that take? Oh, wait! How about we just close down the carried interest loophole on hedge funds? That’s $1.3 billion a year. Or how about we stop the $2 trillion dollars we’ve given to defense contractors to build a fighter jet that blows, when everyone knows the next war is going to be fought with drones and blockchains, whatever that is! Holy shit! I can’t believe it! I just saved us billions of dollars in 11 seconds!”
Watch the entire segment below.
