‘The Daily Show’ Year-End Special Looks Back at Sexual Misconduct, Trump & More of 2017’s Biggest Stories

Katherine Schaffstall
·5 min read
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Trevor Noah and his Daily Show colleagues looked back at 2017 with its Yearly Show 2017 special on Monday night (Dec. 18).

The special aired two weeks before the end of the year and was taped even earlier (on Dec. 3 at New York’s Gramercy Theater). But Noah told the audience at the taping he wasn’t worried about looking back too soon. “The year’s not over, but we’re all gonna die so we figured why not just do this,” Noah said during his monologue. “This was a crazy year. 2017. Sexual harassment, Russians, Russians sexually harassing the election, something like that.”

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The host also took time during his monologue to joke about how people miss former president Barack Obama, the branding behind Obamacare and how Trump’s presidency makes him feel a mix of terror and joy.

Following the monologue, correspondents Desi Lydic and Dulcé Sloan looked back at the “incredible year for women,” as Lydic put it, or, as Sloan said, “It was horrible.” The two shared a behind-the-scenes look at the recording of their “Song for Women 2017,” which includes lyrics ranging from: “Start of this year, marching hand in hand to show that pussy grabber with the terrible tan” and “All around the world we’ve come so far. Saudi women sitting at the wheel of a vehicle” to “Wonder Woman set records at the movies. Who knew you could direct when you have boobies?” and “Megyn Kelly went to NBC from Fox, $17 million for a show that sucks.” (Check out the video below.)

The special also included an In Memoriam to some of the high-profile Hollywood men who were accused of sexual misconduct. A clip of Harvey Weinstein bragging about paying a man to watch Naomi Campbell get dressed opened the segment. Other disgraced men featured in the tribute included Matt Lauer, Bill O’Reilly, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K. and Charlie Rose, who were shown making inappropriate comments before the accusations against them emerged.

Correspondent Ronny Chieng took a look back at technological advances in 2017. The correspondent’s main target was the man known as Salt Bae, who famously went viral after a meme of him sprinkling salt took over social media. “That dude has tens of millions of hits for doing this,” he said as he mimicked the now iconic sprinkling motion. “Who even is this guy? It looks like he’s trying to sell body oil at the mall.” Another hot topic was the Snapchat hotdog. While closing the segment, the dancing hotdog appeared on screen. “Quit upstaging … This is the one time a year I get to talk about this shit. This is why people use Instagram Stories,” Chieng said to the hotdog.

Hasan Minhaj then looked at cable news over the past year, expressing his appreciation for the format. “I’ve always loved cable news. It answered the age old question, can we fit ten minutes of information into an hour?,” he began. “I’m gonna keep this tight, otherwise I’ll end up on MSNBC,” the correspondent said before reflecting on some memorable moments including his “favorite afterschool hangout for sex offenders: Fox News.”

The correspondent also discussed Tomi Lahren’s introduction to cable news. After airing a compilation of the conservative commentator’s aggressive clips, Minhaj shot back, “Damn Tomi, why are you yelling at me? I’m not your Uber driver. … Does Tomi Lahren just wake up in the morning and go, ‘Hey, what if the movie Mean Girls was the news?”

“Let’s move on to MSNBC. The network that hates Trump more than Trump hates normal length ties,” said Minhaj. Specifically, Minhaj remembered Rachel Maddow’s big reveal of Trump’s 2005 tax return, or at least that’s how it was billed. “Two pages?! I’ve been to food trucks with longer menus,” Minhaj said. “And after all that you know what we learned? In 2005 Donald Trump made a lot of money and paid some taxes.” He then pleaded for MSNBC to stop over hyping the news. “It’s the news, not the Justice League movie.”

The special moved on to a segment in which Michael Kosta and Roy Wood Jr. reflected on memorable sports moments in 2017. When the conversation turned to the NFL controversy of players taking a knee during the National Anthem, Wood Jr. asked that they not bring politics into the segment. Kosta later brought up that a racial slur was spray painted on LeBron James’ property. The conversation transitioned to Michael Phelps’ race with a shark, to which Kosta said, “I have always seen the shark as the black man of the sea.” He continued, “Everyone that was involved in this made so much money off of what? The shark’s hard labor. How much money did the shark make? Nothing.”

Another In Memoriam segment appeared in the special, this one paying tribute to many of the people who left Trump’s nascent administration this year, including Steve Bannon, Anthony Scaramucci, Tom Price and Sean Spicer. Toward the end of the night, Noah reflected on Donald and Melania Trump’s marital problems.

“You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that they’re not having a good time in their relationship. You could see it in the very beginning when Donald and Melania first moved into the White House. Well she didn’t, she stayed out of it. That was the first sign,” he said.

Noah added that many of their speeches seemed to be directed at each other. “Melania, when she came out to speak and announce her platform as First Lady, what did she say? She came out and she said she was gonna do what? Fight cyberbullying,” he said. Noah noted that the next time Trump made a speech, it was to fight immigration. The host continued to explain the turbulent relationship by stating that Melania’s next speech was about stopping sexual assault. Noah concluded, “You guys need to handle your shit at home, man.”

This article originally appeared on THR.com.

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