The coffee mug, imprinted with the Elon Musk-aimed dig “World’s Most Dad” — Musk is the reportedly father of more than a dozen children — was set on Jon Stewart‘s desk like Chekhov’s famous gun appearing in the first act of a play. If you put it there, the Russian playwright warned, its destiny is to be fired before the drama ends.
Stewart’s mug followed Chekhov’s rule, and smashed to pieces as the comedian accidentally hit it while slamming his fist down in a rage about how Musk and DOGE are moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic known as federal spending, instead of looking at the proverbial iceberg. (Stewart cut his hand in the process and hid the bloodied appendage from view until near the end of the segment.)
Chekhov wrote: “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” It’s a truism that can be applied to Stewart’s mug or DOGE’s threats, Steward suggested, threats which are the equivalent of a rifle that won’t go off meaningfully until Musk and DOGE aim it at the real villains.
And those villains aren’t, Stewart suggests, the National Park rangers that DOGE has laid off, accusing them of grifting off the people’s money. They are “DOGE-ing in the wrong place,” Stewart steams.
Move over, DOGE. @jonstewart whips out his trusty calculator to identify where America's waste, fraud, and abuse really is pic.twitter.com/UUDJrBFFL9
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 25, 2025
But the real villains, who Stewart says Musk is unlikely to aim at, are the government-subsidized corporations in big pharma, big oil, and the military-industrial complex that use taxpayer money and give little in return. Saying it takes him only 11 seconds to do more cutting than DOGE has even contemplated, Stewart rails against corporations that take federal largesse and stuff their pockets with it.
“How about we just take $3 billion in subsidies we give to oil and gas companies that turn billions in profits. 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,” Stewart raged. “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 blockchain, whatever that is! Holy [expletive]. I can’t believe it! I just saved us billions of dollars in 11 seconds!”
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