Trevor Noah Condemns Cops for Responding to 'Police Brutality With Even More Police Brutality'

On Monday night, The Daily Showreturned from its brief hiatus with an emotional, hour-long episode in which host Trevor Noah soberly discussed the protests against police brutality taking place all over the globe, along with the incidents of retaliation from the police themselves. 

"Never before in American history has there been an uprising like this, exactly like this, where you have huge numbers of people coming out every single day, in every single state in the country," Noah said. He then detailed some of the jaw-dropping numbers the protests — spurred largely by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis — have drawn, and he discussed just how impressive the support for the Black Lives Matter movement has become. "You now have people in every country standing together to say, 'This is not acceptable anymore.'" 

Noah went on to address the response from the police, noting that many have compared this moment to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and saying, "And much like the 1960s, law enforcement officers have met these calls to end police brutality with even more police brutality."

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After playing clips from various news broadcasts which showed police around the U.S. subduing protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets, Noah reminded his audience that arming cops with military-grade equipment was a call made post-9/11. "The police department got this heavy duty equipment to fight terrorists," he said, "and now they're using it against Americans who are exercising their right to protest. I'm sorry, what about these people screams 'terrorist' to you?"

Later in the episode, he reviewed other footage of officers using violence against protesters, such as the now-infamous recording of an NYPD car driving directly into a crowd of people and the attacks by police against members of the press. 

"I mean, I can't blame them," Noah quipped. "If I was doing the sh-- that the police have been doing, I wouldn't want anyone recording it either." He also took a moment to respond to those doubling down on the "bad apple" theory with video from a broadcast about the officers in Buffalo, New York, who resigned from the police department's emergency response team in protest of their colleagues being suspended after video surfaced of them pushing a 75-year-old man to the ground. "Something I think people need to understand about the police is that, in a way, they have the same code that a gang does in that above all, you are loyal to your crew," Noah said.

Prior to his return, Noah had not been silent about recent news. Monday's broadcast came a week after his 18-minute monologue about the murders of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and the domino effect of racial injustice and police brutality, in which he said, "Police in America are looting Black bodies." 

The Daily Show's YouTube channel also posted several previously recorded "Between the Scenes" segments during the break, including a very informative one where Noah discussed the history of stop-and-frisk in New York City, another in which he educated the audience on the meaning of reparations and how they relate to white privilege, and a look back at the police killing and trial verdict of Philando Castile, where the officers responsible were acquitted of all charges.

"When a jury of your peers, your community, sees this evidence and decides that even this is self-defense — that is truly depressing," Noah said, after showing the video of Castile's death. "Because what they're basically saying is, in America, it is officially reasonable to be afraid of a person just because they are Black."

Black lives matter. Text DEMANDS to 55156 to sign Color of Change's petition to reform policing, and visit blacklivesmatter.carrd.co for more ways to donate, sign petitions, and protest safely.