Trevor Noah, the host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, issued a surprising monologue on Tuesday after it was reported that countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had refused to take phone calls from President Joe Biden to discuss potential oil deals.
The White House has officially denied that report, but the self-appointed funny-man news commentator said that regardless of if the story is true or not, under President Donald Trump, something like that never would have happened because of the former president’s unpredictability. He also poked fun at Biden’s bedtime schedule.
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden White House began calling countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE to discuss potential oil deals to help offset the banning of Russian oil from American markets. Rather than increase drilling at home, the Biden team wanted to purchase oil from those Persian Gulf nations, according to the paper.
The only problem is that they allegedly did not answer, and because of that, Noah slammed Biden for the “embarrassing” story.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Noah said after a brief montage of news reports regarding the story. “Apparently, Saudi Arabia won’t even pick up the phone for the President of the United States.”
“I mean, look, I know it’s hard to arrange those calls. You know, Riyadh is eight hours ahead. Biden is asleep by 4:00 p.m.,” Noah said, making fun of “Sleepy Joe” and his sometimes light schedule. “It’s a narrow window to make it work, but still.”
“That must have been really embarrassing for Biden. Can you imagine? He phones them, and they don’t pick up,” he continued before noting the White House rejected the story.
On Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “There were no rebuffed calls. Period,” when asked about the Journal story.
Nonetheless, Noah said, “You can say what you want, but this would have never happened to Donald Trump. Never.”
“Yeah, because if you ignored Donald Trump’s calls, you didn’t know how he would respond. Maybe he’d send an angry tweet, or maybe he’d just, like, ban your country from everything,” Noah claimed. “You don’t know.”
“That’s why I bet in these situations, Biden actually wishes that he could hire Trump to step in as President Wild Card. You know?” he joked. “Just keep everyone on their toes. ‘Cause if Trump was calling, you best believe the UAE — they’ll be racing to pick up the phone.”
“Ah, Mr. Trump! Mr. Trump, we’re here, we’re here, hello?” Noah said in a Middle Eastern accent.
“Too late, Ahmed, you made me wait two rings. We’re bombing the UAE and the UFC, just in case,” the host said while doing a Trump impression.
Noah’s monologue sounded surprisingly conservative. It is similar to what Republicans have been saying about Trump and Biden for years.
Immediately after the story that Gulf leaders would not answer Biden’s phone calls this week, New York Congressman Lee Zeldin (R), tweeted that it was a “TOTAL EMBARRASSMENT!”
“@POTUS stooped to groveling and being rejected by foreign dictators for oil,” he continued. “The answer is to ramp domestic energy production, but he won’t admit it because he’s afraid of the most extreme demands of far-left climate activists.”
TOTAL EMBARRASSMENT! @POTUS stooped to groveling and being rejected by foreign dictators for oil. The answer is to ramp domestic energy production, but he won’t admit it because he’s afraid of the most extreme demands of far-left climate activists. https://t.co/UqR8yM9vA7
— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) March 9, 2022
In 2018, former U.S. United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley also said that Trump’s uncertain reactions worked to the United States’ advantage and helped her in her job at the U.N., CNN reported at the time:
“He would ratchet up the rhetoric, and then I’d go back to the ambassadors and say ‘you know, he’s pretty upset. I can’t promise you what he’s going to do or not, but I can tell you if we do these sanctions, it will keep him from going too far,’” Haley told NBC’s Craig Melvin in an interview that aired Wednesday on NBC’s “Today.”
“I was trying to get the job done. And I got the job done by being truthful but also by letting him be unpredictable and not showing our cards,” she said.
Noah’s monologue can be seen here.