For those who’ve been waiting for Trevor Noah to finally earn Jon Stewart’s Daily Show seat, the moment has arrived. On Wednesday night, in a meeting of two completely unlike minds, Noah invited the supposed voice of the millennial right-wing, The Blaze’s Tomi Lahren — whom you likely know for her viral rants against Beyoncé or Colin Kaepernick — for a spin in his interview chair. In his year as TDS host, interviews haven’t been Noah’s strength. He often defaults to lightening the mood with soft jokes when debates get heated, or picks guests with whom he generally shares a worldview. It’s what makes Noah’s interview with Lahren such a welcome surprise: He’s neither passive with her when she sidesteps questions about her controversial, inconsistent hot takes on Black Lives Matter, Donald Trump, and immigration, nor does he allow her to whitesplain racial politics to him.
And when he briefly humors her, his jokes are smart and cutting (to her insistence that she “doesn’t see color,†Noah responds: “So what do you do at a traffic light?â€). Noah is shockingly patient with Lahren’s inability to justify most of her points, desperately searches for sense and common ground, and, to borrow her own mission statement, is unrelenting in calling her out on her own shit for a change. This might just go down as Noah’s Jim Cramer moment — his best work on The Daily Show yet.