Jon Stewart prayed to keep Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) out of jail on Thursday’s “The Daily Show.”
A grand jury indicted Perry for abuse of power earlier this month, after an ethics watchdog group filed a complaint alleging he vetoed funding to a public corruption unit in order to pressure the Democratic district attorney who led it into resigning.
Perry has since taken the indictment in stride, smirking for his mugshot and fishing for compliments from reporters who ask him how he’s holding up.
“I think Perry’s gonna make a bit of a creepy inmate, if you ask me,” Stewart said. “A little bit of ‘Orange Is The New Blecch.’”
The indictment had to be a political hit job aimed at sidelining a Perry 2016 bid, Stewart thought. But it gave him pause that some Democrats were defending Perry against the charges, while the judge and prosecutor in his indictment were actually Bush-appointed Republicans.
“I get what’s going on here, it’s the old switcheroo. Democrats are defending Perry because they really want him to run for president. Because he will lose, albeit in an entertaining fashion,” Stewart observed. “And Republicans are OK with this indictment, because that means he’ll lose, albeit in an entertaining fashion.”
Watch below:
