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Recap and Powerful Response to Trevor Noah’s Interview With Tomi Lahren

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at MMM chapter.

“I’m a Millennial so I don’t like labels” —Tomi Lahren

Wednesday night The Daily Show with Trevor Noah conducted an interview with Tomi Lahren. You know? Tomi Lahren from The Blaze who likes to aggressively voice her opinions and speak heavily on why Black Lives Matter is “the new KKK.” 

She’s extremely conservative and Trevor is opposite. Watching these two have a political conversation was nerve wracking at first. Noah lead the conversation and did it in a graceful way, never raising a tone. He asked questions like, “why are you so angry?” Lahren denied it, like always. After she had her segment of complaining she took a breath of relief and the more frustrating part is how articulate she is. However, her ultimate downfall will be how aggressive her opinions are presented. Noah stumped her up a few times like when he asked, “what did that moment mean to you, hearing the things he said about how he makes moves on women?” She brought up Clinton saying how she compared “someone who said nasty things to a woman who’ve done nasty things.” Moreover, she expressed how Trump’s comments were inappropriate and aren’t defensible but it didn’t impact her taxes, immigration, or national security so she can “get passed it.” Noah’s rebuttal was, “it may impact the way women are perceived and treated in a country. To which she replied “like Saudi Arabia where Clinton took money from?” The main theme of this election is blaming. Whenever someone is asked a question about something political they automatically go in to defense mode and blame the person. That was heavily present during the debates which is why we never really got the full effect of “what would you do if elected?” The answers were always “well I’m not going to do what her husband did” or “I’m not going to run it like he runs his businesses.” The problem is no one ever wants to take responsibility for their thoughts or actions. 

All Noah asked was “how did you feel about your future president saying that he can “grab women by the pussy,” and all she can say was our situation isn’t as bad Saudi Arabia who *cough cough* Clinton took money from, she just had to squeeze that in there. Honestly, Lahren, if you support him that’s your decision, that’s your right, that’s literally the women’s suffrage movement, but don’t try to downplay it by bringing up Hillary Clinton. Yes, Clinton did take money from Saudi Arabia. Was it wrong? Obviously. However, that doesn’t distract from the fact that you’re a woman who supports a man who is open with his misogyny. Own your opinion, inevitably you’ll be hated for it but at least you’re owning it

Noah explained that the Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t stand for the actions taken by the Dallas shooter (even though the shooter said he was doing it for them) by saying, “just because you say the thing [this is for the Black Lives Matter Movement], [it] doesn’t mean it’s what it [BLM] stands for.” To secure that statement he told Lahren “you’re the same person who argued on your show that just because Donald Trump has supporters from the KKK, doesn’t mean that he’s in the KKK.” That response got a roar of applause and a defensive Lahren. She must have felt threatened because she asked “do you feel emboldened?” Hell yeah and he should, he was the first person to publicly challenge Lahren’s “final thoughts” and he did justice.  

My favorite part of the interview was when Noah ranted, “there is a black person saying I don’t how to get my message across, if I march in the street people say I’m a thug, if I got out and protest people say it’s a riot, so what is the ‘right way’ for a black person to get attention in America? How should one do it?” This was all in regards to Colin Kapernick kneeling during the national anthem and her having a problem with it. Noah asked her to elucidate on why that offends her. She responded, “I know what the flag means to me, I know what it means to the people fighting for our country right now, but when you take your aggression out on the flag and the national anthem I disagree. People of many colors have fought for this country-”  she was cut off by Trevor when he said “yes, but those people haven’t gotten the same rights as others when they returned, so how should they protest? You’re a woman so how do you protest when things aren’t right?” Lahren answered, “I don’t protest because I’m not a victim and I don’t victimize myself.” Which Noah repeated the unanswered “so how should black people get their message across?” She was left quiet. Some people complain and argue without even addressing the subject at hand, it happened a lot during the election and it will continue to go on, it’s pathetic. People love to criticize but no one wants to think about how the person they’re criticizing should’ve went about their actions, and that’s because there is no real way to do so. That’s the problem with supercilious people, they love to think that people are below them and for that reason those people shouldn’t have a voice; that they should be lucky to be in the presence of others who constantly look down on them. 

“There’s nothing wrong with seeing color, it’s how you treat color that’s more important” —Trevor Noah