Stewart Nails Condi on ‘Hypothetical’ Hypocrisy

Jon Stewart presided over a mock game show on Tuesday, during which he played highlights of Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales contradicting themselves and refusing to answer the simplest of questions. 

In response to Rumsfeld’s recent statement that he hadn’t ever painted a rosy picture of the war, Stewart played numerous clips of the defense secretary doing just that. 

The host then went after Gonzales, playing a clip of the attorney general struggling to respond to a torture-related question from John McCain.  After a long pause, peppered with the occasional stammer, the attorney general said he would be able to answer the senator’s question only if they could agree on the definition of “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment,” to which Stewart added, “You call it an electrified anal prod, I say tomato.”

Finally, Condoleezza Rice appeared in a clip where she refused to address troop withdrawal in the face of Iraqi civil war, calling it a hypothetical.  Stewart, as always, had the last word: “In her defense, the last time the administration acted on a hypothetical, we invaded Iraq.”

Watch it:

Partial Transcript:

Jon Stewart:

We turn now to Iraq.  Three-and-a-half years into the conflict, there’s a growing sense of an administration that prided itself on its confidence and competence in dealing with complex issues is flying blind.  Now its policy is facing tough questions with the hot new Capitol Hill game show: ‘Win, Lose or Withdraw.’ You remember the rules, whoever successfully evades the most questions wins additional funding.  Let’s meet our contestants, the returning champs, the ‘Fighting Fighty Fighters.’ Their opponents: everybody else in the world, and…reality.