Comedian Jon Stewart targeted Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for mockery on a recent episode of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, saying Pelosi and other members of Congress “have inside information” that they blatantly use for personal financial gain.
Jon Stewart used New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D) ongoing corruption trial to springboard into Pelosi during Monday’s show. He said Menendez’s didn’t “need to break the law so cartoonishly when the legal corruption in the Senate is so fucking lucrative.”
The comedian used an undated clip of Peter Schweizer on CSPAN noting that the “average” senator’s stock portfolio has beat the stock market 12 percent of the time, versus the average hedge fund at just 7 percent of the time
“How do they do it?” Stewart asked sarcastically. “The secret is an understanding of the intricate interconnectivity of global markets. I’m kidding. They have inside information.”
He added that members of Congress are able to avoid prosecution because they oversee themselves.
“It’s Congress that has refused to even hold a vote on the bills that have been proposed to ban members of Congress from trading stocks. Because not letting members of Congress insider trade would be un-American! Just listen to one of the biggest beneficiaries of this stock windfall.”
He then cut to a video of Nancy Pelosi at a press conference answering a question about whether or not representatives and their spouses should be able to trade individual stocks during their term.
“This is a free market, and people. We’re a free market economy. They should be able to participate in that,” Pelosi said.
Stewart wasn’t buying it.“In a free market, everyone has access to the same information. So unless you’re going to put all of us on the committees, I don’t get it,” he said.
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