Before you sashay into the weekend, take a handful of your precious minutes and spend them watching The Daily Show’s ace correspondent Jessica Williams lambast trans panic.
You know, it’s that thing where people irrationally fear that trans men and women will sexually assault them/try to convert them to/eat their children/etc. For this segment, Williams investigates the incident of a black trans woman being arrested in an Iowa hotel lobby and held for eight days for doing… absolutely nothing wrong. She interviews the woman, Meagan Taylor, in addition to a host of other trans people, and asks them about their experiences with transphobia. But it really starts to get fun when Williams sits down with a Colorado state representative (who doubles as a preacher), and asks him why exactly he is opposed to trans rights. As you can imagine, representative Gordon Klingenschmitt shows up unprepared for the cross examination.
While Trevor Noah slowly forms his hosting identity, Williams has been the program’s clean up hitter since the departure of Jon Stewart last year. Rumors initially swirled that Williams would take over hosting duties, but she quickly neutralized them on Twitter, saying she was “extremely under-qualified” for the job and thanking everyone for their support.
And while we love Williams, perhaps it was best that she didn’t try to take over the chair. If she had we’d be missing out on brilliant field segments like this, which is exactly where Williams has always shined.