While most watched the video of 75-year-old Martin Gugino getting shoved to the ground by the Buffalo police department in horror, President Donald Trump viewed the footage through the conspiratorial lens of One America News Network. Amid his usual barrage of retweets and all-caps proclamations on Tuesday, Trump wrote on Twitter, “Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”
The tweet was roundly condemned (as the New York Times put it, “even by his own standards, Mr. Trump appeared to test the boundaries of credulity”) and it left Trevor Noah convinced that Trump has clearly picked which side he is on in the debate over police reform.
“Trump is so desperate to defend the police that instead of admitting that maybe they used excessive force and that none of them helped a person who was bleeding out on the ground, he turns around and blames the old man from that video for being an antifa provocateur who busted his head open on purpose,” an incredulous Noah said on Tuesday’s episode of The Daily Show. “And I mean, I can’t believe I have to say it, but that is some batshit crazy theory. Let me tell you something—if someone came up to me with a plan that involved busting my head open on the sidewalk, I would ask them to come up with a better plan.”
He added, “I mean, how do you look at that video, see that old man, and think that he’s an antifa provocateur? You think that old man is causing chaos. Who sees that? Like, I feel like Trump is the kind of person who watched the movie Up and he thinks it’s a story about an elderly terrorist who hijacks a balloon house.”
Trump’s tweet about Gugino, who remained hospitalized on Tuesday in serious but stable condition, was a big topic of conversation on the late-night circuit Tuesday.