Ratings-Challenged Trevor Noah Gets Praise For Gun Culture Comments On ‘The Daily Show’

Trevor Noah may have a hard time attracting viewers, but he is at least getting praise for some of his jokes. Salon, a site that has been rather cruel to Noah over the past three months, praised Noah for dedicating his whole show on Thursday night to gun culture. Salon described how Noah started off his show.

“Guns can do anything, Trevor Noah told the ‘Daily Show’ audience before dedicating all of Thursday night’s show to guns in America. ‘You can go hunting, you can combine them with roses,’ to make Guns and Roses, ‘and you can make a raccoon look badass.’ Everyone in the world has them, well, except for a whole bunch of other countries, but you know, other than that.”

Noah wondered why, in the week following the San Bernardino shooting, people were literally lined up at the nearest gun shop. According to Boston.com, Noah didn’t quite like the fact that Northeastern University announced that university police officers would now be equipped with semiautomatic rifles during emergencies.

“Not everyone thinks that the answer is more guns, some people think that the answer is bigger guns. Hm, so now students can go to a place where they live for years, eating s— meals, spending most of the time sharing a tiny room with a stranger, experimenting with same-sex relationships, all while a group of guards patrol with AR-15s,” the newspaper quotes Noah complaining about a controversial issue.

Twitter, which is usually pretty mean toward Noah, lit up with praise.

His Comedy Central special reads guns, racism, & the general stupidity of the human race beautifully. @Trevornoah https://t.co/pEGueBwW4j

— Vanessa (@riversl706) December 11, 2015

This round of good publicity is just what Trevor Noah needs. After all, his show has not only received low ratings, but it has been criticized by both right and left wing critics. Robert Julian of the Huffington Post is the latest left-wing critic to go after Noah.

“Every night on The Daily Show, Noah fluffs lines. He is reading copy off a teleprompter – copy that he’s gone over several times before the show airs – but he just can’t nail it consistently. His regular verbal missteps destroy the comic timing of these set pieces and suggest – now that he is over two months into the show – that Noah might not be up to the task.”

Julian adds that Noah is out of his depth. Everything with him may be “cute,” but that doesn’t cut it when one is trying to skewer pomposity or deliver an evisceration of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. Trevor Noah, not surprisingly, has been criticized by the right as well. Breitbart‘s John Nolte recently wrote a scathing editorial about Trevor Noah.

“Noah’s collapse is not just in the ratings. His clips are not making the rounds, even with a DC Media desperate to viralize clips of leftwing comedians trashing Republicans…Trust me, Noah is not being snubbed out of a sudden fit professionalism, decency, or maturity from our media overlords. Noah’s work is just not up to snuff,” Nolte claims.

2016 will be a make-it-or-break-it year for Noah, who is under a lot of pressure. It would be great if Noah is still making jokes on the air one year from now. However, it’s also possible that by this time next year, Trevor Noah will be replaced on The Daily Show.

[Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images]