Heartwarming / The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

2015

• October 1st: At the end of Trevor's very first week, there was a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. He said that he was completely unprepared to report on his first tragedy, and he gave a heartfelt eulogy free from both politics & his usual Black Comedy. Then he started the episode he had prepared to do, a Take That! at Donald Trump in which he compared Trump to African dictators.
  Trevor: You know, normally in one of these situations, I’d just speak from the heart. But honestly this is not a normal situation for me. I haven’t had the time to feel, let alone think, about everything that’s happened. I’m sure that’s true for many people out there. So, right now, we can only express our grief for the people who are lost. I guess I can do what I do best, and that’s try to make people laugh. Let’s do our show.
• October 20th: In Trevor Noah's segment on the Star Wars African American stormtrooper controversy, the correspondent playing a fanboy makes a profound statement that, "Science Fiction is all about envisioning a future. A future which can belong to everyone."
• October 21st: Jordan Klepper is determined to give two lottery winners a "happy ending" after the Illinois government refuses to pay them the $250,000 they won. So he takes them out in a limo to JCPenney for a shopping spree and a nice dinner, paying in IOUs. The Daily Show is still trying to serve justice, even when justice is Throw the Dog a Bone.
• November 5th: The day before, Trevor Noah had to go to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. He received massive support and wishes of good health he's received on Facebook and Twitter following the announcement of his surgery going well, and he starts the show by thanking everyone and reassuring them that he came back despite Comedy Central telling him to take as much time as he wanted.
  • Jessica Williams was also the only correspondent who didn't claim Trevor's job according to the video reenactment of the correspondents visiting him in the hospital. In fact, she called to warn him about such activity.
• November 16th: Trevor delivers a plain monologue about the Paris attacks that happened the Friday before. He was particularly heartwarmed by the efforts of the Parisians to help out their fellow people. While it's not on the caliber of Jon's 9/11 monologue, it's still heartwarming on its own.
• December 2nd: After Christopher Lloyd makes Jessica Williams realize that even if hoverboards don't exist now they can exist in the future, she runs to a room of children of different races and asks them to draw inventions. Each one, she says is a great idea, including a "potato tree" and an invention that she claims looks like a hoverboard. Christopher Lloyd is also a good sport to let her reenact one of the Back to the Future scenes with him at the segment's end.
• December 7th: When Jon Stewart appears, Trevor Noah turns around and says, in a sweet voice, "Papa?"

2016

• March 22nd: Trevor dedicates the Moment of Zen to the people affected by the Brussels and Ankara attacks. It's a photo of Turkey and Belgium's flags shaped like hearts and entwined together.
• March 23rd: Trevor bonds with South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham over a game of pool, discussing the shaky state of the Republican Party thanks to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
• March 24th: The Moment of Zen is a brief clip of Garry Shandling's stand-up on The Tonight Show, after Shandling passed away that day.
• April 21st: After Prince's death was announced early that day, the Moment of Zen is a clip of him playing "Reflection" on MTV Unplugged.
  Trevor: Today, as you all know, we lost more than just a man. We lost an icon. We lost a leader. We lost in many aspects a genre in itself. Prince, we'll always remember. We will always love you. Your music changed our lives and I think it will continue to do that. Today we would like to dedicate our Zen to you.
• June 13th: The Moment of Zen is Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Love is love is love" line from his sonnet at the Tony Awards.
  Trevor: Today's Zen is a really special one that was beautifully delivered by Lin-Manuel Miranda and we dedicate this Zen to all the victims of gun violence.
• June 30th: Trevor has his first goodbye segment as Jessica Williams leaves from being a regular correspondent to work on her own show on Comedy Central. He even says that it's impossible to put together all her greatest moments, cause she had so many.
  • And as they fade to commercials, the give the correspondent Group Hug.
• August 18th: Amidst the surprise cancellation of The Nightly Show (and some accusations that Trevor's faltering ratings were blame), Trevor believes that Larry Wilmore and the rest of the show's staff will bounce back.
• September 19th:
  • Trevor congratulates Key & Peele and John Oliver on their Emmy wins.
  • He also offers his congratulations at the first responders who rushed to the scene of the Manhattan bombing and tended to those injured, preventing any deaths.
• September 29th: In a segment examining the controversial anti-LGBT HB2 law in North Carolina where Roy and Jordan refused barbecue service to hungry patrons based on the suspicion of being gay. Roy then says they did give out free barbecue to the people they refused after filming.
  Roy: And just so you know, we let everybody off the hook and we gave them free barbecue. 'Cause what we did was kind of fucked up, I mean these people already have to live in North Carolina, that's stressful enough. [Roy fistbumps with a patron, revealing himself to be with the show]
• November 9th: Michelle Wolf and Hasan Minhaj get emotional as they discuss the underlying implications of the surprise victory of Donald Trump (misogyny for Michelle, racist Islamaphobia for Hasan), Trevor just reaches across the desk and clasps his hands over theirs.
• November 14th: The Moment of Zen is dedicated to the late Gwen Ifill, the respected PBS Newshour journalist who passed away from cancer that day.

2017

• Trevor feeling bad about shooing Blue from Blue's Clues away. Calling her a "high quality person" isn't much in context, but at least he tried to console her, if from his desk.
• January 30th: Hasan Minhaj describing his experience going through an airport the day the travel ban went into effect. He was hugged by three random people, people were guarding Muslims as they prayed, and women were turning their scarves into hijabs as a show of solidarity with the refugees. Even though he's terrified of the implications of the travel ban, he's clearly glad to have seen so much support.
• March 21st: Even with their vastly different political views, Trevor still defends Tomi Lahren and calls out The Blaze on their hypocrisy in suspending (and later firing) her for being pro-choice... though he still can't help slipping in a burn at the end.
• April 19th: When talking about the news of Bill O'Reilly's firing from Fox News, Trevor takes a moment to remember Jon Stewart's confrontations with O'Reilly, saying that for many people, Jon was the Yoda to O'Reilly's Sith Lord. It then crosses into funny when Trevor asks if he can be Daisy Ridley.
• November 1st: Trevor giving his guest for the night, Hillary Clinton, a standing ovation as she enters.

2018

• February 21: Roy Wood's sheer glee that with Black Panther there is a film for black people, that isn't a slave narrative or civil rights drama.
• July 18: Trevor's segment on the life of Nelson Mandela for his 100th birthday, sharing many little-known facts about him and showing his admiration for the man who was so influential in ending apartheid and uniting the country, events that he witnessed as a child growing up in South Africa.

2019

• August 5: Over the weekend, after 2 mass shootings occurred in El Paso and Dayton less than 24 hours apart from each other, Neil Degrasse Tyson tried to argue that the media disproportionately talks about mass shootings more than other statistically more likely problems, but Trevor explains why NDT's comments were misguided.
  Trevor: I get what he was trying to do, like, he was trying to be, like, science-y in that moment. But first of all, timing. Do you know what I mean? At a funeral is not a time to tell the people that the guy owed you money, that's not the time. Let's start with that, but secondly, I feel like it fundamentally missed the, I guess, the human element of what people are fighting for in America, and that is trying. Trying is the thing. We ban dangerous cars. To get a car, you need a license. You need to go through a process, because we just want to minimize the chance of a person dying in a car.

2020

• Trevor's interview with Tochi Onyebuchi is very sweet and nuanced. Tochi reiterates that "science fiction is the place of social commentary" as Trevor says and mentions it's what he loves about the genre.

2021

2022

• March 14: The show announced that, starting April 11, they'll move back to their original studio to tape with a live audience for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic two years earlier.
• April 11: The show airs with a live, fully-vaccinated audience. The sound of their applause may bring a tear to your eye.
• April 12: In honor of Gilbert Gottfried, the "Moment of Zen" is a clip of Gottfried discussing the relationship between tragedy and comedy in an interview about his post-9/11 The Aristocrats joke.
• December 8: As Trevor's last "Moment of Zen", he turns to the audience as Gerry And The Pacemakers' version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" plays, with the audience soon singing along.

2023

• March 1: In the interim between Trevor Noah's departure and a new permanent host, each week was hosted by a different guest, with this week's host being former correspondent Hasan Minhaj. Due to a last-minute cancellation for the interview segment, Hasan's interview for this day was instead with his own just-turned-five-years-old daughter, and he asks the entire live audience to sing Happy Birthday to her.

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