Triumph the Insult Comic Dog May Be the Best Political Correspondent Working Today
Right now is a scary time to be living in America, as the country is just days away from an election that will decide the next president: Will it be the current vice president, or the anthropomorphic hemorrhoid who retroactively ruined Home Alone 2? Stay tuned.
At this crucial moment in history, the Fourth Estate is more important than ever. But since cable news is a dumpster fire, and major newspapers seem to be ethically-kneecapped by their billionaire owners, we will instead have to rely on the journalistic integrity of a rubber hand puppet.
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (who as you may not be aware is secretly controlled by a human being named Robert Smigel) has been providing on-site election coverage for The Daily Show this year. Most recently, Triumph popped by Madison Square Garden to interview Trump supporters eagerly lining up for the city’s most toxic open mic night. Or as Triumph put it, a “caravan of migrants invading Manhattan.”
Don't Miss
Smigel unloaded a number of clever put-downs that simultaneously dismantled Republican talking points. He asked one out-of-state couple, “Since you arrived in New York City, how many times have you been murdered?” To another MAGA loyalist he questioned, “What do you think is less likely — that Haitians are eating cats, or that any of the guys here have eaten pussy?”
He told political roast jokes that were actually funny and made a good point. Unlike some people.
Further proving that Triumph may be better at getting to the core of what this movement is about more than most mainstream reporters, his segment also captured a Trump supporter trying to sneak a white supremacist hand signal onto the broadcast.
Earlier this year, Triumph somehow scored an invite to the vice presidential debate, where he asked billionaire Trump associate Howard Lutnick why “Tampon” Tim Walz is “okay with putting tampons in a bathroom” but has a “big problem with installing a couple of douchebags in the White House?”
Weirdly, Triumph may be one of the most seasoned political correspondents covering the 2024 election. His pivot to more political material really began with the 2004 presidential election. Even though Triumph debuted on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, his political streak first became apparent during an interview with Conan’s archenemy Jay Leno.
For some reason, John Kerry was booked on the same episode of The Tonight Show as Triumph, but came out after him, leading The Washington Post to suggest that George W. Bush’s Democratic challenger was playing “second fiddle on the guest list” to a canine puppet. And ABC News referred to Triumph as a “blunt political strategist” for making the observation: “The poop I made in the dressing room had more heat than John Kerry.”
After that, Triumph was sent out to report on the presidential debates, and roast undecided voters.
But perhaps his greatest act of political reporting came in 2016, when Triumph starred in a series of election specials for Hulu. The segment where he stalks Ted Cruz, even going so far as to hire a duplicate campaign bus to follow him around from event to event, is pretty damn funny. According to Smigel, the Cruz campaign was “very upset.” They even offered him the possibility of an interview with Cruz to get him to stop, but Smigel thought it would be funnier to just keep hounding the senator, allowing us to see Cruz repeating the same corny speech and autographing supporters’ guns.
Hopefully The Daily Show will bring Triumph back for election night, in case any of the results need to be pooped on.
