If your Twitter handle does not feature a frog emoji winking impishly at the end of it, it's entirely possible that you've never heard of Tomi Lahren. Many others have, though; the 24-year-old talk show host for Glenn Beck's TheBlaze has earned a tidy 3.5 million Facebook followers for her scorching takes on Colin Kaepernick, Black Lives Matter, and other standard alt-right fare. She is the unapologetic voice of Millennial Trump supporters, and on Wednesday, she sat down for a surprisingly lengthy interview with The Daily Show's Trevor Noah. Although the two rarely see eye-to-eye, Noah abandoned the usual Comedy Central shtick and engaged in an almost-entirely-serious debate with Lahren on Trump's level-headedness (9:00), the evolving mainstream media (13:30), and, of course, Colin Kaepernick (19:00).

It wasn't a Stewart-style takedown, but it did make for a genuinely revealing (if occasionally horrifying) conversation. Many of Lahren's lines were predictably cringeworthy—her galling insistence that she "doesn't see color" provided a laugh-so-you-don't-cry moment. And she proved exceptionally good at evading Noah's questions, instead delivering rehearsed lines about patriotism and participation trophies. Lahren also earned a surprised chuckle from Noah when she somewhat oxymoronically responded to his question of whether she considers herself a conservative by saying, "I'm a Millennial, so I don't like labels."

That said, Lahren certainly held her own. Her arguments contained all the familiar alt-right logical holes, but like a skilled debate kid making the best of a bad assignment, she presented them so eloquently and confidently that even when the opportunity arose, Noah struggled to land an effective counterpunch. When the audience booed her down or applauded a Noah one-liner, she smiled pleasantly, insistently making her points while never transforming into the angry caricature of a right-wing talking head that perhaps Daily Show fans are used to.

Noah's mixed-bag performance highlights the reality that there aren't going to be clear winners and losers in these debates anymore. After years of mocking the forces that gave birth to Trumpism, Noah and his peers are now stuck punching upwards against opponents like Tomi Lahren, who watched the eviscerations of the Tucker Carlsons who came before and mastered the art of neutralizing snarky asides with smoothly-recited rhetoric that can make a well-aimed joke look like a crutch. Basically, this isn't funny anymore, and Noah—along with every other late-night host for whom politics was once just punchy monologue fodder—needs to hit the heavy bag and learn how to punch back. Hard.

Up next: Keith Olbermann Asks, "Does Donald Trump Really Believe What He Is Saying?"