Daily Show host Trevor Noah. Comedy Central

In mid-January, with Bernie Sanders surging in the polls in Iowa, The Daily Show With Trevor Noah decided it was time to formally introduce Sanders to its audience.

Sanders officially declared his candidacy this past May and has been squarely in the public eye for months now, his positions, politics, unkempt hair, and Brooklyn accent dissected all over cable news and razzed by every late-night show in the land (including The Daily Show).

Still, Noah supposed its viewers “might be wondering [about] this rising new, yet old, force in the Democratic Party.”

Then Noah launched into “The Legend of Bernie Sanders,” a relatively straightforward, jokey synopsis of Sanders’ accomplishments, from his birth in Brooklyn to his election as senator, climaxing in his album of folk songs. “If you ask me personally,” Noah said, “Bernie Sanders’ popularity has nothing to do with policy. I think it’s because he’s opposite Trump. See, the world craves balance. He’s the yin to Trump’s racist yang.”

Noah concluded by pointing out that both Trump and Sanders regularly commit New York–style assaults on the pronunciation of the word huge. The segment was a précis of Noah’s Daily Show so far: something that looks like The Daily Show, that mugs and winks like The Daily Show, but that has only a diluted point of view.

If you suspect that there is something more substantial to say about Sanders than that he talks funny, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart agrees. Stewart’s Daily Show did a segment on Sanders when he first announced his candidacy in May. It began with a clip reel of pundits disparaging Sanders as a whack job, as Stewart, talking fast, his voice pitched high, breathlessly ranted, “If Salvador Dalí and Dr. Seuss had a child and that child was raised by schizophrenic howler monkeys, it would be Bernie Sanders. Give me a taste of this crazy wacko cuckoo bird,” throwing to a clip of a Sanders sharing his policy positions, which include pay equity for women, campaign finance reform, and expanded social security. “What a … rational, slightly left-of-center mainstream politician,” Stewart said. “Bernie [isn’t] a crazy-pants cuckoo bird, it’s that we’ve all become so accustomed to stage-managed focus-group–driven candidates that authenticity comes across as lunacy.” This segment was taped in May, when Sanders’ campaign seemed like a hippie fantasy and Trump’s candidacy the fever dream of a feral child raised on nothing but reruns of The Apprentice, Rambo, and Dave. Yet it’s astute about the connection between Sanders and Trump, while also being prescient about why both have turned out to be viable candidates: One voter’s lunatic is another’s truth teller. Trevor Noah, comparing Sanders and Trump, called out their devotion to silent h’s simply to make a joke. But Stewart, without even trying, illuminated why those h’s are more than merely funny: To many Americans, those are the silent h’s of authenticity.