On November 10, you went on The Daily Show and spoke very honestly and poignantly about what you were worried about. You said you were panicking. Are you still panicking?

I have dealt with all my different stages of political grief at this point, so I am not panicking as much as I am maintaining a sense of quote-unquote political wokeness. Like, be aware of what's happening around you. Don't just be worried about Mr. Orange coming in to take the seat in the White House. That's not what it's about. It's also about the people that he’s surrounding himself with, who are going to exploit his lack of knowledge and expertise of government. That’s the thing I think most Americans need to be highly aware of. It's not just Donald Trump, it's the Bannons, it's the Ben Carsons, it's the people around him in the G.O.P. who are going to exploit his stupidity to get their agenda done. We have a narcissistic puppet. So as long as you tell the narcissistic puppet that he's not a puppet, that he's a really smart and powerful puppet, he’s totally cool with whatever’s being done.

“I think that Trump tapped into this really ugly combination of three things: ignorance, anger, and fear. He tapped into that and packaged it under the banner of patriotism.”

So it’s less worrying about Trump being a loose cannon, and more worrying about him being pushed around by even more evil, more efficacious politicians?

The thing that bothers me the most is the gall that the Paul Ryans and the people around him, having been Never Trumpers, and then all of a sudden saying, “Let's see what he has to say.” I think that sort of normalization of [Trump] is being masked under the guise of patriotism. To me, calling those astute politicians out on their bullshit is the most important thing. We shouldn't get lost in the bombastic tweets of Trump. He provides such great fodder every day. You don't want to lose sight of the other stuff that's going on that’s even more important.

How do you push aside the daily insanity?

We do everything we can on the show to eat our political vegetables. [Trump] provides such great candy. I mean, his New Year's tweet, which seemed like it was a tweet out of Mean Girls. Like you compare what Barack Obama tweeted coming into the new year and what he tweeted coming in the New Year. But it's assigning only 140 characters of brain RAM to that, and then understanding that there's all of Capitol Hill to focus on. I think we're doing everything we can to take a closer look at the Mitch McConnells, the Trey Gowdys, the Paul Ryans—the people who were in the G.O.P. masquerading, saying, “We never wanted Trump, and we're doing everything we can to make this situation work.” Meanwhile, these cards are being dealt underneath the table. It's us keeping our eyes on that.

Have you guys at The Daily Show found it challenging to pile comedy on top of Trump? He’s kind of parody-proof. It’s impossible to find a punchline that’s more insane than the real thing.

That scares me a little bit, man. That idea that he's so doubled down on who he is that he's become the comedic Teflon Don, where he just can't be touched. Even at his New Year's party, the things that he was saying on stage: Just riffing off the top of the dome while he's standing next to a guy—I think the guy’s name was Joey No Socks? Like, an old mafia dude. His New Year's speech literally looked like a scene out of the movie Casino. Nothing's going to shock me at this point, and that's concerning. My biggest hope is that we do everything we can, because the rhetoric of the country has become so divisive, to place the importance on facts again. My goal, personally, is to do that in the most empathetic way possible. Van Jones was on the show recently, and Van has done such an excellent job in reaching across the aisle. For the longest time, our show and so many other political-satire shows did everything we could to show the American people, you can't vote for this guy. I called him “white ISIS” and it didn't work! I think now the job is, instead of calling the people that support [Trump] foolish or stupid or racist, there has to be some sort of middle ground where partisanship comes off the table and we can collectively agree that, hey—this isn't for the benefit of our country, whatever political team you're on.