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The Elephant in the Room During Tomi and Trevor’s Debate

Thomas J. Eckert

If you’ve been on Facebook during the past few days, you’ve probably seen posts about last Wednesday’s episode of The Daily Show. The Daily Show’s host, Trevor Noah, held an interview with Tomi Lahren, a contributor for the conservative news source, TheBlaze, and is widely known for her rambunctious monologues during her Final Thoughts segment.

Seeing that Noah is a favorite among liberals, this was looked at as a momentous occasion. A modern Clash of the Titans for millennials who follow them. The two spent their time nitpicking the details of each other’s principles, while throwing in some playful banter for entertainment. After the back and forth was finished, Trevor was considered by the viewers to have won by managing to keep Tomi on the defensive for much of the interview. Although keeping it civil, they both concluded they hardly agree on anything, but I’d like to revisit that claim.

If you re-examined their beliefs, you’d find that not only are they in line on multiple issues, but they are opposite sides of the same coin.

This requires an objective lens to perceive, something that is rarely used when celebrities discuss politics. It stares us in the face like an elephant in the room, but ironically, it’s the one thing they never seem to notice or discuss in their painstakingly detailed critiques of one another. Allow me to state just a few examples.

When it comes to defending our rights, they’re both on the same page. Tomi would never ask you to give up your First Amendment rights, provided it doesn’t jeopardize her feelings of patriotism. For Trevor’s opinion, all that’s needed is to take the words “first” and “patriotism” out of the last sentence, swap them with “Second” and “safety,” and you’ve nailed it.

They’re even more related when accepting children as casualties; so long as it’s paraded around as representative of freedom. Trevor, valiantly cheering the abortion of more than 750,000 children per year as empowerment of women. Tomi meanwhile, defending the 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children from our involvement in the Middle East as just costs of U.S. freedom. Perhaps those two do have some things they can agree on after all.

There’s even instances of them using the same words regarding the same issues.

Trevor reveled in his brilliance when conservatives put up a “Muslims go home” sign in a store window, scoffing that “maybe that’s all the airports need is a sign that says ‘No Terrorists,’ yes?” While Tomi also used that argument when liberals thought that “terrorists” listened to signs after the San Bernardino shootings. Yet, if you told Trevor that signs don’t stop mass shootings, his head would explode as fast as Tomi’s after hearing that bathroom signs don’t stop sexual predators. You see? Take a few steps back and it looks more like they should host a show together, rather than debate one another.

It seems that all we really have is the illusion of choice. We’re fed news segments where we’re told the real argument is whether the top tax bracket should be 35% or 39%, and that this is differing viewpoints. As Tom Woods would say, there is an approved index card of allowable opinion in today’s media, and anyone with beliefs outside that spectrum is either laughed off or overlooked. That’s not representing differences, that’s two siblings arguing politics, even though they’ve both formed their philosophy solely off what they’ve heard their parents say.

It’s for that reason people like myself aren’t invited onto these shows. Our values are formed outside of where we’re told to pay attention to, and won’t be found on their index card. The good news for Tomi and Trevor though? If they ever do decide to host a show together, at least they’ll know where to look for an actual difference of opinion.

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Thomas J. Eckert

Thomas J. Eckert is the Managing Editor of Think Liberty and Copy Editor for Being Libertarian. With a passion for politics, he studies economics and history and writes in his spare time on political and economic current events. He is a self-described voluntarist.
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