True Detective Jon Stewart Attempts to Solve the Mystery of Donald Trump's Popularity

Though he gave a proper tease of his possible full-time return to stand-up with an impromptu set at the Comedy Cellar on Wednesday, outgoing Daily Show host Jon Stewart wasted no time getting back to the task at hand on Thursday — the exponentially baffling rise of Donald "Troll Me Harder" Trump (as previously stated, "Troll Me Harder" copyright is quite pending).

No stranger to the Trump dance, Stewart asked viewers to join him on a "trip back in time" to 2012 — to an era in which "Lincoln taught everyone that slavery was bad" and "Carly Rae Jepsen suggested we call her but, of course, made it clear we didn't necessarily have to." Meanwhile, remembers Stewart, Republicans took "an old-fashioned electoral clobbering." Stewart then shows a now-hilarious reel of various Republicans promising internal changes in a party-wide attempt at appealing to people other than WORMs — i.e. White Old Rich Men (again — copyright definitely pending, so step off).

Of course, as Stewart makes quite clear and as your own eyes have surely shown you, the Republican attempt at inclusion has ironically (and with a fine-tuned sense of karma) birthed the fascinatingly doofus-driven rise of Trump. "People like him are supposed to buy the candidates," says Stewart, "not be them." Trump, the "living embodiment of everything Republicans were trying to exorcize from their party," is the candidate the party deserves — and, in some sick and twisted way, he just might be the candidate they actually want.