Michael Kosta brings a whiteboard to Maine's second-cousin debate
Ronny Chieng's midterm segment also takes in Trump's lake renaming and a Tim Scott tribute he plays as a crush.
The Daily Show
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Trump Is Hot for Tim Scott & Susan Collins Side-Eyes Troy Jackson's Second Cousin | The Daily Show
Video summary
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- 0:00Ronny Chieng opens "Indecision 2026: The Midyssey" with the Michigan Senate debate between El-Sayed and Rogers.
- 1:08News clips report Democrats competing in red states, including Mississippi, where Trump goes to campaign.
- 3:30Trump's rally riff on renaming lakes, rivers and oceans.
- 4:58Trump says he falls in love with Tim Scott, and Chieng treats it as romance.
- 5:50Susan Collins raises Troy Jackson's family while saying she won't; a crude radio ad follows.
- 8:20Michael Kosta reports from Bar Harbor, Maine, with his cousin-dating whiteboard equation at 11:34.
Michael Kosta arrives in Bar Harbor with a whiteboard and a task nobody gave him: proving, by equation, whether a person may date their cousin. "That's totally legal in America," he assures Ronny Chieng. When Chieng looks unconvinced, Kosta snaps back: "Jesus, Ronny, read a book!"
The setup comes from Maine's Senate race. Susan Collins says she is "not going to bring up" the fact that Democrat Troy Jackson's partner is his second cousin, and brings it up in the same breath. Chieng follows with a radio ad on the same theme, which he singles out for its crudeness, before handing over to Kosta's mock field report.
Maine is where the segment ends. It opens under the show's long-running election banner, this year titled "Indecision 2026: The Midyssey." Chieng starts with the Michigan Senate debate between Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers. Then he turns to Mississippi, where reports of a close race between Scott Colom and Cindy Hyde-Smith have brought Trump to campaign.
The rally footage supplies two detours. One is Trump on renaming bodies of water: "I only like two oceans: the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean." The other is a tribute Chieng plays as a crush: "I fall in love with him, and his name happens to be Tim Scott."
About 1.8 million views came in since yesterday, and comments arrived nearly three times faster than on the show's usual first day. Much of that conversation circles Collins's not-bringing-it-up moment and the tone of Maine's attack ads.
The same day's uploads also previewed Jordan Klepper's new special, Fingers the Pulse: Red Flags, in which he asks Trump supporters to define communism.
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💡 Test your knowledge
Bar Harbor, where Michael Kosta files his report, is the gateway to which national park?
Bar Harbor sits on Mount Desert Island in Maine, most of which belongs to Acadia National Park.