“Let me get this straight,” Trevor Noah said on Tuesday night’s The Daily Show after going through President Trump’s reckless budget plan. “The Trump administration will defend Putin, white supremacists, and sexual assault. But delivering food to old people—that shit’s immoral?”
Noah was, of course, referring to Trump’s proposed slashing of the federal Meals on Wheels program, which budget director Mick Mulvaney curiously said is “not showing any results” and should be left to states to fund. That such a compassionate, straightforward program could come under fire in Trump’s America is, unfortunately, a grim indication of where things could soon be headed. But together with correspondent Roy Wood Jr., Noah and the Daily Show team came to a potentially innovative solution: Militarize Meals on Wheels, and trick President Trump into thinking it’s just another (unnecessary) boost to defense.
Wood Jr. unveiled Meal Team 6, a new unit with the task of delivering meals in a timely and orderly fashion—a more difficult task than you might imagine. “It’s our duty to get this food into these people’s homes and their bellies, and it’s not easy,” Wood Jr. explained. “They got a lot of doors. They got cats. Some of them need their food before Jeopardy! starts.”
Sneaking around homes and delivering food quietly, without drawing attention to themselves, could Meal Team 6 energize this longstanding federal program with new strategies? Probably not. “Why can’t they just ring the doorbell?” Peter, a 74-year-old Vietnam vet and Meals on Wheels recipient, asked after his food was shot through his glass window. “I’m always home.”
Sorry, Peter, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
