Late Night: For Jon Stewart, Trump a gift from the comedy gods

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He’s baaaack!

Just as the general election campaign was getting underway this week, reality star Donald Trump emerged from whatever gold-plated cage he’s been hiding in for the last few months to try, once again, to revive the “birther” controversy.

While most of us just rolled our eyes at Trump’s latest round of grandstanding -- which included a heated interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and a tweet calling conservative pundit George Will the “dumbest political commentator of all time” -- Jon Stewart welcomed the return of the Donald.

PHOTOS: Donald Trump’s famous feuds

Until this week, Stewart had been concerned that the two-man race between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama would be a tedious slog, unlike the three-ring circus of the Republican primary.

He needn’t have worried.

Stewart noted the fortuitous timing of Trump’s reemergence: “The comedy gods deliver. On the day Mitt Romney celebrates clinching the Republican nomination, he also holds a fundraiser with reality TV host and antique doll hair thief Donald Trump.”

For Stewart, the most amusing thing about Trump’s latest round of publicity-mongering was his refusal to answer any questions about President Obama’s allegedly suspicious birth certificate, only hours after he’d chastised the press for not asking these exact questions.

As Stewart put it, “No one’s mad enough to bring up the birther issue, and [bleep] you for bringing it up!”

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— Meredith Blake

twitter.com/MeredithBlake