The Daily Show gets to the bottom of the MSNBC-Eric Swalwell #Fartgate mystery

© Screenshots/YouTube/The Daily Show, The Tonight Show Late night tackles Fartgate

Washington was consumed with Day 3 of the impeachment hearings on Tuesday, but "there's an even bigger scandal rocking D.C. today, and — just a warning — if you have small children at home, you should probably bring them over to the TV to watch this," Trevor Noah said on Tuesday's Daily Show. "This" was a clip of Rep. Eric Swalwell's (D-Calif.) Monday night interview on MSNBC's Hardball being interrupted by what sounded an awful lot like very loud flatulence.

"That was a fart on live TV, and it was a loud fart, too," Noah cringed. He played it again. "Yeah, that was unmistakably a giant fart," he said, adding that to be fair to Swalwell, "it could have been the host, Chris Matthews. In fact, this is the viral argument that everyone has been talking about online: Who let it rip?" MSNBC blamed it on a mug scraping across the desk and Swalwell claimed "TOTAL EXONERATION!" Correspondent Desi Lydic didn't buy it. Along with his body language, "Swalwell's quick denial is the biggest tell of all," she said. "Might I remind you, Trevor, that the law says: 'He who denied it, supplied it.' It's right there in the Constitution."

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Stephen Colbert had the same joke on The Late Show.

Congressman Swalwell, you claim you didn’t even hear it? Now we KNOW it was you. That was established as admissible evidence in this landmark court decision. #fartgate #LSSC pic.twitter.com/llXP4zaV7M

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) November 20, 2019

Though that joke apparently never made it out of rehearsal.

Goodnight, everyone! #RehearsalRewind #LSSC pic.twitter.com/8Ohojl8jFp

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) November 20, 2019

The Tonight Show's Jimmy Fallon ran with it, a little sheepishly. "The other big political story is that the hashtag #Fartgate was trending yesterday after people thought Rep. Eric Swalwell may have passed gas on live TV," he said. "I guess we finally know who the whistleblower is." He showed other poorly timed TV farts and managed to work in Baby Yoda. Watch below.

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