Trevor Noah, Larry Wilmore slam Rupert Murdoch for ‘crazy’ ‘racist’ Ben Carson tweet

Rupert Murdoch was widely criticized Thursday for an ill-advised tweet about Republican candidate Ben Carson implying that Obama was not a “real black president.” And nowhere was the condemnation louder than at Comedy Central, where hosts Trevor Noah and Larry Wilmore had a field day at the expense of the aging media titan.

At “The Daily Show,” Noah, who’s familiar with being in the middle of a Twitter firestorm, feigned sympathy with Murdoch over the tweet, which read “Ben and Candy Carson terrific. What about a real black President who can properly address the racial divide? And much else.”

“Look, man, I know what it’s like to be young and crazy on Twitter,” he said. “You start to crave those faves and you don’t care how you get them/ you’ll hopefully stop making mistakes like this.”

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour >>

After joking that perhaps Murdoch had a rare form of insomnia that could only be cured by “vaguely racist tweets,” Noah observed, “This whole time, conservatives have been accused of disliking Obama because he’s too black. Now it turns out the problem is he isn’t black enough.”

Using a slang derivation of the N-word, he added, “Well, at least according to my ... Rupert Murdoch.”

At 11:30 p.m. on “The Nightly Show,” Wilmore was more outraged than amused as he unpacked Murdoch’s tweet — a.k.a. “this 140-character putdown from an almost 140-year-old character.”

“I haven’t seen that much racism packed into one vehicle since Amistad came to America,” Wilmore said. “He blames one black man for not properly addressing the racial divide, and he does it by racially dividing him with another man — brilliant!”

Wilmore also took issue with Murdoch’s use of the phrase “real black.”

“There are a few things that are ‘real black.’ An 8 ball, the dead of night and the bull... definition white people made up to subjugate an entire group of people,” he said.

Wilmore also wondered why it should be up to black people, and specifically President Obama, to heal the racial divide, as Murdoch’s tweet seemed to imply.

“How do you think the racial divide started?” he asked, noting that black people weren’t responsible for any of the things (slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynchings) that created the problem in the first place.

“That’s what caused the racial divide, so why is it up to us to begin to heal it? You had 43 presidents who had a chance to clean up that mess. Now there’s a brother in the White House, and you’re handing him a mop?”

Let’s just say Wilmore made it clear what he thought of that idea.

You can watch the clips here and here.

Follow @MeredithBlake on Twitter.

MORE FROM ENTERTAINMENT:

First Impression: The Beatles’ ‘1/1+’ delivers something new

‘Jay Leno’s Garage’ premiere was most watched in CNBC history

Justin Bieber upset by unauthorized full-frontal nudes; his dad, not so much