Jon Stewart Very Sorry He Believed His Own Both-Sides Bullsh*t

He thought Trump would go fascist authoritarian at a more moderate pace!

Photo by Nihal Karkala on Unsplash

Jon Stewart finally noticed in Monday Night’s “The Daily Show” that Donald Trump is actually far worse than Jon Stewart thought he could be. This is a tiny improvement over the Jon Stewart who in December devoted a lot of air time to saying it was hypocritical and bad politics for Joe Biden to pardon his son Hunter going back 11 years, even for “crimes [he] may have committed. I’m surprised Biden didn’t include the phrase ‘on Earth 1 or any of the Earths in the multiverse.’”

Stewart said in that monologue, “Hypocrisy isn’t illegal. Nor is it particularly unusual in politics. It’s not like he’s ever going to run again, so why not take care of your kid, even if you said weren’t gonna. I respect it, I don’t have a problem with it.” But wow, that sure made Democrats look stupid for upholding Biden’s (previous) principled refusal to pardon his son as proof that Democrats Respect The Rule Of Law. So awful!

Stewart could have possibly devoted a few lines to the lead-pipe certainty that Dictator-elect Trump would go after Biden’s family and other “enemies,” many of whom Biden also went on to preemptively pardon. Also Leonard Peltier, at long last. Boy, that Biden, only helping his family and allies and people who, without the pardons (or perhaps even with them), might soon be on their way to prison in El Salvador without a trial or even a hearing.

Still, Trump’s eagerness to send people to foreign prisons for the rest of their lives, even in error, even potentially including American citizens, with no hope of return or release, was enough for Stewart to spend last night’s A-block examining the many ways in which Trump has ticked off most of the boxes on the “is this guy an autocrat?” checklist:

As an aside, and not really the focus of the segment, Stewart apologized a little for having failed to see the train wreck when it was coming, even with all those sparks flying out from the wheels and the flashing alarms and the screams from everyone — on the train and off — who saw it going off the rails.* Here’s that bit, on its own:

“I did not think he would get this authoritarian this fast. I really didn't. I'm sorry. Who could have known? Maybe if someone out there had yelled at me on Bluesky about this, I would have known. But no one did. Except every day. In all caps.”

So okay, apology, as far as it goes, accepted. Kudos also to Stewart for observing that as Trump and Salvadoran President Bukele joked about throwing people in prison to be tortured forever: “They’re fucking enjoying this. The two of them.” The disgust was palpable, and the segment made the very easy case that Trump isn’t just adopting authoritarian policies but also the full Dictator Aesthetic, including patent absurdities like the claim that Trump is once again in the greatest physical and mental shape of any president ever.

But Stewart still doesn’t get it. He thinks Dictator Dumbfuck is too inept to throw everybody in prison when he already is. At the end of the authoritarian checklist, Stewart joked that Trump falls badly short as an authoritarian in the category of “ruthless competence,” because here is a video montage of all the reversals and incompetence surrounding the rollout of his tariffs, aviation disasters, the measles outbreaks and all that. Stewart joked, “So close!”

But the segment didn’t end there, and here’s where Stewart got weird: I’ll repeat this bit, cued to Stewart’s mock “advice” for the great dictator:

Stewart suggested to Dear Leader that the “authoritarian bargain” — the disappearances and the elimination of democracy, the crackdowns on imaginary enemies — will only be accepted by proles if the autocrat can “make shit work.” The planes don’t even need to run on time, just don’t have them crashing, he said, but also

You can take over Greenland, demonize Canada, dominate the golfing pro circuit, but in return our children should be somewhat safe from most Victorian era diseases. We love our children. Especially The Rizzler

In reality, we shouldn’t be threatening Canada, and autocrats seldom make shit work for anyone but themselves and their selected backers, which is the far-right billionaire class, not so much the disposable MAGA faithful, so Stewart got that wrong. So close, as it were.

Instead, instinctually, Stewart got busy blaming the ineffective opposition, because God help him, he cannot help himself, joking that if Trump “keeps fucking this up, then

“some of these lawyers and universities and corporate leaders are going to start to think about suggesting, respectfully, to each other, in a very tightly controlled text chat, that someone should reach out to someone who knows someone in your
administration to express mild dissatisfaction. Because injustice anywhere is not something we mostly think about.”

Dang. Maybe Stewart could have noticed that Americans are already in the streets, DAILY. We don’t know whether the segment was taped before Harvard said Hell No, but there’s that as well. While some Big Law firms have rolled over and asked Trump to please let them do free work for him, others found their spines and are suing. Stewart wasn’t hosting when Cory Booker gave his galvanizing, record-breaking speech, but good on the Daily Show for pointing out that the media mostly worried about Booker’s bladder.

Is this a new, less both-sidesy Jon Stewart? We can hope, but he sure seems reluctant to see that the problem isn’t that we’re “polarized,” but that we’re under assault and maybe the problem isn’t that in the face of gathering fascism, some people are going overboard by burning some Teslas (which yeah yeah yeah, we condemn, but also it’s property damage, not sending people away forever to torture prisons). The problem is the fascism.

We sure hope Stewart can shake his dangerous belief — the centerpiece of his and Stephen Colbert’s 2010 “Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear” — that deep down, Americans are really just good people who want to get along and only need to be reminded they are decent, good people, if only the political media wouldn’t keep driving us apart. So much of that rally was about telling liberals that we needed to respect our fellow Americans, who simply have different beliefs, as reflected in the “protest signs” Stewart suggested:

“I disagree with you but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler,” and “Things are pretty OK,” and “What do we want? Moderation!!! When do we want it? In a reasonable time frame.”

Because we disagree with them, and guess what, they are Hitler. Damn right we’re still mad. But it was a pivotal moment in realizing that Jon Stewart was more David Brooks than any sort of progressive. We’ll keep watching, to see if he can do better.

Let’s just hope he doesn’t accept any dinner invitations to the White House.

OPEN THREAD.

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*This is a very subtle reference to Stewart’s false-equivalence trio of songs at the rally, where Sanity (not necessarily Barack Obama) was represented by “Peace Train,” then Fear (definitely the Tea Party) was the “Crazy Train,” and haha, everyone forgave each other and came together with “Love Train.” We’d forgotten that Kid Rock also sang a song lamenting that “I hear screamin’ on the Left / yellin’ on the Right / I’m sitting in the middle tryin to live my life,” and no, you won’t hear him singing that anywhere 15 years later.

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[Deadline / Guardian / Uproxx]

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