Jon Stewart was back in “The Daily Show” anchor chair on Monday night, where he got to celebrate the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel to massive applause from his Comedy Central audience.
“Young Jimmy Kimmel’s coming back to television,” he began the episode. “That campaign that you all launched pretending that you were going to cancel Hulu, while secretly racing through four seasons of ‘Only Murders in the Building?’ That really worked. Congratulations.”
“Wasn’t it interesting to try to figure out all the tentacles Disney has in your daily life? It’s one thing to swear off cruises, but Avengers? How is it possible that by getting rid of one company, I can’t watch ‘Winnie the Pooh’ or Monday Night Football’ or listen to early Hilary Duff?” Stewart continued. “It was rather shocking that this turnaround occurred, because I was told that the original decision to get rid of Jimmy had nothing to do with the Trump administration and their explicit FCC threat that they could remove the show the easy way or the hard way.”
At that, multiple news clips began playing of Trump’s administration and other public supporters downplaying the president’s involvement in getting his political opponents jailed, fired and/or canceled.
“Now, most people would think that a president ordering his independent Department of Justice to go after his political opponents is weaponizing the Department of Justice. That’s why most people don’t work in this administration,” Stewart continued. “At this point, it’s so blatantly an abuse of power, and yet his defenders continue to reframe this as refreshing.”
“I just want to say this to Trump’s defenders: You don’t have to bend over backwards trying to make Trump’s authoritarian power grabs seem like the rule of law; he does not give a f–k anymore, he’s saying it straight up,” he said in conclusion. “Trump is saying, ‘The people like dictators,’ Trump is saying, ‘I hate my opponents and I want them punished,’ and Trump is saying, ‘I’ll use all the leverage of government at my disposal to accomplish that goal.’ So you can get on board with that and say I’m with that, or you can join the rest of us and fight like hell for this Constitutional republic.”
Indeed, the Walt Disney Company ended Kimmel’s six-day indefinite suspension on Monday: “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
Last week, Stewart stepped in for host Desi Lydic on an atypical Thursday night episode following Wednesday’s news of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” being preempted
“From Comedy Central. It’s the all new government-approved ‘Daily Show’ with your patriotically obedient host, Jon Stewart,” the episode began. It was followed by an entire half-hour long bit in which “TDS” was reimagined as a state-run propaganda farm with plenty of praise for Trump and his allies.
“We have another fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show,” the comedian further joked. “I’m coming in tonight from a real s—thole, the crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster like no one’s ever seen before. Someone’s National Guard should invade this place. Am I right?”
“I don’t know who this ‘Johnny Dribble Live’ ABC character is, but the point is, our great administration has laid out very clear rules on free speech,” Stewart said in conclusion last week. “Now some naysayers may argue that this administration’s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smokescreen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation, principle-less and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance. Some people would say that. Not me, though. I think it’s great!”
