Jon Stewart hosted a rare mid-week episode of The Daily Show on Thursday evening, one day after ABC suspended fellow talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” over comments he made about the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Stewart, introduced as a “patriotically obedient host,” performed a satirical monologue about free speech, describing his program as “fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show.” He referred to Trump as “father” and “dear leader” as he jokingly praised the president and his recent state trip to the U.K.
“If you felt a little off these past couple of days, it’s probably because our great father has not been home, for father has been gracing England with his legendary warmth and radiance,” Stewart joked.
The episode comes amid public outcry over ABC’s decision to suspend Kimmel’s show. The decision was announced just hours after FCC Chair Brendan Carr said Kimmel’s remarks were “truly sick” and suggested ABC’s license could be at risk over it.
Former President Barack Obama criticized the administration for “threatening regulatory action against media companies,” while fellow talk-show host Stephen Colbert called ABC’s decision “blatant censorship” on Thursday.
During the monologue, Stewart rolled clips of false statements made on Fox News, including Tucker Carlson’s claim that the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 were largely “peaceful” and “sightseers.”
“That last roll of clips, all true. Especially that last one about sightseers, because technically, anything you see is a sight,” Stewart said.
The monologue also featured satirized newscasters from The Daily Show speaking in unison.
“Americans are free to express any opinion we want,” the group responded as the crowd laughed. “To suggest otherwise is laughable, ha ha ha.”
After the opening monologue, Stewart interviewed Maria Ressa, a journalist and author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator. Ressa won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for freedom of expression in her home country of the Philippines.
Ressa and Stewart spoke about her work on free speech and the dangers of disinformation spreading online.
“By design, these platforms spread lies. Social media spreads lies, by a 2018 MIT study, at least six times faster,” Ressa told Stewart. “So by design, lies spread faster.”
“That’s the incentive — and then in 2017 we saw in our country, in the Philippines, that if you lace it with fear, anger and hate, it can go viral,” she added. “That’s the incentive structure. So that was used to attack us. Now imagine if you’re pumped full of … toxic sludge. Online violence is real-world violence.”
Stewart went on to ask Ressa about people who are now “living on eggshells on the whims of one man.”
“It’s like Americans are like deer in headlights,” Reesa responded. “But if you don’t move and protect the rights you have, you lose them, and it’s so much harder to reclaim them.”
Ressa went on to say there are two ways one could describe the current moment: “Is this an information apocalypse, or is this an information armageddon?”
“Because I’m optimistic, I chose armageddon,” she said. “Think about it, the apocalypse is done, it’s the end of the world. But, armageddon is the battle. This is the battle.”
