President Donald Trump is basking in a rare moment of praise from a perennial thorn in his side who he once called “a wiseguy with no talent” and “the most overrated joke on television” — The Daily Show host Jon Stewart.
Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday to amplify a clip of Stewart’s most recent turn hosting the Monday edition of the long-running program in which the comedian started his monologue by giving Trump “credit where credit is due” for having done “a solid over the weekend.”
Stewart was referring to Trump’s surprise Saturday morning Oval Office appearance alongside podcaster Joe Rogan, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Texas congressman and ex-Navy SEAL Morgan Luttrell and other MAGA-aligned personalities and administration officials, at which Trump signed an executive order intended to “accelerate medical treatments for serious mental illness” using psychedelic drugs.
Such substances, such as Ibogaine and MDMA, have long been thought to have benefits for people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder but they have also been nearly impossible to access because they are banned under federal drug laws in most cases.
Stewart quipped that Trump “signed an executive order in front of his fraternity brothers, fast-tracking the FDA process for novel psychedelic drug treatments for veterans suffering from all forms of PTSD and other psychiatric conditions, including addiction.”
He then played a clip of Trump awkwardly pronouncing the name of the drug “ibogaine” before stopping himself and apologizing for “falling into hold habits” by mocking the president.
“It’s good. You did a good thing. I’m nitpicking. I apologize. A lot of the people are going to get the help they need,” he said.
Stewart’s kind words for the president’s executive action were a sharp contrast to many of the things Trump has said about him over the years.
The 47th president was a frequent target for the comedian’s mockery when he was in the midst of his first campaign for the presidency against Hillary Clinton, and Trump more often than not responded in kind, usually on his Twitter account in the wee hours of the morning.
Over a three-day period from May 30 to June 1 in 2015, Trump posted about Stewart nine separate times, referring to him as “a dummy,” “a joke,” as well as “not very bright and totally overrated.”
He also poked fun at the comedian’s use of “Stewart” as a stage name in place of his family name, Leibowitz, in a tweet in which he claimed he “would never” attack the Daily Show host for “his phony last name” even though it is an alternative spelling of his middle name, Stuart.
But Thursday’s Truth Social post was not the only time he has amplified an instance of Stewart giving him plaudits for something that he’s done as president.
According to CQ Roll Call’s FactBase archive of Trump’s social media output, he tweeted — then deleted — a retweet of a post by a Twitter user @rcale1776 which quoted Stewart as saying Trump’s first-term justice department had done “an excellent job administering the 9/11 compensation act.”
