Jon Stewart headlined a special episode of The Daily Show on Thursday (September 18) night and, as expected, the 25-time Emmy winner reacted to the news that ABC suspended fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the midst of pressure from the Federal Communications Commission chair. Only, instead of addressing the issue head-on with a directly scathing monologue or thoughtful speech on censorship, Stewart took his uniquely satirical approach to the matter.
In the opening act of the episode (embedded above), Stewart spent 23 straight minutes cosplaying as a North Korea-style media sycophant of Donald Trump, shivering with unbridled enthusiasm for the president and finding kind words to say about every possible situation involving Trump.
Dubbing himself a “patriotically obedient host,” Stewart reacted to all of the highlights of Trump’s overseas visit to the United Kingdom — especially the most awkward moments of his state dinner with Great Britain’s royal family — with utter adulation.
“Father has been gracing England with his legendary warmth and radiance. Gaze upon him with a gait even more majestic than that of the royal horses that pranced before him, he wowed the English with charm, intelligence, and an undeniable sexual charisma that filled their air like a pheromone-packed London fog,” Stewart joked of Trump’s appearance. “And as part of this historic trip, the perfectly-tinted Trump dazzled his hosts at dinner with a demonstration of his unmatched oratory skill.”
Stewart continued the schtick of lavishing praise upon Trump for the next few minutes, pretending to be sheepishly afraid that he, too, might face the wrath of the administration’s FCC chair, before touching on the Kimmel situation directly… er, indirectly, as the case may be.
“Now the visit to England couldn’t have gone better for our president. Finally, a country affording our great leader the respect and deference that any sun god would command,” he said, before introducing a clip of a British journalist asking, “We saw the dismissal of a very well-known chat show host in America last night, Mr. Kimmel. Is free speech more under attack in Britain or America?” To that, Stewart responded with feigned outrage, “How dare you, sir?! How dare you, sir?! What outfit are you with, sir, the Antifa Herald Tribune? Why I wouldn’t even line my parrot’s cage with your rag. There’s a very reasonable explanation for what befell this scallywag, Kimmel.”
Stewart then played a clip of Trump reacting to the news himself to say, “Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago. So you know, you can call that free speech or not.”
After momentarily dropping the guise and yelling at Trump’s still image to “shut the f**k up,” Stewart resumed his subservient character performance to say, “You may call it free speech in jolly old England, but in America, we have little something called the First Amendment. And let me tell you how it works. It’s a completely scientific instrument that is kept on the president’s desk, and it tells the president when a performer’s TQ talent portion, measured mostly by niceness to the president, goes below a certain level, at which point the FCC must be notified to threaten the acquisition prospects for billion-dollar mergers of network affiliates. These affiliates are then asked to give ultimatums to the even larger mega corporation that controls the flow of state-approved content, or the FCC can just threaten those licenses directly. It’s basic science.”
Watch the above-embedded clip for Jon Stewart’s full opening segment on Thursday’s The Daily Show edition.