Jon Stewart devoted a huge portion of Monday’s “The Daily Show” to media criticism, letting news outlets have it for how they have handled the GOP’s dishonest, conspiratorial response to Donald Trump’s felony conviction.
Rather than work to explain and contextualize “our shared experience,” media companies have instead allowed Republicans to speak outright lies and make veiled and not-so-veiled threats without any real pushback. “News media has decided that there’s really no such thing as reality,” Stewart argued.
You can watch the full segment at the top of the page.
Stewart began by recapping not only the verdict — Trump being convicted on all counts in his New York City business fraud trial — but also how Democrats and Republicans have responded. And in particular, how Republicans have made baseless claims that the trial was somehow orchestrated by President Joe Biden, while also claiming the justice system protects Democrats.
“God, the justice system hunts Republicans while protecting Democrats,” an exasperated Stewart said. “Someone should mention that to such unprotected Democrats as Senator Robert Menendez and Congressman Henry Cuellar, both facing corruption charges brought by our Department of Justice, not to mention Hunter Biden was facing jury selection in a federal gun charges trial, f—ing today.”
“Probably why you notice everyone on Fox and Friends this morning using pillows to cover their boners,” Stewart joked. He then ran several clips of Republicans making these false accusations while also vowing to get revenge, ending with one of Megyn Kelly using the possibility of a hypothetical Hillary Clinton investigation to argue Trump should not have been held accountable for his lawbreaking.
“Perhaps it is time for those on the right to begin to examine what it might be like to investigate Hillary and William Clinton, or perhaps to do it continuously and relentlessly for the last 30 years,” Stewart said with heavy sarcasm. “But, to admit their own political gamesmanship, their own attempts at weaponizing justice, their own relentless pursuit of opponents, their own dehumanizing rhetoric towards the left, would be to allow a molecule of reality into the airtight distortion field that has been created to protect MAGAdonian from the harsh glare of actuality.”
Stewart then took a few moments to look at an interview Fox held with Donald Trump over the weekend, in which Trump blatantly lied that he had never said “lock her up” or called for Hillary Clinton to be arrested. Notably three separate Fox journalists allowed this lie to pass unchallenged.
“The ‘Fox and Friends’ B-team is just sitting there, tanned and fit, healthy. And so, how did they get such good looking bunch, but there’s three of them. One of them didn’t remember he said, ‘lock them up.’ I can believe two of them didn’t remember. Three of them? And that, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, is why we need courts,” Stewart explained.
“Whatever flaws the American justice system has, and they are legion, especially for non-billionaire former presidents, it does appear to be the last place in America where you can’t just say whatever the you want, regardless of reality,” Stewart continued, adding that “Trump knows this better than anyone,” followed by footage of Trump demonstrating this.
“This is why the law and order right hates court procedures when applied to them,” Stewart said. “Courts are the last remaining guardrail that is a standard of evidentiary presentation. It is the last place where you have to prove what you say, and you see the difference in what they say out of court versus what they say in court.”
But, he continued, “the problem is that most of the time in this country, our political leaders are not in court. They are here on TV, where the news media has decided that there’s really no such thing as reality.” At that he ran clips of various media outlets asserting that Americans “live in two different realities” when it comes to various factual issues, rather than actually clarifying who is speaking factually.
Stewart joked that those reporters are “thinking of the multiverse,” rebutting that “we are all living in one reality, and it can be the news media’s job to litigate the parameters of said reality. What the courts do really well is look backwards and reconstruct the realities of what happened. The news media could do the same, but what they do instead is look forward and wildly speculate on the future.”
That, way, Stewart added, “when they say to you, I never said ‘lock her up,’ you can say ‘I object.’ F—ing do that,” Stewart shouted. “What is wrong with you?’
“You really want to ask speculative questions that nobody can answer? We’ll just create a show just for that. We’ll tighten it down to a half hour and call it ‘No One Knows,’ and you throw the polls and the horse race questions in there, and then with the other 23 and a half hours in the day, the other 7 days a week, you can present the evidence for our shared experience,” he said.
“Because court should be the option of last resort for our defined reality, not the only option for our defined reality. So listen up,” Stewart said, addressing the media directly. “We’ll give you a little gavel. You study all the evidence, no matter how tedious, and reach a conclusion, and then you can present those conclusions, and the audience us will be the ones doing like jury duty, willingly, without penalty of law or without trying to come up with any excuse to avoid having to do jury duty.”
“I think I’m seeing the flaw in my argument. Either way, it’s better than what we have now,” he concluded.
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