Italian
Jon Stewart used the latest episode of his “Weekly Show” podcast (via The Daily Beast) to criticize the media for getting Americans scared about Donald Trump‘s second term as president before it’s even begun.
“The Daily Show” host said America is in a “transitional period where we are not sure about whether the ground we are standing on is solid” and noted how the media is only stoking more fear by being “convinced that we are the Roadrunner and the Coyote and the Coyote has run over the cliff, and we just looked down and realized there’s nothing under our feet and now we are plunging to our deaths.”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen when Donald Trump takes over,” Stewart said, adding that American should be “prepared for all outcomes” but “I don’t know how helpful it is to get us shitting our pants this much, this early.”
Popular on Variety Stewart is often critical when it comes to how the media covers Trump. During Trump’s hush money trial in April, Stewart slammed the media for reporting on all the “mundane bullshit” from the trial as if it was “earth shattering news.” He encouraged the press at the time to “limit the coverage to the issues at hand and try not to create an all-encompassing spectacle of the most banal of details.”
“What the fuck are we doing?” Stewart asked.. “Look! At some point in this trial, something important and revelatory is going to happen. But none of us are going to notice because the hour spent on his speculative, facial tics. If the media tries to make us feel like the most mundane bullshit is Earth shattering, we won’t believe you when it’s really interesting. It’s your classic boy-who-cried-Wolf… Blitzer.”
At the end of October following Trump’s controversial rally at Madison Square Garden, which featured comedian Tony Hinchcliffe making a divisive joke about Puerto Rico, Stewart told the media not to get carried away by focusing on the joke so much and thus ignoring Trump himself.
“The media is focused on the terrible jokes that were made. Focus on Trump, who would have the power,” Stewart said in a new interview with Vanity Fair. “Focus on the guy going, ‘I’m going to deport everybody using the law we used to intern Japanese people.’”
Listen to Stewart’s most recent episode of the “Weekly Show” podcast here.
