Jon Stewart returned to host Tuesday’s (July 16) edition of The Daily Show after Comedy Central shelved Monday’s episode, originally planned to broadcast from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“What a terrible f**king week,” Stewart said at the top of the show before sharing his thoughts on the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump and the decision not to air Monday’s show.
The host sarcastically mocked his own decision to return to The Daily Show to cover the 2024 election. “‘Hey Jon, come back to The Daily Show just for the election, it’ll be fun,’” he quipped. “’You can do one day a week, it’ll be a laugh. What could go wrong?’”
Stewart noted how they were meant to be doing this week’s shows from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee “but because of the attempt on the former president’s life, the venue in which we planned to do the show, a theater, which was originally located in the soft perimeter was shifted, understandably so, to the hard perimeter.”
“You really don’t want to be in the hard perimeter,” he continued. “It was locked down. They built cages around the theater, and because of that, we felt that we could not put on the theater shows effectively without… people.”
Stewart also praised the mayor of Milwaukee for being accommodating and gracious to the show and said he hoped they could reschedule an event there for the future. One event he is determined to still make happen is “Indogcision,” where “we get dogs adopted and people registered to vote.”
However, he gave the “biggest slice of praise” to the production team and crew for rescheduling and moving everything from Milwaukee to New York to get the show set up and ready in time for Tuesday night.
As for his thoughts on the shooting, Stewart said, “We dodged a catastrophe, but it was still a tragedy.”
He also paid his respects to firefighter Corey Comperatore, who died from the shooting. “He had given his life in service to his community and he died literally shielding his family,” Stewart explained. “He’s a reminder that in those moments of crisis, there are helpers, and we can all make a choice to try and be one of those people.”
The comedian also focused on the online reaction and conspiracies.
“It’s this pattern I feel like we now have in the country when we hear about a horrific event,” he said. “You’re on pins and needles in this sort of reverse demographic lottery to make sure that the psychopathic shooter doesn’t belong to one of your teams. You know, you just sit there going, ‘Please, no Democrats, no liberals, no progressives…’”
He added, “And we’re all doing it. We’re all doing it. Because we have to know what our posture will be on the tragedy: Will it be a haughty ‘I told you,’ or perhaps a circumspect, ‘Oh, let’s not rush to judgment. We shouldn’t generalize.’ And then it ends up being someone we can’t even f**king figure out in the first place.”
Stewart then brought on former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, someone with whom he has clashed throughout the years. O’Reilly last appeared on The Daily Show in 2014, when he and Stewart had a heated debate about race and white privilege.
“I like coming on here, in front of all of your friends out here — and the audience should know, I have no friends here,” O’Reilly said as he joined Stewart at the desk.
“Well, not just here,” Stewart quipped.
The debate this time around was friendlier, with the pair discussing the events that took place in Pennsylvania on Saturday (July 13). O’Reilly, who has written several books about the assassinations of presidents, said that every assassin or would-be assassin in American history has been mentally ill.
Stewart then brought up John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed President Abraham Lincoln, to which O’Reilly said, “Well, John Wilkes Booth was a fanatical conservative and racist who hated Lincoln.”
“Good thing that’s gone out of the country,” Stewart joked.
You can watch Stewart’s full opening monologue and debate with O’Reilly above.
The Daily Show, Weeknights, 11/10c, Comedy Central
