Jon Stewart has made headlines this week with his critique of Democrats, but he offered a scathing take on Donlad Trump this week, too, while appearing on “The Bill Simmons Podcast.”
“The Daily Show” host ripped the president’s lawsuit against CBS News and parent company Paramount, and said it is just Trump’s attempt to get corporations to grovel before him.
“What you are seeing now is all must pay tribute to the king,” Stewart said.
Trump initially sued CBS News and Paramount for $10 billion over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris in the run up to the 2024 election. The lawsuit has since been upped to $20 billion, per Fox.
Paramount owns Comedy Central, which Stewart’s show airs on. He said he planned to continue to host the show “until, you know, the company is brought out by the people that don’t want anything to do with ‘The Daily Show.’
“And then who the (expletive) knows what’s going to happen,” Stewart said. “I mean, look what they’re doing now to ’60 Minutes’ and CBS News and everything else.”
Simmons said that media pundits were “in an area now that we’ve never been in my lifetime.”
“Oh, it’s insane,” Stewart said.
“Now you can make comments about, ‘Well I think I didn’t like the way (60 Minutes) edited it’ in the way that oftentimes people don’t like the way they edited it. But it certainly doesn’t rise to the level of libel, slander, or whatever the (expletive) else they’re doing with a $2 billion lawsuit.”
Stewart said that CBS News’ editing of the Harris interview was a “purely subjective editorial decision.” He also called out other networks for cooperating with Trump, referring to that as “bribery.”
“And the price of peace is different,” he said. “You know, ABC had to pay $15 million. Bezos had to pay $40 million for a documentary on Melania. Zuckerberg had to pay — they just put money into the pot, so hopefully they don’t get … what does that remind you of?”
“Michael Corleone,” Simmons said.
“Right,” Stewart said. “It’s protection money.
“So ultimately, at the end of this, does Trump burn our (expletive) country down for insurance money? Like where are we headed?”
