Jon Stewart Defends Trump
Jon Stewart, former host of The Daily Show, recently weighed in on the media’s coverage of President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming presidency, suggesting that much of the current speculation could be unnecessarily alarmist and potentially counterproductive. Stewart, no fan of Trump, questioned whether the intense fear-mongering we’re seeing in the media is doing more harm than good, especially when no one can truly predict the future.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen when Donald Trump takes office. Unfortunately, we can’t see into the future, but we have to be prepared for all possibilities. I’m not sure how helpful it is to be panicking this much, this early,” Stewart remarked on The Weekly Show podcast.
He added, “But I suppose it’s always good to stay on top of things.”
Stewart also criticized the media’s handling of Trump’s transition, reflecting on what he saw as an overly dramatic narrative. He compared the current situation to a scene from Looney Tunes, where the character Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff and only realizes mid-air that there’s nothing below him. In Stewart’s view, the media has portrayed the country as being in freefall, even though we’re still in a period of transition, not a point of crisis.
“Everything feels like we’re about to plunge to our doom,” Stewart quipped, referencing the Coyote and Road Runner cartoon, while poking fun at the overly sensational tone of media coverage.
He also acknowledged the irony of Trump pushing some policy goals that Stewart himself had advocated for during his career, such as government reform. “It’s a strange thing, seeing someone I’ve criticized now taking up some of the same ideas I’ve been calling for. But I guess that’s what happens when you lose an election—you don’t get to dictate the terms anymore.”
Despite his distaste for Trump, Stewart recognized that with the shift in power, the political landscape is now in the hands of the winners. “That’s what elections are,” he concluded. “When you lose, you don’t get to call the shots.”
