On Monday, CNN took a look at how the Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi became its “Senior Muslim Correspondent” (hard-hitting pieces on the “Terror Aisle,” for one) and allowed the comedian a chance to promote Today’s Special, a romantic comedy featuring a variety of Muslim characters.

On Thursday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart had a revelation to share — despite the soap operatic nature of the 2012 GOP nomination race (“some fine debate, dramatic story lines”) he has felt a certain “emptiness” in his life — a “mogul-shaped hole” in his heart. Finally, this morning, Stewart had some hope in the world, when news broke that Donald Trump was making a major announcement. “I haven’t been this happy to see an orange face again since the end of Finding Nemo!”

Mitt Romney was off to a bad start this morning, as he began the day telling CNN’s Soledad O’Brien that he was “not concerned about the very poor.” Jon Stewart happened upon this clip in horror, trying to understand what Romney was getting at. The best he could do was to imagine Romney as a doctor unconcerned about the “very sick because, you know, morphine.”

On Tuesday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart took notice of Mitt Romney‘s outreach to elderly voters while campaigning at The Villages, the largest gated retirement community in the country. “Mitt Romney is all over them like white on Mitt Romney,” Stewart cracked.

Jon Stewart came back from the weekend with little but the Florida primary to look forward too and a cluster of polls from various points of the Republican race that showed Mitt Romney in a heated battle with Newt Gingrich for the top spot. Such a heated battle, in fact, that Stewart compared the bloodbath to a level of Mortal Kombat, one that culminated with someone’s spine broken in a video game.

Newt Gingrich‘s moon mission idea got no love from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show Thursday night. Despite getting some earlier sympathy from astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson. Jon Stewart lit into him for having the audacity to propose such a lofty idea while dissing other candidate’s ideas as crazy. “A moon base?! Your solution to being accused of grandiosity is ‘give me eight years and I have have a f*cking moon base?!” Stewart seethed. “Did you start with Death Star and got kind of reigned in?”

The State of the Union address is a once-in-a-year opportunity for mockery for Jon Stewart. With the President going over his past successes and future plans, there was plenty to go over: The Osama Bin Laden opening, the large amounts of tax credits, and the bad joke that made the First Lady force an awkward smile.

On Tuesday night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart lambasted Mitt Romney over the controversy brewing over the Republican hopeful’s tax returns. “Exciting news!” Stewart exclaimed. “Mitt Romney’s 560 page 2010 tax return has been made public! It’s an exciting topic that in no way needs zazzing up. So let’s get right to it in tonight’s segment!” Stewart then blasted up on the screen a chyron screaming ‘Happy Clown Tax Jubilee!’

Jon Stewart came back from his weekend to find a pretty dramatic shift in the dynamics of the Republican primary. When he had left, Mitt Romney was a “juggernaut,” impossible to stop (see several movie posters Stewart apparently made to celebrate this fact). But now he’s back, and it’s all Newt Gingrich, all the time. And all because of a debate moment that makes Stewart completely flip out.

Appearing at a Winthrop University panel Thursday, NBC analyst Chuck Todd ripped into Stephen Colbert and his not-yet-official run, suggesting that Colbert might have some ulterior motives in the way he’s almost throwing his hat into the GOP primary ring:

Jon Stewart took a whack at the scandal brewing over the revelation that Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich asked his second wife for an “open marriage.” “Oh, oh, it’s the second of his three wives, Marianne! The Jan Brady of Mrs. Gingriches. The meat in his wife hoagie, the Empire Strikes Back of his wives. Who ends kind of sad but in retrospect is really the best one in some respects!”

Jon Stewart went on the internet today and found, to his horror, that he would be forced to “go to the library, like a common masturbator”– Wikipedia was down. Why? The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA– the bill that proposes to shut down websites that allegedly help facilitate media piracy. Stewart gave his run-down of what SOPA was, how Congress was deliberating it, and, finally, interviewed one of its “victims.”

Stephen Colbert has been very concerned about going to jail since he decided to explore a run for President of the United States (of South Carolina), so much so that he gave his SuperPAC to Jon Stewart and, apparently in complete non-coordination with each other, Colbert SuperPAC is going after Stephen Colbert. This time, the pro-Herman Cain ad stars Samuel L. Jackson, and blasts Colbert for “turning our election into a circus.”

On Tuesday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart lampooned the overzealous conservative audience during Monday’s South Carolina GOP Debate held on Martin Luther King Day. “The real star of the debate was the South Carolina audience who made some revealing laudatory choices.”

How Jon Stewart got chef Mario Batali to feed him an omelet “mother bird” style in order to make a statement about Stephen Colbert‘s SuperPAC, we may never know, but that it happened is a fact on film. The new president of Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow took to the stage today wearing a tiara and spending money on insane and useless things, much like other SuperPACs have done for candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, and was legally unable to tell Colbert anything about it.

On CNN’s Reliable Sources today, Howard Kurtz examined the latest details in the story of comedian Stephen Colbert and his former Super PAC. Many would dismiss his intent to run for president as a joke, but Kurtz wondered if there was an element of journalism in Colbert’s methods, for by highlighting the absurdity of the Super PAC process on his show week after week, Colbert is bringing more attention to how the world of politics changed after the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

Stephen Colbert isn’t even a candidate for the presidency yet, and he’s already attracting more attention than actual candidates. The comedian has been riding high ever since announcing his intentions last Thursday to form an exploratory committee to run for the presidency in South Carolina, and on the heels of a new ad released by the Jon Stewart-helmed Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC released late last night, Colbert sat down with George Stephanopoulos to talk about his chances of actually getting on the ballot and the influence of Super PACs on the political process.

It’s been less than four days since Colbert Super PAC changed hands from comedian Stephen Colbert to his colleague Jon Stewart and was renamed the Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC. Political analysts were wondering how long it would take for the new PAC to start airing ads in South Carolina. Well, wonder no more, because a new ad from the PAC targets Mitt Romney over his “corporations are people” comment.

Last night’s O’Reilly Factor began with a question near and dear to the heart of anyone trying to follow the 2012 race for the White House: “is the presidential election a joke?” Bill O’Reilly did not mean it in a colloquial way, however, but in the sense that comedians and pop culture had just as much of an effect on voting than substantive issues. To that end, O’Reilly asked, how would the overwhelmingly liberal swing of the media affect the way people perceive 2012 candidates?

Politics is a name game. It is about who you know– at least in the sense that knowing who the players are in this elaborate dance that defines how we govern ourselves as a nation is critical to successful analysis. And then there are anomalies like Tim Tebow, black holes of cable news time and energy that, through no fault of their own, become fault lines along our political geography.

On Thursday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart put Newt Gingrich on blast for being — in correspondent Wyatt Cenac‘s terminology — “condescending and dickish” to African-Americans, making reference to his remarks to the NAACP that they should “demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” “Here is the great thing about Newton Leroy Gingrich, he is not being defensive. He’s truly bewildered that he is taking sh*t for saying something so incredibly altruistic!”

In the aftermath of Republican hopeful Mitt Romney‘s overwhelming victory in New Hampshire, The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart was in awe of the former Massachusetts Governor’s success despite having no real enthusiastic fans. “He became the first Republican non-incumbent to win Iowa and New Hampshire while still having no one like him!” Stewart jabbed.

CNN’s new morning show Early Start has a segment where they call newspeople early in the morning as a surprise and get them live, possibly before they are awake. Needless to say, spontaneous segments have a way of going… awry, and Jon Stewart took a peek at just how wrong things can go– first, during a call to one of the Kennedys, and then mistakenly dialing the wrong number, then telling that person that they were talking to the FBI and not CNN.

Last week, Rush Limbaugh was one of the many predicting Newt Gingrich’s shots at Mitt Romney, the man he Gingrich believes ruined his front runner position, would only increase in intensity following Iowa. At the time, Gingrich seemed fine with the idea, pointing out that it would only end up helping Rick Santorum. However, the radio host clearly has not enjoyed the tenor of Gingrich’s attacks since then as he spent a large amount of today’s show absolutely lambasting the candidate and comparing him to such GOP-unfriendly entities as Occupy Wall Street, The New York Times, and Barack Obama.

Jon Stewart came into the office this Monday with four hours of Republicans shouting at each other to wade through, and the analysis of cable news pundits thereafter, given Saturday night’s Republican debate and the fact that Republicans “inexplicably reassembled at 9 AM for another debate.” There was much to talk about in these debates! Like what the candidates would be doing on Saturday night, and the fatherly advice of relatable Gov. George Romney to his son.