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!”

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?”

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!”

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.

On CNN’s Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz lauded The Daily Show as being perhaps the most important program for political satire on television. “Is there another program out there that’s not quite news but not quite just a comedy show –that has had more impact on politics through laughter and ridicule? Did it long ago eclipse Saturday Night Live?” Kurtz pondered. “The 2012 campaign is prime time for Jon Stewart as he pokes not just the pols but the pundits for being so absurdly fickle.”

Political fact-checker Politifact has called out Jon Stewart this week for citing an inaccurate segment from the History Channel to refute Fox News’s War on Christmas. The video had noted that “On Dec. 25, 1789, the United States Congress sat in session and continued to stay open on Christmas Day for most of the next 67 years.” Politfact called this claim “flat-out wrong” consulting the US Senate’s historical record, and pegged the late-night comedian’s assertion “pants-on-fire”, which is a harsher judgment than when they last went after him over claims about Fox News’s viewers being misinformed.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart kept cable news’ war on the War on Christmas raging Thursday night when he shot back at Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly‘s assessment that he was destined for an eternity of hellfire and poorly-lit dressing rooms. After calling O’Reilly “one of Santa’s unusually large elves,” Stewart seemed shocked – shocked – that the Fox News personality had so casually condemned him to Hell.

On Wednesday, Bill O’Reilly took a look at Daily Show host Jon Stewart‘s excitement over the “War On Christmas,” particularly with Fox News’ coverage of one community’s “tree lighting ceremony.” “If there has been a war,” a clip showed Stewart telling his viewers, “then Christmas is the aggressor nation.”

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear arguments over the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care overhaul signed into law back in March of 2010. While the legality of what its detractors call “Obamacare” is the primary issue at play, a secondary –and more media-centric — issue has also arisen, and that is the costs and benefits of broadcasting the proceedings live from the nation’s highest court, as has been requested by both C-SPAN and Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA.) In the esteem of Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera, there are two simple words why the Supreme Court will never allow cameras inside their edifice: Jon Stewart.

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain recently sat down with the editorial board at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel for a series of questions and answers on the positions and policies that make up his campaign. When asked a relatively easy question about the Obama administration’s handling of the uprising in Libya, however, Cain suffered something of a brain freeze, the video of which quickly went viral and was all over the cable news landscape. Last night, Daily Show host Jon Stewart opened his show with numerous clips of various reporters ridiculing Cain’s gaffe, before playing it himself for his own comedic gain.

On Thursday night’s The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart announced, emphatically, that Mitt Romney is the GOP’s next nominee for president. (Exhibit A: Herman Cain‘s decision to refer to Nancy Pelosi as “Princess Nancy” while in the midst of being hit with several allegations of sexual harassment, Exhibit B: Newt Gingrich‘s “dickishness” and… general doughiness?)

Moving on to Rick Perry, however…

On Wednesday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart was in disbelief that Herman Cain just “happened to remember more” details relating to the sexual harassment accusations made against him in the 1990s. “You know, everyone talks about how traumatic being sexually harassed is,” Stewart observed. “But nobody talks about how traumatic it is to be the harasser, and you repress a lot of those memories. I would bet his therapist is delighted about the breakthrough that’s happening.”

NBC News anchor Brian Williams premiered his new show Rock Center last night, and judging by the very early word-of-mouth, NBC executives should be very pleased. Williams is a whip-smart and affable television host, who is equally adept at covering both low-brow and high-minded topics. Take, for example, his interview with his debut guest, Daily Show host Jon Stewart. The two discussed New York City trick-or-treating and the dawning era of protests in an equally entertaining and enlightening way.

Last week President Obama announced plans to remove all U.S. military forces from Iraq by year’s end, effectively ending the long and still questionably effective Iraq War. Over the weekend, numerous GOP leaders like Lindsey Graham and John McCain — and even some presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann — predictably used the news to blame the Obama administration. Turns out that a rather significant detail had been overlooked by commenter and reporter alike: the withdrawal date had been agreed to by President George W. Bush. Enter Jon Stewart to make a mockery out of the story.

Fox News alpha-male and best selling author Bill O’Reilly continued to shill his new book Killing Lincoln with an appearance on America Live with Megyn Kelly today. An otherwise unremarkable appearance turned interesting when Kelly confronted O’Reilly on why he’d want to go on The Daily Show and give attention to host Jon Stewart (who has, on occasion, turned his comedic focus on Kelly herself.) O’Reilly explained that he liked the added attention from such appearances, before claiming he “likes” and “beats” Stewart.

This week, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has been reporting, seriously and solemnly, on an NYPD officer who sprayed pepper spray into a group of protesters taking part in Occupy Wall Street. That officer, Anthony Bologna, is now facing an internal investigation due in no small part to O’Donnell’s reporting. But, hey. Who said a faceful of pepper spray can’t also be utterly hilarious? Not The Daily Show!

As part of a lengthy promotional tour for his new book Killing Lincoln, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly appeared on The Daily Show for a spirited and respectful discussion with host Jon Stewart of the current political rhetoric of the day. Government spending, tax rates and the price of Government-bought muffins were the topics of the conversation in the segment that aired, but as is often the case with interesting TDS interviews, the second segment, saved for Internet-only release, was more interesting that the first.

Congressman Ron Paul appeared on Monday night’s Daily Show and talked with Jon Stewart about his campaign for the Republican nomination and his struggle to get media traction. Stewart asked Paul what it was about his candidacy that made the media so quick to dismiss him and consider him unelectable. Paul said the media was [...]

Who: Eric Stangel (Letterman), Justin Stangel (Letterman), A.D. Miles (Fallon), Steve Bodow (Daily Show), Barry Julien (Colbert), moderated by Jason Sudeikis (SNL)
What: The New York Television Festival’s “Long Day’s Journey into Late Night”
Where: 92 Y Tribeca
When: September 22, 2011
Thumbs: Up

Author Ron Suskind appeared on The Daily Show last night to promote his controversial new book Confidence Men which takes a pretty critical look at the first two years of the Obama administration. Host Jon Stewart continued the discussion beyond the time allotted for the third segment of the show, eventually publishing some very interesting dialog that never made air, like the following discussion of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Wall Street’s seemingly strange perception of President Obama.

If you’re one of those people who remembers the ridiculous dust up this past spring in which various conservative politicians, blogs, and nearly every person who had an ounce of airtime on Fox News tried their darndest to make it a thing that the Michelle Obama had invited Common and Jill Scott to read poetry at the White House, here’s some nice closure.

79% of The Daily Show‘s guests in 2010 were men and only 21% were women, according to a recent art installation featured at New York City’s Winkleman Gallery. In addition, The Colbert Report‘s 2010 guest line-up was even more homogeneous, featuring 82.5% male guests.

This past weekend the nation paid respectful homage to the memory of those killed 10 years ago during the events of 9/11, and as such, anyone watching television, listening to the radio or picking up a magazine or newspaper were likely overwhelmed with by turns mawkish and moving tributes to that fateful day. Last night Jon Stewart took aim at both the cynical and maudlin remembrances via a new Daily Show special focused on 9/13, or the day we forgot lessons we’d sworn never to forget.

In advance of Barack Obama‘s joint session jobs speech (re)scheduled for Thursday evening, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney got out in front of the issue by unveiling his own jobs plan. The 59-point plan was presented in a one-hour extemporaneous presentation, that was mostly missed by anyone not constantly tuned in to C-Span where it aired. Tonight, Jon Stewart selectively edited out his favorite moments and made jokes. Lots of funny jokes, even.

Jon Stewart returned from a two-week hiatus last night and passed by recent news stories like the earthquakes, hurricanes and a struggling economy, choosing instead to train his sites on last week’s controversy known as “speechgate,” or the scheduling conflict between the White House and Speaker’s office over a joint session address. The fake news host first noted how the conflict was resolved rather quickly by introducing a segment entitled “Tales of Reasonable Accommodation.” But that wasn’t the entire story.