Jon Stewart Admits He’s Skeptical His Return to The Daily Show Will Have ‘Influence’ on 2024 Election
Photo by Victoria Will/Invision/AP, File
Jon Stewart will make his much-anticipated return to The Daily Show on Monday evening, but he poured some ice-cold water on his fans’ hopes he would be able to use his anchor desk perch to influence the 2024 election.
Stewart will anchor the show on Monday evenings with a rotating cast of guest hosts taking the role for the remainder of the week, but as The Hollywood Reporter’s Hilary Lewis noted, he “will be an executive producer on the other nights as well, allowing the former host to be heavily involved in the show leading up to the election and even beyond, with Stewart’s deal keeping him in place as an executive producer through at least 2025.”
The comedian was noticeably measured in his assessment of his show’s power in a Monday appearance on CBS Mornings, telling hosts Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil, and Nate Burleson that he viewed his return to The Daily Show more as a chance at “catharsis” for himself than an ability to exercise actual power and influence.
“It’s fair to say you are hoping to have an influence on politics?” asked Dokoupil.
“I don’t know about hoping to have an influence, but I’m hoping to have a catharsis, and a way to comment on things, and a way to express them that hopefully people will enjoy,” said Stewart. “But as far as influence, and you guys know this from doing this, just about everything I wanted to happen over the 16 years that I was at The Daily Show did not happen.”
Stewart compared his role on television with what he had learned “post-Daily Show” from being “lucky enough” to watch activists push for legislation, saying that television let him “occasionally provide air support to those on the ground who are actually doing the work.”
“I don’t really view it as ‘I really want to have an influence on this issue, this election,’ things like that,” he added.
It’s not the first time Stewart has openly questioned the ability of The Daily Show to actually move the needle. In a segment titled “The Daily Show: Destroyer of Worlds” during one of his last episodes before he signed off in 2015, he discussed the plethora of media headlines crediting him and his show for “destroying” various targets.
“I feel like what we’ve built here is a monument to evisceration,” said Stewart as a sampling of media headlines popped up on the screen using words like “eviscerates,” “demolishes,” “crushes,” and “destroys.” Ah, but the segment soon turned to reporting Stewart’s targets very much not destroyed, even though, as he bemoaned about terror group ISIS, “I hit them with a really good f***ing pun.”
Watch the video above, via CBS Mornings.
