Jon Stewart Throws Elon Musk’s Insults Right Back at Him in Tiff Over Podcast: ‘Come on the Show!’

Jon Stewart and Elon Musk traded sarcastic insults on Friday after Musk took issue with criticism Stewart threw at him on his Weekly Show podcast.

“Jon Stewart is an extremely skilled propagandist disguised as a truth-teller,” Musk wrote on X on Thursday in response to a clip from Stewart’s show.

On The Weekly Show, Stewart was joined by Georgetown Research Professor Renée DiResta and Platformer editor Casey Newton to discuss Musk, election integrity, social media algorithms, and more.

Stewart argued that Musk, through his ownership of X, has far more influence on elections than any election fraud, including illegal immigrants voting, which is a common complaint of Musk’s.

Stewart said:

Let’s talk about the artist formerly known as Twitter. And this gets us to the crux of the irony. Elon Musk for a long time, and really incredibly consistently and vehemently, has pushed this idea that undocumented non-citizen voting is rampant. It is sowing the seeds of our destruction and we cannot do it. He’s tweeted about it I think 1,300 times or interacted with stories about it. The irony of it all is that this guy’s platform, this guy’s algorithm, which he is in charge of, I see his s**t on my feed all the time — I don’t ever interact with it. There’s no reason for it to be there. He is a far more relevant actor in the warping of our democracy through his money and his algorithm than any measure of undocumented non-citizen voting will ever be.

After Musk commented, Stewart fired right back and even eventually invited him onto the podcast. Musk did offer a compliment after calling Stewart a “propagandist,” writing, “He’s a great comedian too.”

“Elon Musk is an extremely skilled propagandist,” Stewart wrote on X.

“Not as good as you! Stop being so humble,” Musk replied.

Stewart also somewhat echoed Musk’s compliment, calling the X owner “a businessman.”

The Daily Show host responded to the “humble” message by offering to have Musk on his show.

“Come on the show!! We’ll talk about how self deprecating we both are!!” he wrote.

Watch above via The Weekly Show.

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