WATCH: Fox & Friends Lauds Jon Stewart for Telling Media to Move on from Trump
The hosts of Fox & Friends took time to laud Jon Stewart Monday morning after the comedian called out the media’s apparent obsession with former President Donald Trump during a Sunday appearance with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Stewart primarily focused on the media’s apparent bias towards conflict, saying, “I think the media does a terrible job at de-escalation. And de-escalation is the antidote to all this nonsense. And I don’t mean civility, and I don’t mean nonpartisanship. I mean focusing on things that are more urgent and elemental in people’s lives, and really hammering away at those things, rather than the emotional fault lines that occur in societies.”
But it was Stewart’s comments on the media regarding Trump that caught the attention of Fox & Friends producers, which brings to mind a strange bedfellows metaphor of some sort. Ainsley Earhardt introduced this clip, noting how she saw Stewart saying he thinks “the media should move on from Donald Trump” before playing a clip from the interview.
“I think we make a mistake focusing this all on Donald Trump as though he’s, I don’t know, Magneto and some incredible supervillain that has changed the very nature and temperature of the United States,” Stewart told Tapper. “I think it’s a mistake to focus it all on this one individual, and not to focus it more on, you know, the idea that power is its own reward whether it be in the financial industry or in government power doesn’t cede itself.”
Brian Kilmeade called the entire interview “amazing.” He appeared to laud Stewart’s pledge to move the focus of his new AppleTV show from the whole Republican vs. Democrat construct to issues that are more bipartisan in nature. After a brief explanation, Earhardt returned to remind viewers that she didn’t think Stewart was a fan of Trump’s, only that the more he is discussed, the more power he retains.
This was followed by a predictable discussion that compared “The Big Lie,” as Kilmeade called it, and how, in his purview, the Democrats did the same thing in 2000 and 2016. They did not, and to compare the examples with a straight face does not serve anyone well. But the fact that Fox News opinion hosts are finding a reason to agree with Jon Stewart calling out the media obsession with Trump is no small thing,
Not that long ago, there was a time that Stewart and Fox News hosts were opposed on nearly every topic. While the former Daily Show host would occasionally appear on, say, The O’Reilly Factor to trade barbs with then-Fox News alpha dog Bill O’Reilly, Stewart nearly always derided the conservative outlet as “Bullshit Mountain.” But things change.
Stewart noted Sunday that the media’s obsession with Trump was somewhat misdirected. The fact that he said this on CNN appeared to give some credence to the idea that he was politely calling out CNN, a cable news network which reported exhaustively on the former president, and in a manner that drew conservative criticism.
The proper context of this criticism should include the rather obvious note that Trump was the president and broke countless political and social norms along the way. But Stewart’s comment appeared to suggest that an obsessive attack on Trump only gave him power and lifeblood. A curious take as it suggests that ignoring Trump would help him go away. Stewart did not host a show during the Trump administration and largely stayed out of politics. So it is very easy for him to cast aspersions from his position of not wanting to get involved or apathy.
Jon Stewart’s new show on Apple has launched with very little attention and likely viewership on a new streaming platform. His show’s inability to make clips available for meta-aggregation by third-party political media websites is probably at issue. His commentary being picked up by Fox & Friends will likely bring him new viewers, but are they the target audience he is seeking?
Watch above via Fox News.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
