Spring is in the air, and America’s favorite past time has officially returned: Jon Stewart treating Tucker Carlson like a human piñata. Stewart famously eviscerated Carlson during a 2004 appearance on CNN’s Crossfire, when he told Carlson that his partisan hot takes were “hurting America.” When Carlson responded by saying Stewart was “more fun on [The Daily Show],” Stewart clapped back: “You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.”
Two decades later, Carlson remains a big dick. Fortunately, with Stewart back at the helm of The Daily Show, he had an opportunity to one again put the Conservative firebrand in his place.
Stewart began Monday’s episode by responding to his own critics who were angered by comments he made last week about Joe Biden’s age. “It was one fucking show! It was just one fucking show! It was 20 minutes,” Stewart proclaimed. “I did 20 minutes in one fucking show! But I guess, as the famous saying goes, ‘Democracy dies in discussion.’”
“It was never my intention to say out loud what I saw with my eyes and then brain,” he continued. “I can do better!””
Where do I go to study the particulars of unquestioning propaganda?” Stewart wondered. “I would need mentorship.”
Cue: Tucker Carlson’s recent to Russia and his softball interview with president Vladimir Putin. With a pen and paper in hand, Carlson took notes as he aired clips of Carlson’s conversation with Putin: “Lie about what your job is… Lie about what your duty is… Disguise your deception and capitulation to power as noble and moral and based in freedom. Yes, master!” Stewart also noted Carlson’s facial reaction to Putin, which he described as akin to being “constipated while jerking off to a Sears catalog.”
Stewart then showed another clip in which Carlson marveled over a Russian grocery store that uses coins to prevent the theft of its shopping carts. “There’s an incentive to return it and not just bring it to your homeless encampment,” Carlson remarked. Stewart, almost in disbelief over Carlson’s comments, responded in kind: “I know I’ve said this before: you’re such a dick. Really, truly, a dick.”
Stewart then wrapped up his monologue by surmising the true intent of Carlson’s trip to Russia and how the murder of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny only further exposed Carlson as a fraud.
“Perhaps if your handlers had allowed, you would have seen there was a hidden fee to your cheap groceries and orderly streets. Ask Aleksei Navalny or any of his supporters… Because the difference between our urinal-caked, chaotic subways and your candelabra-ed beautiful subways is the literal price of freedom.”
“The question is: Why, why is Tucker doing this? Here’s why: It’s because the old civilizational battle was communism versus capitalism. That is what drove the world since World War II. Russia was the enemy then. But now, they think the battle is woke versus unwoke, and in that fight, Putin is an ally to the right. He’s their friend. Unfortunately, he is also a brutal and ruthless dictator. So now they have to make Americans a little more comfortable with that. I mean, liberty is nice, but have you seen Russia’s shopping carts?”