Jon Stewart returns to 'The Daily Show', pissing off liberals who forgot what he does best

Jon Stewart returned as host of “The Daily Show” Monday for the first time since 2015, and wasted no time going after Donald Trump — and Joe Biden.

Making Kari Lake look absurd was just gravy.

Stewart’s equal-opportunity joke-making — always a feature of the show when he hosted —  will doubtless enrage liberals who think of any swipe at Biden as an automatic vote for fascism. (In fact, it did. Social media lit up with complaints; the Daily Beast said in a headline, “Jon Stewart Uses ‘Daily Show’ Return to Equate Trump and Biden.”)

But Stewart, who will only host Monday shows through the election, was prepared for this.

Stewart is not a fan of Biden's TikTok posts

“The stakes of this election don’t make Donald Trump’s opponent less subject to scrutiny,” Stewart said. “It actually makes him more subject to scrutiny. If the barbarians are at the gate, you want Conan standing on the ramparts, not chocolate-chip-cookie guy,” a reference to Biden’s TikTok post on Super Bowl Sunday that Stewart was not a fan of. (“Fire everyone,” he advised Biden for whomever was behind the post.)

I think a lot of people may have forgotten just what it is Stewart did as host of “The Daily Show” — he went after everyone he thought deserved it. Monday was no different, as he expressed concern (through jokes) about both candidates’ age and mental acuity.

Though he did start out with some Super Bowl jokes: “The Kansas City Chiefs are the world champions,” he said, “which means the decades-long plot in which Travis (Kelce) and Taylor (Swift) brainwash America into getting routine vaccinations is complete.”

But Stewart spent most of the show bemoaning the choice of candidates, kicking off Indecision 2024 by trying out a few slogans, like “American DeMOCKracy” or “Electile Dysfunction,” before settling on “What the f--k are we doing?”

Stewart bemoaned the age and mental fitness of Trump and Biden

Naturally, Stewart brought up the special counsel report that found that Biden’s handling of classified documents didn’t warrant charges — but described him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

A deposition in which the witness can’t remember key events must have been “brutal to watch,” Stewart said, before cutting to video of Trump in a deposition saying he didn’t remember all sorts of things, including this all-timer of an exchange:

Question: “So you don’t remember saying you have one of the best memories in the world?”

Trump: “I don’t remember that.”

Stewart also played video of the Trump children not remembering things under oath.

“It turns out the leading cause of early onset dementia is being deposed,” Stewart said.

But he also introduced clips of the hastily called press conference after the special counsel’s report came out, in which Biden, jousting with reporters and trying to prove his mental facility, mixed up the names of the presidents of Mexico and Egypt.

“Now, geography buffs might have noticed Gaza and Mexico do not share a border,” Stewart said.

This is a perfect encapsulation of Stewart's humor, why he is worlds better than pale imitations like Greg Gutfeld on Fox News. He went at the joke sideways, not head-on. He didn’t hammer the punch line or beat the audience over the head with the joke. He just told it, his delivery honed by years as a stand-up comedian.

'Now where were we?'

Stewart started the show by saying, “My name’s Jon Stewart. Now where were we?”

Indeed, he fell right back into form. He sounded like the Stewart of old, with no sacred cows. He works a desk like no one else. Noting that Biden and Trump were both about 20 years older than he was, he pulled the camera in for a close-up.

“Look at me,” he said. “Look what time hath wrought.” And yet both Trump and Biden would wish for that, he continued.

Of course Kari Lake was a part of it all

Lake showed up in a clip in which she tells an interviewer, “Well, first of all, Donald Trump is not an old man.”

Ahem. Trump and truth typically do not appear together in anything Lake says. Stewart wasn’t having it, screaming, “He’s an old man! He is objectively an old man! On a human scale he is objectively old! If he was a tortoise, I would tell him at 77, as a tortoise, ‘Oh, young man, go off and enjoy college.'”

But Trump is not, as Stewart noted, a tortoise.

Stewart proved he's still got it, but that doesn't mean people will watch

So Stewart has answered the questions about whether he can still be relevant and piercing in his commentary. Yes, on both fronts. What he didn’t answer, because the audience will have to, is whether anyone in a more sharply divided country is willing to listen. We’ll just have to see.

“So what’s the good news?” Stewart asked. Beat. “That is not rhetorical framing. I’m literally asking it.”

He had some, though.

“I’m not saying you don’t have to worry about who wins the election,” he said, more seriously. “I’m saying you have to worry about every day before it and every day after forever.

“Although on the plus side, I am told that the sun will run out of hydrogen.”

Welcome back.

Where to watch 'Comedy Central'

You can find Comedy Central on cable services and stream on Paramount+.

Shining star: How national media turned Kari Lake into Trumpism's 'leading lady'

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Jon Stewart fires at Biden, Trump, Kari Lake on 'The Daily Show' debut