Jon Stewart skewers media over Trump trial coverage: 'What the f--- are we doing?'

"It’s the first day of the first of [Trump’s] 438 trials to come. Pace yourselves."

Jon Stewart is calling out U.S. media outlets for their excessive coverage of former president Donald Trump's ongoing hush money trial. 

During his opening monologue on Monday, the Daily Show host described the legal battle as both “a test of the fairness of the American legal system” as well as “a test of the media’s ability to cover Donald Trump in a responsible way.” However, he noted that’s a task that media “have acknowledged that they’ve performed poorly in the past.”  

The video then cut over to a montage that included MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow, as well as former CNN host Brian Stelter, reflecting on how they believed that journalists had learned from the spectacle of the 2016 presidential election and needed to give Trump less screen time moving forward. 

“So brave. Well done,” Stewart said, poking fun at the other hosts for taking responsibility for their actions. “I think, for this trial, we will see the seeds of that introspection bear fruit, or, we will learn that learning curves are for pussies.”

Instead, footage then showed several videos from the first day of trial coverage, including two clips of Wallace and her MSNBC colleague Chris Hayes both describing it as “the trial of the century,” as well as several other journalists remarking that the “walls are closing in” on Trump. Stewart then asked, “Perhaps, if we limit the coverage to the issues at hand, and try not to create an all-encompassing spectacle of the most banal of details, perhaps that would help?”

Naturally, the video then cut to a collection of clips from different outlets all reporting Trump’s trip to the courthouse in extremely specific detail. “Seriously, are we going to follow this guy to court every f---ing day? Are you trying to make this O.J. [Simpson]?” he exasperatedly remarked. “It’s not a chase. He’s commuting.”

Stewart then declared that the media’s “very first attempt” at self-control had “failed.” He then proceeded to poke fun at the way that multiple outlets focused on interviews with dismissed jurors and attempted to find deeper meaning behind Trump’s expressions in courtroom sketches.

“Why are you showing it to us? It’s a sketch. Why would anyone analyze a sketch?” he asked. “It’d be like looking at The Last Supper and going, ‘Why do you think Jesus looks so sad here? What do you think, it’s 'cause of Judas? What if we interview one of the waiters at one of the tables from like a different section of the restaurant, who maybe didn’t actually see him, but we’ve got time to kill.'”

He later bluntly added, “What the f--- are we doing?”

Stewart also warned that focusing so heavily upon every tiny detail could hurt public perception of the trial in the long run. “Look! At some point in this trial, something important and revelatory is going to happen. But none of us are going to notice because the hour spent on his speculative, facial tics,” he said. “If the media tries to make us feel like the most mundane bulls--- is Earth shattering, we won’t believe you when it’s really interesting. It’s your classic boy-who-cried-Wolf… Blitzer.”

He continued, “It’s a trial. It’s boring, mostly. I’ve been on jury duty… Look, trials are a lot of procedural s--- and side conferences and side bars and what’s exhibit 372A and you’re not out of order, this whole court is out of [order]. The one person who’s had the most normal reaction to the trail so far is Donald Trump.”

Stewart then cut to a clip about how Trump recently fell asleep in the courtroom. “As he should!” he shouted. “I mean, he’s been up since 2 a.m. rage tweeting. He needs his anger sleep!”

In the end, Stewart took a moment to remind other journalists that "we got a long ways to go here" when it comes to Trump taking the stand. “It’s the first day of the first of his 438 trials to come. Pace yourselves. And if you’re bored, you can always start planning how you’re going to be covering his next trial and the sober mea culpas you’ll deliver during his next term as president.”

Watch Stewart reflect on media coverage of Trump's trial in the clip above.

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