By Zach Weigel
It’s been 16 months since Jon Stewart left his desk at “The Daily Show,” but just because he’s no longer the host of the Emmy-winning satirical news show doesn’t mean he no longer has something to say. And although current host of “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah, has furthered the popularity of the show superbly through eviscerating jabs at President-elect Donald Trump, Stewart recently shared some candid insights on the 2016 election in an interview with Anderson Cooper.
Stewart touched on many things in the interview as he promoted his new book The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests, but three particular things Stewart noted stuck a chord with me.
First, addressing his prospects of what a Trump presidency may bring, Stewart said, “Obama didn’t change and fix everything, and Trump can’t ruin everything.” Stewart may not have invented the art of blending satire with pointed argumentation, but he certainly made a living doing so. Now, however, absent from his role atop Comedy Central, Stewart’s rhetoric can be more pointed and his thoughts on Trump demonstrate his political expertise. Although much of the attention generated during the 2016 election has focused on presidential promises, Stewart knows that politicians often accomplish very little of what they intended to. Therefore, Trump likely won’t end up doing many of things he has said he will because there are simply too many checks and balances. Consequently, depending on which side of the political aisle you sit, presidential inaction can be viewed as either a blessing or curse since the president’s power is immensely constrained by the American political process.
Second, aside from what Trump can do in the future, Stewart also offered his insight on how Trump got elected. In Stewart’s estimation, “Not everybody that voted for Trump is a racist.” To back this up, he asserted, “We all give tacit support to exploitative systems as long as they don’t affect us that badly.” For example, Stewart noted that many Americans overlook the exploitative dimensions of companies such as Apple because they value a cheap iPhone more than other concerns like the fact that the phone was assembled by impoverished workers in a foreign country. So while some are still struggling to make sense of how people could support Trump given his inflammatory rhetoric throughout the campaign, Stewart believes it is rather simplistic to assume that everyone who voted for Trump agrees with everything he’s said and done. This logic is akin to believing that everyone who buys an iPhone is consciously consenting to the exploitation of workers.
And last, perhaps Stewart’s prescience can alert us as to why politics in our country are so divisive. When it comes to the much-maligned role of the media Stewart opined, “How long is the campaign? A year and a half? I assume [television media are] talking right now about who’s running in 2020. They don’t give a flying [expletive] about governance, they care about campaigns, and that’s where the fun is for them.” Seemingly, Stewart’s point here is that over 18 months of election coverage you are forced to pick a side and then forced to defend that side. Moreover, Stewart believes this protracted election cycle is directly responsible for widening the political divide as coverage focuses on the differences between each side instead of the actual governing part.
So while Noah has done a great job replacing Stewart on “The Daily Show,” I think Stewart can help us understand how we got to where we are and why things have played out this way. There are reasons Trump got elected and reasons not to believe our country is doomed. Perhaps Stewart has uncovered a few of them.
