Note: This post was almost entirely written by March 6 and only touched up today, so parts of it may be out of date.
In February, Jon Stewart made his triumphant return to The Daily Show after nine years away, effectively skipping the bulk of the Trump era and leaving most of that time to his successor Trevor Noah while working on other projects, to host Mondays through the election. What transpired reminded many fans of Stewart’s Daily Show of, perhaps, why his original departure may have been well-timed.
For his first show back, Stewart discussed the report from special counsel Robert Hur that cleared Joe Biden of mishandling classified documents upon leaving the vice presidency but characterized him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” who struggled to remember facts under questioning, re-igniting concerns over whether Biden is too old to serve four more years as president. Stewart played clips of Donald Trump and his associates claiming not to remember things at their own depositions over the years, but spent the bulk of the segment seemingly reinforcing the concerns over Biden’s age, picking apart a press conference Biden gave where he forcefully responded to the special counsel’s assertions but seemed to struggle afterwards, and responding to Democratic surrogates playing up his “sharpness” and “engagement” in official meetings on talk shows over the weekend by suggesting that, if he’s so sharp in those settings, perhaps they should be captured on camera. By contrast, Trump only received one or two shots on relatively trivial matters over the course of the segment, with no mention of the most concerning development to come from his side over the weekend, his seemingly blackmailing NATO allies with a Russian invasion. Stewart was excoriated by various figures on the left, including Keith Olbermann and even Trump’s estranged niece Mary, for focusing on concerns over Biden’s age instead of the far more existential threat posed by Trump’s return to the White House. Responding to those concerns on his second show back, Stewart twisted the Washington Post‘s Trump-era slogan into “democracy dies in discussion” and spent the rest of the segment facetiously studying Tucker Carlson’s trip to Russia and interview with Vladimir Putin to learn how to speak “of course” to power.