Jon Stewart is no fan of Donald Trump.
But in this case Stewart was willing to say fair is fair.
And Jon Stewart defended Donald Trump for a reason that no one saw coming.
Fake media outrage over comic’s joke at Trump rally
The media believes the 2024 election is slipping away from Kamala Harris.
Left-wing activists in the press desperately tried to manufacture a game changing moment for Kamala.
That took the form of pretend outrage over a joke told by standup comic Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden.
Hinchcliffe is a popular standup comic who performs at roasts.
As an insult comic, Hinchcliffe takes shots at everyone.
During his set, Hinchcliffe told a joke about Puerto Rico being a floating island of garbage.
“There’s a lot going on. Like, I don’t know if you know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe declared.
Pennsylvania is the most important state in the election and polls show a tight race.
There are 500,000 Puerto Ricans living in Pennsylvania and the press hoped fanning the flames of controversy over Hinchcliffe’s joke would turn the tide in Kamala Harris’ favor.
But the Left’s most trusted newsman, Jon Stewart, squashed that news cycle.
Stewart defends Hinchcliffe
On the first broadcast of The Daily Show following the rally, Stewart used his monologue to mock the media scolds for pretending to get all offended over a joke.
“But of course, for the media there was one moment in particular that raised the alarms,” then played a supercut of network anchors criticizing Hinchcliffe’s jokes, which included calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” Stewart began.
Stewart did admit that putting an insult comic on stage at a political rally may not have been the best idea, but Hinchcliffe is a roast comedian and he performed a roast routine to warm up the crowd before Trump addressed the packed Garden.
“Obviously, in retrospect, having a roast comedian come to a political rally a week before election day and roasting a key demographic … probably not the best decision by the campaign politically, but to be fair, the guy’s just really doing what he does,” Stewart added.
Stewart then played a clip of Hinchcliffe’s set from Netflix’s The Roast of Tom Brady and admitted he found the comedian hilarious.
It would have been worse than Beyoncé
And Stewart even found a way to mock Kamala Harris by saying having Hinchcliffe perform and not do his signature roast jokes would be like having Beyoncé at your rally and not sing, which was the inexplicable decision Kamala Harris made at an event in Texas.
“Yes, yes, of course, terrible, boo. There’s something wrong with me. I find that guy very funny. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to tell you. I mean, bringing him to a rally and having him not do roast jokes? That’d be like bringing Beyoncé to a rally and not…,” Stewart concluded.
Brilliant by Jon Stewart… 👏 pic.twitter.com/XDE1ECvRG6
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) October 29, 2024
While the media wants to invent a fake controversy to try and help Kamala win in the election, the finger wagging and pearl clutching by the press over Hinchcliffe’s joke speaks to a larger problem about the relationship between the Left and comedy.
Leftists now believe the targets of jokes should be limited to the Democrat Party’s political enemies.
In this worldview, comedy isn’t meant to entertain.
The purpose of a joke is to affirm leftwingers’ worldviews.
That crosscurrent of authoritarian impulse and political opportunism led to manufactured outrage of the day in the last week of the election.