The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jon Stewart on the Perilous State of Late Night and Why America Fell for Donald Trump

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Jon Stewart has been a leading figure in political comedy since before the turn of the millennium. But compared to his early years on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”—when Stewart was merciless in his attacks on George W. Bush’s Administration—these are much more challenging times for late-night comedians. Jimmy Kimmel nearly lost his job over a remark about MAGA supporters of Charlie Kirk, after the head of the F.C.C. threatened ABC. CBS recently announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s program. And Stewart now finds himself very near the hot seat: Comedy Central is controlled by David Ellison, the Trump-friendly C.E.O. of the recently merged Paramount Skydance. Stewart’s contract comes up in December. “You’re going to sign another one?” David Remnick asked him, in a live interview at The New Yorker Festival. “We’re working on staying,” Stewart said. “You don’t compromise on what you do. You do it till they tell you to leave. That’s all you can do.”  Stewart, moreover, doesn’t blame solely Donald Trump for recent attacks on the independence of the media, universities, and other institutions. “This is the hardest truth for us to get at, is that [these] institutions . . . have problems. They do. And, if we don’t address those problems in a forthright way, then those institutions become vulnerable to this kind of assault. Credibility is not something that was just taken. It was also lost.” In fact, Stewart also directs his ire at “the Democratic Party, [which] thinks it’s O.K. for their Senate to be an assisted-living facility.” “In the general-populace mind, government no longer serves the interests of the people it purports to represent. That’s a broad-based, deep feeling. And that helps when someone comes along and goes, ‘The system is rigged,’ and people go, ‘Yeah, it is rigged.’ Now, he’s a good diagnostician. I don’t particularly care for his remedy.”This episode was recorded live at The New Yorker Festival, on October 26, 2025.  New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In September, right after Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from his late-night talk show, John Stewart went on the air with a special episode of The Daily Show. From Comedy Central, it's the all-new government-approved Daily Show. With your patriotically obedient host, John, Stuart. The joke, of course, was that they'd done a full rebranding and the high style of MAGA was on display.

Flags flying, jet fighters soaring, the studio slathered in gold, and the desk is gigantic. Stewart, in a red tie, looks like he's going to lose his lunch. We have another fun, hilarious administration-compliant show. He's so anxious, he's actually twitching. We're coming to you tonight from a real shithole. The crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster. Like no one's ever seen before.

Someone's National Guard should invade this place, am I right? That night was a real reminder of why after 25 years plus, we still very much need John Stewart on the air. But compared to his early years on the show, the era of George W. Bush, this is a much more dangerous time for late night. and for speech and for America. Kimmel nearly lost his job over a remark about MAGA in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder.

The head of the FCC threatens broadcasters in a tone that sometimes sounds a lot like a mob boss. This administration supports free speech only insofar as it agrees with that speech. And Stewart is not too far from the hot seat himself. Comedy Central is now controlled by David Ellison, the Trump-friendly CEO of Paramount. skydance.

So I sat down to hash this all out the other day with John Stewart at the New Yorker Festival. Hello. John Stewart. How are you? I am so pleased to have John Stewart here. Me too. I'm delighted.

This is a man of New Jersey. Can I hear it for people? That's it? That's it. That's the appropriate level of respect. few cheers, a couple of booze, most people indifferent. I understand. I've lived there.

I want to begin by reminding you of what happened not long ago when Jimmy Kimmel was tossed off the air. You had to come up with a response to something very serious. And I want to know if you... And by the way, you weren't alone. Colbert also did. John Oliver also. Was there any sense of coordination?

conversation? What? No, we don't even, I don't even have their numbers. I don't know. No, we do have a text chain that goes along. I think everybody, look, we all understand that it's a luxury, but none of us are owed

a platform or any of those things, but we also understand that it's a meaningful luxury and that there is a certain amount of strength of a society that is able to withstand the smallest of ridicule. And when that goes away, when the leadership

becomes, you know, the last time that that happened was, I have a friend who did a show very similar to mine in Egypt, and he was exiled. And in America, we sort of assumed that satire was settled law. And to find out that it, along with Dobbs, were going to be revisiting what we considered Star-A. Decisus, you know, I think it rattled everyone to some extent, but it also presented great opportunity. And so I don't know. know that we've had as much fun as we did that Thursday morning coming up with all the stupid little shit that you see with, I mean, including like gold pictures and red ties and, you know, it gave us some purpose. That being said, like, I want to be clear. I don't, the victims of this

administration are not the comedians. Like, we are a visible manifestation of certain things, but the victims are the victims, are the people that are struggling to have any voice and are being forcibly removed from streets by, you know, hooded agents, you know, those are the victims of this administration. You say that this is not the issue, but look, I remember when Putin came to power in 2000?

Sure. The first thing he did was take, A program that was a satirical program about politics called Ku Klux, Puppets, off the air. And people said, oh, I took the puppets off the air. Within a couple of weeks, the news was off the air. Isn't it possible that this assault, however, kind of herky, jerky, and back and forth it might be, is tantamount to something else. When 7 million people show up in America on a weekend for anything, I mean, honestly, anything,

You know something's going on. And this is, they are attempting to graft, I think, an alien culture onto this country. We're not Russia and their history of autocracy or dictatorship or those things. That doesn't mean we're not going to be in some kind of soft autocracy where news is controlled. But we have a lot of different avenues. and suppression creates opportunity. And a populist that is thirsty for inspiration and leadership and morality and integrity and lack of corruption, that's fertile ground for that opportunity.

So, like, as bad as this is, and it's fucking bad. Like, I knew it would be bad. I did not. It was, it was going to be, like, flesh-eating dick-cats. cancer bad. That's, that's an, I, yeah, you know how bad it is? David Ellison, just, that's my new boss. Paramount.

Yes. And not only does he, forgive me, own your enterprise, he could also affect it. And he just hired Barry West to run CBS News. So tell me what this, tell me what this means. Well, I wish you would mention that before I went into the dick cancer bed. This is not happen. stance. This is, this began with Richard Vigory doing a mail-in to try and get people to be conservative. This began with people buying AM radio stations and converting them to conservative

talk radio. This began with Roger Ailes in the Nixon White House going, we will never allow this to happen to a Republican politician. Again, all of the institutions by which I mean education and media and news and academia and all those things that we relied on as a solid tent post by which to build a decent society on, they were like, yeah, no. And they built a parallel universe of think tanks and education and media. And so that they could at some point just flip a switch and move us over onto that track. Because what do these institutions have? They are the reference point for our decisions. What do you do?

You quote, well, there's a study done by, and you use data and scientific method and other things to try and make as informed a decision as you can. But if you're a political movement that believes that investing those institutions with authority is against your movement, the best thing you can do is build organizations that either tear down the credibility of those institutions

or you build your own. But with respect, John, this is different. This is, this is, this is, this is markedly different. It's one thing to, it's one thing to have the Brookings Institution that was kind of liberal, and then you have the rise of the American Enterprise Institute. It's one thing to have a liberal newspaper and then a conservative newspaper. Fine, fine, in fact, all the better in some ways. But this is, what's going on now is different, and with respect, you're going to face it,

potentially with Paramount. and the daily show. Sure. What do you do? You don't compromise on what you do, and you do it until they tell you to leave. That's all you can do. That's all you can do.

So I think the line that you gave before was, I'm not giving in, I'm not going anywhere, I think. I'm neurotic still. I'm not, you know. Your contract comes up in December. You're going to sign another one? I mean, we're working on staying. Look, the other thing to remember is it's not as clear cut as all that. The business... If it's up to you, you're staying. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's up to me, I'm sorry.

How do you think CBS News will be affected? Does the evening news even matter at this point in the media sphere that we live in? We are projecting, we are projecting things that we do not know. The ecosystem has changed. the monetization of it has changed. I will tell you this, it is a different ethos. But one thing we have to remember, and this is the hardest truth for us to get at, is that the institutions that we spoke about earlier have problems. They do. And if we don't address those problems in a forthright way,

then those institutions become vulnerable to this kind of assault. Credibility is not something that was just taken. It was also lost. And that is a part of this equation that has to be consistent. And the Democrats have to consider that as well. There's a reason Donald Trump came to power, and that is that in the general populist mind, government no longer serves the interests of the people it purports to represent. That's a broad-based, deep feeling.

And that helps when someone comes along and goes, the system is rigged. And people go, yeah, it is rigged. Now, he's a good diagnostician. I don't particularly care for his remedy. Tell me why you think Trump won. because of that, because of the dissatisfaction of an analog system in a digital world. The distance between how you feel about the world and the world has never been larger. We are victims of the circadian rhythms of social media.

And social media is incentivized to what? Not connect us. And I've seen the Facebook commercial. And yes, it's true. If you do like a certain kind of cat, there will be other people that like that certain kind of cat. and you will connect with each other. But the purpose of social media is to keep you on its platform. That's it.

They want you on that platform. They want you on there as long as they could possibly have you. And the way that they have rigged our brains to figure it out is that outrage and anger and hate and hostility are much stronger drivers of engagement than anything else. Now, on the flip side of that, we have a political system designed in the 18, what? It's designed as an analog. What is the Senate?

It's the cooling saucer of democracy. And what's Twitter? The thing that makes you want to rip people's eyes out. And you put those together, and it's not a good mix. And so he was able to harness the anger and catastrophizing of that as a way of taking over that other thing that we have. have. And you didn't find Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a good

remedy for that in the election. That was called to set up line. I thought they were great. Look what's going on with Mandani. You know, you finally got a guy in New York City who is getting people to vote in the affirmative

for his positions, who is inspiring people and giving a certain amount of leadership. And what is the general status quo of the Democratic Party do with that. The guy is a communist. Like, they go along with the caricature of this man.

Look, we're in a bad situation, but it's not just Trump. It's the passivity of the Democratic Party to stick with a status quo that most people felt was not working. In January, about a week after. Trump was inaugurated. You did a monologue on the Daily Show. It was, God knows, it was critical of Trump, but you didn't go after him so much as you went after a lot of his critics, or at least the more hypocritical and pearl clutching ones. You seem to be saying that instead of crying wolf, calling him a fascist for every executive order, was, you know, to his benefit. I agree.

Do you think you underestimated how bad this would get? No. I stand by. I stand by. I, because in that moment, that's how I felt. What I'm saying is the seeds of this destruction were not sown this year. They were sown by citizens united. They were sown by corporations or people. They were sown by a Democratic Party that thinks it's okay for their Senate

to be an assisted living facility. Like, respectfully, like, I mean, I could kick the shit out of the Senate. I don't mean this cynically. I mean this idealistically. I mean this as like, we better get real about this very fast. And it's coming from a perspective of having worked with our government

to try and get certain things done. I was stunned by certain Republicans that would tweet out, Never forget the heroes of 9-11 versus how they would vote for their medical care. But I was also stunned by the Democratic Party leadership's passivity and being told over and over again. No, no, no, you have to go through regular order. When we have this congressional hearing, I don't want you to be confrontational. You have to be nice. And then what we hopefully will get to do is put the first responders and the victims of 9-11,

will be able to put their health care into the transportation bill. Unless Mitch McConnell thinks he wants to trade that for the import, export tax that he really wants on petroleum. And I would go, that's crazy. And so this is coming from a place of, I've lived with this. Well, we're in the middle of a government shutdown, which is a different attitude this time than it was the last time. That's right. Does that make Chuck Schumer any braver now than he was before? No.

And you can tell about, like, what you're going to. Chuck Schumer's been told is you're losing. And people like your glasses to be higher up on your nose. And so it's what I'm telling you is here's what, here's what they're doing with us now. The strategy is authenticity. And suddenly, people in Congress are cursing. Oh, and it seems so natural. When Chuck Schumer curses, this is a shitty bill.

I'm like I'm over at all man I'm over at all and I understand why people wanted to blow it up and why it's so vulnerable to being taken over by a charismatic person that says I understand how this is done like even the shutdown which I'm glad that they stood up for something but I still think the ACA is playing the Republican in the corporate game it's basically just subsidies. the insurance companies when what we need is health care. And the ACA doesn't give you health care. It gives you it gives you subsidies to get a coupon that maybe you can take to someone that then they'll give it to you and then they'll still be a deductible.

40% of people in this country go without things like food because of their medical debt. And so like when the Democrats announce that they got the pharmaceutical companies to, out of the grace of their heart, allow us to negotiate, the price on 10 different medicines, only 10, and that's a victory when we're subsidizing these motherfuckers by billions of dollars a year? No, no more. I'm done with it. I'm speaking with John Stewart,

the comedian, actor, and host of The Daily Show. We'll continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm speaking today with John Stewart. Stewart was hardly the first political comedian on TV, but on the Daily Show, he pioneered something new. He delivered some of the sharpest political analysis on television interviewing serious newsmakers in a format that was also consistently hilarious. Stewart helped launch the careers of Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, John Oliver, and many others. And in bringing journalism or something kind of like journalism to late-night entertainment,

Stewart up the game for the entire medium. I'll continue my conversation now with John Stewart. We grew up in New Jersey, but I grew up with another comedian, Bill Maher. I used to play basketball in a driveway with him. He was a local celebrity. You know, there's nothing better than playing basketball with short Jews. I have to tell you. Yeah, you can post up on him.

We used to have a game at Gary Shandling's house. Literally, we were like, I think, Al Franken might be Pete Maravich. Kevin Neeland would come by and everybody would just be like, what? No. You can't do that. Yeah.

Bill Maher is the comic political voice of the notion that the biggest problem the Democrats have is wokeism. How do you respond to Bill's approach to the world? Well, I don't know if that's just bills. I mean, I maybe. shorthand for it, but wokeism is not something that enters your analysis of things for the most part. No. There is a real pressure that people feel on issues that they don't quite understand where they don't want to offend,

and it can have a censorious effect on discourse. I've seen it. And the left certainly has their, like when someone says to me, like, pregnant people, I do go, well, it's, I understand, but like, come on. But it doesn't make you crazy. Yeah, if you'd be better to be like pregnant women and Dave. Like, you don't have to, you know what I mean? Like, you don't have to do the whole thing. So, yeah, that gets a little out of control. But the idea that that has the same effect on the world as like a rich country that isn't able to. to give its people health care.

That's where I take exception. The one thing I would give him is the most politically effective, so-called the most politically effective advertisement for the Trump campaign was the one about trans people. You know, she is for them, he is for you. That was extremely effective, unfortunately.

But the answer to that commercial is simple as well. Yeah. Like, yes, Donald Trump is for you. If you are a convicted sex trafficker who should get transferred to a less bad prison because you're not going to name him. Donald Trump is for you if you have a jet that you will give him. Or Donald Trump is for you if you give billions to his campaign.

And so he will allow you to bypass tariffs and not small businesses. Like, my problem is they don't know how to fight that effective. They do not realize. the game they are playing, I don't think, in my mind. How do you mean? There is a relentlessness and of bad faith to the social media algorithm. It's, I'm trying to think like, okay, here's a different analogy. If you go to a restaurant and the food is delicious, it's because they probably, like, add a little

extra bunner, or they throw a little salt in there, a little umami in there. maybe they throw a little sugar in the marineri, you know what I mean? And you eat it and you're like, wow, that's decadent and beautiful. And I would like to come back here. But it's still within the realm of what we understand as the earthly tricks we play on each other. But there are guys in lab coats who work for craft, who are figuring out how to take the gland of like a beaver's anus and turn it into strawberry flavoring.

And then there's a bunch of other. other dudes that are checking the consistency of it and they're designing it to get past the prehistoric reptilian wiring of your brain so that you no longer understand that two bags of chips and a quart of ice cream might not be good for you in the long run and social media is that what we do is we communicate and we sometimes use hyperbole and we sometimes use puns and satire and Laudity and parody to convey something, and it's cheating a little bit. But social media is ultra-processed speech in the same way that Doritos are food. It's designed to bypass the parts of your brain that keep you off it, that keep you from

diving into those holes, from radicalizing yourself. that's what you're up against. They are designing these things in the lab to bypass our ability to collaborate and cooperate. When did these guys get so bad? You remember years and years ago? They've always sucked. Ah.

No, but wait a minute. We believed or half believed that these guys, because they wore jeans and sneakers, and they were kind of cool and said things like, don't be evil and and so on and so forth. Isn't that something someone evil would say?

It's like Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel is always going on about Satan. Satan, it could be amongst us. It could be Greta Toonberg. And you'd be like, or it could be a guy who runs a company called Palantir. But wait a minute. You're forgetting the early part of these guys

where Mark Zuckerberg when is going to make it possible. Sergei Burden was going to make it possible if you're sitting in the desert somewhere where you didn't have access to a library, now you could reach Shakespeare on your phone. And this was amazing. And everybody was going to be connected, and this would democratize the press.

Yes. And they believed it, and a large part of us believed it. No, they all want to be the next guy. They all just want to be the next must. They want to be the next person. Look, we suffer from the same thing in that we're people.

like everything that we have that's great can be weaponized against us. Like nuclear power is the, you know, as Oppenheimer once famously said, what could go wrong? John, you've been on Rogan a couple of times? Yes. What did you think of that experience being on Joe? I enjoyed being on Rogan. I think he's an interesting interviewer. You know, there are right-wing weaponized commentators whose sole purpose is to manage.

manipulate things to the benefit of the Bannon project or the project 2025. Rogan's not that guy. What is that guy? How would you describe it? That guy is a curious comic who fell into this thing that got fucking enormous, maybe doesn't, has opinions all over the political spectrum, but has tendencies that people on the left does not fit the aesthetic. He's a hunter.

In fairness, he's had people on who are kind of, of Nazi curious. That's not good. So, I mean, I've interviewed Kissinger, like, it's, and he was carpet bomb curious. Like, I don't know what to say. Like, like, it's very easy to castigate those where we're like, but he had an opinion a few years back that's, you know, corrosive. But the difference is when he was carpet bomb curious, you didn't say, oh, yeah, that's awesome. And what happens with Rogan sometimes is he'll hear somebody that's on the dangerous end of the spectrum, and he'll just kind of soak it in. And so, and this is, I think this is a great point. And it's whosoever job who thinks that that

information is dangerous to fight, to get their point of view out there, to counter what they think is misinformation. You can't just deputize people to say he should have known better, and he should have prosecuted that point. But the reality is, John, is that it might be my job or the New Times job or even your job, but I don't have the audience that Joe Rogan does. Then get it. Yeah, go get it. Then go on that show. Then do those things. Like, that is, it's not acceptable to just say, well, I don't like what he does. Then do it better. Beat them at their own game. It's not enough to just complain that that guy got a platform and don't platform that guy. There's no one in this world right now that isn't platformed. And my biggest

frustration, honestly, with a lot of scientists as they all go, RFK, oh, you're so fucked up, that's terrible information. Oh, okay. What's the information? Nothing. Where are they? Get out there. Fight. I got in trouble. I was giving an interview to a German magazine. I said I would interview Hitler. And I thought that was kind of non-controversial. Is there anybody that you wouldn't interview? It depends on what the expectation is also for the interview. Because remember, a lot of what we're doing right now is we're falling into that trap that an interview, a good interview, will solve the problem. I've been on the side of the good interview. I've been on the side. I interviewed Donald Rumsfeld. I lost more sleep over that interview than he did over the entire fucking war.

And you know what he did afterwards? He wrote me a note saying that was fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Do you have any idea how that still hurts? He wrote, that was fun. I bet if we had known each other when we were younger, we would have been friends. Oh, ooh. John, what did you think of the recent, the business of comedians going to Riyadh and being paid a lot of money? What did you think of that?

I don't touch other people's money. And, you know, it's hard, man. I want to fix my house. I want to operate with integrity. but I don't want to gatekeep. Like, I'm not, I don't go to the tree of hilarity and get visited by the fathers of, and I think a lot of comics who came out

and really shit on those guys, like I know a couple of them, and I know them actually to be like garbage humans. So I would have preferred if they would have just come out, though, and said, it's money. And not like, it's a way to start a conversation. Like, would you have started the conversation for $2,500? Well, then that's, you know, that's the difference.

Look, I worked for Apple. Apple. Like there's a lot of people who believe that Apple is exploitative in a way that's horrific. You know, we all have our lines that we are willing to cross. Like, we get into a problem when we're unforgiving in any way. We offer no grace. And that doesn't mean that I don't have lines that I draw, that if people cross it, I won't do. But I do try to not be so rigid in the way that I think society has become. And if it goes back to that point that- are ahead of time? No. Because, I mean, as we started the conversation, you're facing a complicated situation at Paramount. Sure. And you know what you won't do, but if you see something else happening

the company, do you know where those lines are? Like with the news? Yeah. They've already done things that I'm upset about, but then if I had integrity, maybe I would stand up and go, I'm out. Or maybe the integrity thing to do would be to stay in it and keep fighting in the foxhole. Like, love a good argument. I love differing points of view in all facets of things, but I also love grace. I've got people in my family that are to the right of Attila the Hun, and when people tell me, like, how can you platform that person on your show? I go, I platform my uncle every fucking Thanksgiving. And by the way, I love him. He's a three-dimensional human being. who has qualities that I really admire, things about them.

And we've lost that. We've lost the ability to love people because we litmus test at every point in every single moment. John, you've always struck me as an idealist, an American idealist. And I remember around 9-11, you said the view from your place was the towers. and then you said, now I have a view of the Statue of Liberty. It was a terrific terrace. You know.

And that was a really idealistic thing to say about America in many ways, small and large. I believe it. You still do. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is, and how can you not believe it? Because think of the amazing people

that you see every day. Think of the quiet activism of living pleasantly. There's more good than bad. I always will believe that. I always will believe that the odds are in our favor. Always. I'm talking with John Stewart, a conversation that was recorded

at the New Yorker Festival. We'll continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and I'm David Remnick. John Stewart has always insisted that he's a comedian, a performer, not a journalist, but a generation of viewers came up saying that they got their news from John Stewart. He was also funny enough that, at least early on, he was able to appeal to viewers who didn't

always agree with his politics, which skewed distinctly liberal. For people who do agree with those politics, Stewart became a voice of authority, of reassurance in dark times, and back in 2016, some fans really implored him to challenge Hillary Clinton and run for president. and much more recently, the radio host Charlemagne the God, who's become something of a democratic power broker himself, suggested quite seriously that John Stewart get in the game for 28. He's a celebrity who actually knows what they're talking about.

We've seen him get legislation and stuff, you know, passed before. Like, we know where his heart is. He'd be somebody I'd like to see really get in the race and disrupt things in 2008. I'll continue my conversation now, with John Stewart. You mentioned idealists in the, in a Democratic Party

and figures who were just not up to the task. You mentioned Mom Donnie, for one, who do you see on a national level who has promise as a national leader that you could get behind? You have 20 minutes. Somebody just said you. Oh, have we really gotten to that point?

I do understand, you know what? It's interesting. I think that's also a function of frustration. A cry of desperation. You know what it is? Because I'm other. I'm none of the above. Years ago, I won a poll.

It was most trusted newsman in America. The poll was like, it might have been Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, rather, Diane Sawyer, and me. And I was, I'm not. none of the above. Like, but what a dildo rolled in glitter could have won that poll. I have never, in the audiences that come into the show,

seen them so thirsty for leadership. And so the none of the above, the Democratic Party is ripe for what happened to the Republican Party in 2016. The right, but hopefully it will be somebody who uses that power for good and not for self-aggrandizement and not for their own, you know, gratification.

As somebody, I think this was, I think Elaine once said to Jerry on this show, that is someone on the fringe of the humor community, do you think Donald Trump is funny? Funny ha-ha? I think he has a performer's cadence. And it would be funnier if he didn't also control the army. But what's the gift? Because it's not nothing.

There is something that works for him with an audience. Yeah. What does he got? He knows how to channel the frustrations of an audience. He knows how to read a room. He knows what the room is feeling, and he can articulate it back to them, and they understand it. There is an undeniable connection between him and his audience to the point where the normal rules of engagement, don't apply. And the Democrats, unfortunately, continue to be Wiley Coyote in the Acme, and they

think, they always think they got him. Oh, if he's convicted of 34 felony counts, there's no way he'll win. Oh, we got him now. He just got indicted on, and every time Donald Trump just walks in and goes, meep, meep. So then what catches the roadrunner? What puts an end to this? What catches the roadrunner is to offer something other than not him, is to offer something that's not just the negative. It's not just negative space. We are stuck in a pattern where the Democratic Party has bought into an agenda over 40 years that also bought into supply-side economics and the general neoliberal vision of how things go and that the only way workers are ever going to get anything is you just got to unionize better. Just poor people need better lobbyists. You know, they need a coherent vision.

For whatever you think of Donald Trump, he presents to his audience a coherent vision. It's not one that I want to live and it's not one that I think makes America great. It's not one that I think is even endemic to how America ever really was. So this is a question of the audience. John and David,

you've both been sounding the alarm about the state of American democracy since 2016. After nearly a decade of saying the sky is falling, do you think that people are hearing you at all? Why even write that as a question? Why I just, dear David and John, why don't you just die? Why do you even get up in the morning?

The thought occurs to me. All day long with the democracy this and the... You got an answer? It doesn't matter. I control what I can control. It doesn't matter if people... People can say like, do you think what you do is effective? I have no fucking idea.

I just do what I have to do. It's if you don't develop a barometer for morality or integrity for yourself and let that inform how you live, then you're at the whim of what you think other people view you as. And I have no control over that. I have no control over how people view it. Do you think by going into other forms, podcasts in particular, you've reached different audiences.

Do you think that you're reaching them in a different way? I don't know. That's the thing about communication is you don't, I don't know. The only people I talk to live in my house. Do you get what I mean? Like people say like, what's it like to be on TV? And you're like, it's like not being on TV.

It's, you can see me, but I can't see you. I don't know how I affect you. Like, you just don't know. I wish I knew. believe. Or maybe I don't. Like, it could, it actually could be hurting. Like, I don't know. What's it been like for you to think and talk about what's been happening in Gaza for the last two years? How have you been affected? Super fun at Passover. It's a really fraught and complicated, emotional issue, obviously, for a lot of Jews.

But again, I try to speak. as best I can, in my opinion, as honestly as I can. And if that means upsetting certain people, I'm always open to the conversation. But I have very strong opinions about the horror of what I see over there. On all sides, I'm on team human. And I don't think that, look, I grew up, as David. We were all David, not Remnick, obviously, but biblical. And I think feeling like David became Goliath was a hard thing to counsel for myself. And a lot of people disagree. And listen, you bring this up and immediately, you know, you're ignoring in 1954. Like, I really don't, like, I get it. But I'm like, right now, there's,

death and sadness and starvation and horror. And I just don't, I don't think it's, I don't think it's human. And I don't know what happened. And I don't know how we can do that. And it's a failure of the world. And it's a failure of humanity. And it's the saddest thing that I can think.

And by the way, the same shit's going on in Sudan and in the Congo and in all kinds of other places that don't have access to the kinds of information and light that. that we see and it's articulated with us and it's going on in Ukraine and like, you know, we're, this is it. Like, this is all we got. And if we can't figure this out, it's mind-boggling.

This being life on earth. Right. Yeah. You know, you hate to get, but like when you get to be older, you do start thinking like, oh, I'm gonna, like, I won't be here, but. Do you, your kids are in their late teens, 20s.

that I know about. Yeah. Oh no, you're right. That is right, actually. Those are the own. Do they watch you on TV? No. They don't even watch me in the house. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get them to look at you? It's very hard. I assume if they were in this room and I know my kids in this room would say, half of this conversation is irrelevant because they're not watching cable TV. Sure.

They're not necessarily reading magazine with 10,000 word profiles and gag cartoons. You and I operate a blockbuster kiosk inside of Tower Records. There's no question. There's, yeah. We are, we are definitely like, we're the guys out there. We're like, extra, extra. So, yeah, no, they live in a completely different. universe. And it gives me hope, and I don't know how you feel about this, but like, in the way that

social media is like poison to me, right? I'm hoping that they're, that the human spirit and the ability to sort of adapt and in near yourself to the new technology, that it won't affect them in the same way that I think it affects me, that it won't be as corrosive. I don't know that that's what it'll be, but I hope that. Final question. Sagittarius. You're prescient. You're prescient.

The Mets. What accounts for your love for the Mets? I'm a loser. And losers love to lose. My family is from Brooklyn and the Bronx. and so my mother's side of the family were Yankee fans. My father's side of the family were...

That was my wife. So what happened was when the Dodgers left to go to L.A., you weren't allowed to flip your allegiance. You just had to wait. And so when the Mets came, that was the... So it was really a birthright more than it was. Well, it's a Yankee fan, I wish you all the luck in the world. John Stewart, thank you.

Thank you for this. That was lovely. Thank you. John Stewart. We spoke last week at the New Yorker Festival, and I want to send a special thank you to our colleagues who put the festival together, including Catherine Sterling, Amanda Miller,

Julia Rothschild, Nico Brown, Michael Etherington, and so many more. Thank you to all my colleagues. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell

and Jared. Paul. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccan. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.