Jon Stewart Says He Might Not Be Relevant Enough for Trump to Take Him Off TV

In President Donald Trump’s ongoing war against late-night comedy, it simply isn’t worth his time to go after the part-timers.

Ever since Trump took back the White House, he’s made a point of publicly insulting late-night hosts who repeatedly pick on him, calling the coverage of his administration by comedians like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel biased and deceptive. When Trump’s new allies at Paramount made the decision not to renew Colbert’s contract and permanently retire the Late Show franchise back in July, the President celebrated the removal of one of his most prominent comedic critics and expressed his desire for Kimmel to take Colbert’s place on the chopping block. Months later, FCC chair Brendan Carr publicly and controversially intimidated ABC affiliates and the Walt Disney Corporation into temporarily suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Now, just months into Trump’s second term as President, late-night comedy has become a battleground in Trump’s war on the First Amendment itself — and, yet, the most overtly political late-night show on TV has mostly escaped the President’s wrath and his catty attacks on Truth Social. The Daily Show and its weekly host Jon Stewart aren’t on Trump’s official hit list — at least, not according to the President’s many social media rants about the state of late-night, and Stewart thinks he knows why. 

“There’s no question there. It’s a function of relevance,” Stewart said during a recent episode of his podcast The Weekly Show. “I don’t think we are on the radar.” 

But, knowing the President, that’s a problem that a simple Sharpie could fix.

When Weekly Show producer Brittany Mehmedovic asked Stewart why, in his opinion, Trump and his cronies haven’t attempted to give The Daily Show the Jimmy Kimmel Live! or The Late Show treatment, Stewart suggested that the Trump administration may not see his Comedy Central operation as a significant threat.

“I’ve had my experiences with him in the past,” Stewart said of his public clashes with Trump, stating, “I take great pride in the fact that Donald Trump once, at 2:30 a.m., just tweeted, I think in all caps, ‘JON STEWART IS A PUSSY.’” 

While lamenting that Trump couldn’t give him one of his famous catchy nicknames that the President reserves for his greatest rivals, such as “Crooked Hillary” or “Lyin’ Ted,” Stewart revealed that he already had Trump beat in the insult department. “That was after I had come up with ‘Fuckface Von Clownstick,’” Stewart said of his early-morning Twitter feud with the future President. “He was saying my real name is Jonathan Leibowitz, and why don’t I appreciate my Jewish heritage? And I said, ‘Well, you know, he doesn’t like people to know, but his real name is Fuckface Von Clownstick.” 

But, as Stewart pointed out, Trump picked a fight with him before he had bigger fish to fry. “This is obviously before he was the commander-in-chief of the United States,” Stewart admitted.

Now, Trump reserves his passive-aggressive social media rants for the late-night hosts who clock in more than once a week, and Stewart isn’t even worth the usual “low ratings” jab that Trump throws at his colleagues. And, while The Daily Show’s failure to enrage the President as well as their competitors may be considered a short-coming from a political standpoint, professionally, it’s probably in the best interests. 

I’m sure that everyone at Comedy Central is happy to let South Park take all the flak from the White House, seeing as Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the only comedians whom Trump truly fears.