Jon Stewart Details Why ‘The Daily Show’ Left the RNC After Trump Assassination Attempt
Truer words have rarely been spoken.
“What a terrible fucking week,” Stewart said to open Tuesday’s episode of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, which he was originally not supposed to host and most definitely was not supposed to have take place in its regular New York City studio. The attempt on Donald Trump’s life and heightened security at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin very abruptly changed the program’s grand (and on-the-ground) plans.
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Stewart went on to mock the sales pitch that brought him back to “The Daily Show” in the first place.
“‘Hey Jon! Come back to ‘The Daily Show’ just for the election! It’ll be fun! You’ll do one day a week, it’ll be a larf — what could go wrong?'” (“Larf” here being an etymon for “laugh.”)
But seriously folks, Stewart felt that he had some explaining to do — or at least some gratitude to express.
“Obviously we were supposed to be doing our shows from Milwaukee for the RNC this week. But because of the attempt on the former President’s life, our venue, the venue in which we had planned to do the shows — the theater — which was originally located in the ‘soft perimeter,’ they called it, security-wise, was shifted — understandably so — to the ‘hard perimeter,’ they called it,” he said. “You really don’t want to be in the hard perimeter.”
IndieWire reported out much of this on Monday, but we felt it best said in Stewart’s own words.
The 1,000-seat theater was “locked down,” he continued. “And because of that, we felt that we could not logistically put the theater shows on effectively, without… people.”
Right, that checks out. No studio audience = no studio show. But he sure would have loved those people.
“The people of Milwaukee, the mayor of Milwaukee, could not have been more accommodating to the show, more gracious to us. We thank you so much,” Stewart said. “I do hope that we will be able to come back to Milwaukee. We really do want to come back some time and make up the events we had planned, including our ‘InDogcision.’ We get dogs adopted and people registered to vote. Or it’s the other way around, I don’t remember.'”
Actually not the worst idea ever: dogs are pretty good judges of character. And boy were there some characters that stayed in Milwaukee to take part in the RNC, which kicked off on Tuesday. Before Stewart went there — and trust us, he went there — he had one more batch of special thank yous to express.
“But as always, the biggest slice of price is reserved for our production team and crew,” he said. “They turned this ocean liner around on a dime. On a dime! It is a big production to take a show like this on the road. On short notice, our crack production team and our crew got us back to New York City, rejiggered all the things in the studio to get us ready to do a program this very Tuesday night. It’s remarkable work.”
And then Stewart got down to talking about the Trump assassination attempt — and how the RNC (mis)handled the moment.
Watch the video here:
Stewart’s guest on Tuesday’s spit-and-glue show was his famous foe Bill O’Reilly (pictured above). Watch the two spar in their latest round here:
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