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Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show on Tuesday to spar once more with former Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly, who made the surprising argument that Donald Trump is “haunted” by the legacy of January 6, without which he might have been able to pull much further ahead of Joe Biden in the polls.
The Comedy Central satire had been due to broadcast from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week, but its producers had to cancel Monday’s instalment and return to New York when security arrangements were ramped up following the assassination attempt on Trump at his Pennsylvania rally over the weekend.
Stewart opened by paying tribute to his production crew for hastily reorganizing before introducing O’Reilly, a regular foil from the show’s pre-2015 heyday, to discuss the heated nature of so much current political rhetoric, polarization, fanaticism, and what historic attacks on American presidents have had in common.
The pair were soon back to bickering, with Stewart invoking the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021 when a violent mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the legislative complex in Washington DC to prevent the formal certification of the previous November’s election results, fired up by his baseless insistence that the vote was “stolen” and his urging them to “fight like hell” moments before they acted.
“That has haunted him every day since,” O’Reilly contended, to which the host responded by scoffing: “Oh, he’s paid a terrible price…”
O’Reilly persisted: “If Trump hadn’t done that on January 6, he’d be ahead of Joe Biden by 25 points in the polls. That’s how bad Biden has been for the country.”
The conservative broadcaster then produced a sheet of A4 paper from his jacket containing a laundry list of unfavorable statistics, claiming that food and gas prices, mortgage rates, drug overdoses, and car insurance costs had all risen under the Biden administration – ignoring the important context that most developed nations were left facing cost of living crises in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Elsewhere in the conversation, O’Reilly said he was not optimistic that recent calls by President Biden and others to “lower the temperature” of campaign debate would have a lasting impact.
“We’re now in a society where hatred is rewarded,” he explained.
“The hate brigade is now pulling back a little bit because they have to, but they’re gonna be back in two weeks because they get paid to do this. They’re so untalented.”
On his long-running animus with The Daily Show host, O’Reilly said: “We are able to disagree without hating each other. Now, I truly hate him, but I don’t show it.
“But now, that’s not rewarded. That kind of detente where two people look at life differently isn’t rewarded. The haters get the big money, and so that’s what you have, and I think all Americans have got to hold the corporations accountable.
“You can’t do anything about the guys in the basement that are chucking this stuff out that you just had it on, these conspiratorial nuts, you can’t do anything about that.
“But you can say to corporations, ‘You better knock this stuff off. You better stop calling people racists and Nazis and this and that.’”
Stewart jokingly agreed that they were both “somewhat fossilized practitioners of the rhetorical arts” but argued their shared standing made it difficult to tell other pundits how to conduct themselves.
During his opening monologue on Tuesday, Stewart joked about Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson struggling to incorporate their party’s new “unity” message into their convention speeches, observing that Taylor Greene in particular appeared to be unable to accept the concept, grimacing on stage like a human body rejecting a transplanted monkey heart.
He also ridiculed Trump’s newly-minted running mate, JD Vance, noting the eerie resemblance between the Ohio Senator and the nominee’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
“It’s like for VP, Donald selected the actor who would be hired to play Don Jr in the Lifetime movie,” he said.
“It’s not right! It’s like Don Jr was the beta version that had to have the kinks worked out.”
