Jon Stewart Rips “Chilling Effect” Hitting Media: “What a F***ing Week”

Jon Stewart ripped into what he called a “tenuous” moment for media, using his Weekly Show podcast to examine how the government uses its levers of power “to manipulate and get what they want.”

It was the first edition of The Weekly Show since CBS announced that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would end next year. Stewart is an executive producer of that show, and also hosts Comedy Central’s Daily Show on Monday nights.

“Let me just begin with, what a fucking week. I can’t even get into the Late Show, Daily Show of it all. Watch Steven’s [show] from Monday, watch ours from Monday. I think you’ll get a sense of how we’re feeling and just how tenuous this moment,” Stewart said to open the podcast that released Thursday morning. “Oddly enough, our episode today is about levers of power and coercion from the government and how they use their power to manipulate and to get what they want and to force people into the authoritarian tendencies.”

Stewart’s guests on the podcast were former U.S. attorney and Stay Tuned with Preet podcast host Preet Bharara, and Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer.

Stewart used Monday’s Daily Show to rip into CBS’ decision, saying “the fact that CBS didn’t try to save their number-one rated late-night franchise that’s been on the air for over three decades is part of what’s making everybody wonder: Was this ‘purely financial’? Or maybe it’s the path of least resistance for your $8 billion merger to kill a show that you know rankled a fragile and vengeful president who’s so insecure that he’s suffering terribly from a case of chronic penis insufficiency.”

He also said on last week’s podcast (released before CBS’ decision was known) that he was unsure of what would happen to The Daily Show.

“By the way, it is not just about the people on the air. We saw that ABC paid 15 [million], CBS we just saw paid 15 [million] for nothing, just to get that merger through,” Stewart added, before referencing comments from FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who posted about Colbert’s cancelation and told Status that the host “clearly doesn’t have ‘it’ anymore.”

“And by the way, the FCC chairman, getting back to our guardrails, shitposts Colbert and CBS,” Stewart said. “The FCC chair! The guy who is responsible for this is just out there like, ‘yeah, motherfucker, how does my ass taste?’”

CBS, for its part, says that the decision to cancel the Late Show was purely financial, and not related to the merger.

Stewart added that he believes the chilling effect will have a lasting impact on media and entertainment.

“And by the way, it predates Trump. Ron DeSantis suing Disney, I have been in those meetings with executives who have said to me, ‘look man, we don’t want to get on their radar,’” Stewart said. “So there are a lot of things that will never be made, that you will never know about, that will be killed in the bed before they ever had a chance because of this chilling effect.”