While all of the other late-night hosts were dark last night as the election results were filtering in, there was Jon Stewart.
Stewart - who returned to the desk at The Daily Show for the lead-up to this moment before he eventually extended - was joined by the show’s correspondents for a live election special. If you were getting tired of feeling anxious while watching the news, hoping your candidate of choice would win amidst all the uncertainty, Stewart provided something of a familiar presence for us all.
Towards the end of the broadcast, a winner hadn’t been announced. That being said, everything was strongly pointing towards Donald Trump returning to the White House. Naturally, many of us expected Stewart to react with a rather harsh assessment of the situation. Instead, there was more of an earnestness in what he delivered.
What Jon Stewart shared on "The Daily Show" live election special.
“Here’s what we know: It’s that we don’t really know anything,” Stewart said. “We’re going to come out of this election and we’re going to make all kinds of pronouncements about what this country is and what this world is. And the truth is, we’re not really gonna know s—. And we’re going to make it seem like this is the finality of our civilization. We’re all going to have to wake up tomorrow morning and work like hell to move the world to the place that we prefer it to be.”
He then showed instances in which the drastic opinions had been wrong previously, such as in 2012, 2016, and 2020. He continued, however, with some words of encouragement, saying, “But this isn’t the end. I promise you. This is not the end. And we have to regroup and we have to continue to fight and continue to work day in and day out to create the better society for our children, for this world, for this country that we know is possible. It’s possible.”
After the cameras stopped rolling, he then turned to the audience and had a frank conversation that went even deeper into what this particular night doing the show meant to him.
“Can I tell you what a joy you were, how happy I am to have spent the evening with you and not sitting at home throwing shit at my television screen,” Stewart said, according to Variety. “You have helped us all have a beautiful distraction, and you’re gonna leave here, and you’re gonna look at your phone, and you’re gonna go home, and you’re gonna have that weird feeling where your knees feel wobbly, and you’re like, ‘Do I have hypoglycemia?’ But you don’t! You just have a temporary anxiety and paralysis that comes with disappointment and just a soupçon of despair.”
He then added, “It will pass. And we will be back, digging ditches for democracy once again in the way that we have always had to do, and I thank you guys for your dedication, and I thank you for being here. Get home safe.”
