Jon Stewart was fired up on Monday’s (March 24) edition of The Daily Show, where he took aim at Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Republicans’ hypocrisy over free speech.
The comedian started by discussing Hegseth’s recent group chat blunder, where he accidentally included The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a text message group about the United States’ plans for military strikes on Huthi rebels in Yemen.
“Oopsie poopsie,” Stewart mocked. “Back in my day, if you were a journalist who wanted leaked war documents, you had to work the sources, meet them in a dark garage, gain the trust, pound the pavement. Now, just wait for the National Security Director to be distracted by The White Lotus while he’s setting up his Bomb Yemen group chat.”
He continued, “By the way, I might also be in this. I don’t know. I don’t check my group chats. Perhaps my favorite text of the entire group chain was the one from our defense secretary saying, ‘We are currently clean on op-sec.’ For those of you who don’t know, ‘op-sec’ means operational security. He said that in a group chat… a group chat with a journalist.”
Elsewhere on Monday’s show, Stewart slammed the Trump administration and Republican commentators for their “hypocrisies and absurdities,” especially when it comes to the topic of “free speech.”
After pointing out Republicans spent years blasting former President Joe Biden over the supposed end of free speech and running a “thought police,” Stewart aired clips from President Donald Trump promising the return of free speech in America.
“There are actions by our government that are so baldly bulls***, even if you know it will have no effect, that these powerful creatures have been genetically modified to resist shame or self-reflection of any kind, you just can’t help yourself but to go old school Daily Show gotcha,” Stewart said before sharing recent clips of Trump urging for networks such as CNN and MSNBC to be shut down because he disagrees with them.
Continuing to mock Trump, Stewart quipped, “Watch What Happens Live. I think Bravo should also lose their license. What they did to Dorinda on Traitors… they should be sent to a Salvadorian hellhole.”
“This is so blatant, they so fetishize free speech, this thing that they do not in any way actually practice,” he added. “These guys don’t give a f*** about free speech. They care about their speech. It’s blatant hypocrisy. The hypocrisy burns.”
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