During Tuesday night’s episode of The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart announced that he would be departing the show by the end of the calendar year, ending an absolutely amazing run as America’s top political satirist. Prior to making the announcement, it was business as usual, as Stewart once again aimed his sharp wit at his favorite target — Fox News. In this instance, Stewart highlighted the insane lengths the network will go through to express admiration for a foreign leader in order to denigrate President Obama.
Over the past few days, the talking heads at Fox News have found a new heroic figure, King Abdullah II of Jordan, to idolize and heap praise upon. Stewart aired a montage of Fox News hosts swooning over the king regarding his response to ISIL after a Jordanian pilot was executed by the terror group. This was then followed by the inevitable shots taken at President Obama, with numerous pundits calling Abdullah a real leader while describing the President as weak.
Stewart pointed out that conservatives were asking, “Why can’t Obama be more like this powerful Muslim King?” The comedian observed that this “is weird, because if I may say, that’s also been their biggest complaint about Obama.” Even when confronted with statistics that show the United States has conducted 80% of the air strikes on ISIL, the right continues to claim Obama isn’t doing anything. This was highlighted by a clip of Gretchen Carlson complaining about the President’s inaction while a graphic appeared on the screen showing the number of American air missions against the Islamic State.
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Stewart also showed instances of Republicans embracing other foreign leaders who would normally be seen as thuggish dictators. A clip was aired of Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) praising Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, who is essentially a military dictator of Egypt. Stewart also played a montage of conservatives gushing over Russia’s Vladimir Putin while complaining about Obama wearing “mom jeans.”
The Daily Show host stated that conservatives’ “paragons of leadership are a king, a military dictator and a power-hungry wannabe czar.” He then said it was at odd with what it is they all claim to love — freedom. This was followed by the normal band of misfits (Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, Gohmert) all bloviating about how much they love America and freedom. Stewart then ended the segment with the following statement:
“Apparently you love freedom — you just wish it was being administered in this country by a dictator. It’s kind of ironic, because if President Obama started acting like any of the guys whose leadership you admire, I’m pretty sure I know the first place he’d shut down.”
Below is video of the segment, courtesy of Daily Motion:
Jon Stewart 021015 segment1 by lookatmyshirt
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
