Jon Stewart is calling out Elon Musk for backing off of his offer to come on The Daily Show.
Last week, Musk expressed willingness to go on Stewart’s Comedy Central series if the interview would air unedited. Stewart readily agreed. But then Musk decided against going head-to-head with the host, calling Stewart a partisan propagandist.
On Monday, Stewart told his viewers (video below), “I thought about [his offer], and after a prayerful week with my family … I thought, ‘You know, that’s actually how the in-studio interviews normally air — unedited. So, sure, we’d be delighted! As a matter of fact, let me sweeten or unsweeten the pot. The interview can be 15 minutes, it can be an hour, it can be two hours — whatever. I’ll be honest: I don’t think this network makes any other programming. So we can do whatever the fuck we want as long as we wrap before the new season of South Park comes out in May or June in 2026.”
Continued Stewart: “But then I checked X again, and I saw another tweet from Elon, because you can’t not. He then said — after saying he’d like to come on — that ‘Jon Stewart cannot be trusted’ and that I’m a ‘propagandist’ and a ‘bipartisan.’ You give me too little credit. Again, the guy who custom-made his own dark MAGA hat that he wears to opine in the Oval Office with the president who he spent $270 million to elect … thinks I’m just too partisan. I’m not sure what he thinks ‘bipartisan’ means. But its generally not, ‘I support Donald Trump and also Germany’s AFD party — that’s not bipartisan. That’s just the same shit.”
Concluded Stewart: “So I guess what I’ll say is this: Look Elon, I do have some criticisms about DOGE. I support, in general, the idea of efficiency and delivering better services to the American public in cheaper and more efficient ways. And if you want to come in and talk about it on the show, great. If you don’t want to, sure. But can we just drop the pretense that you won’t do it because I don’t measure up to the standards of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times? Because quite frankly, that’s bullshit. You know it, and I know it — it’s bullshit.”
Musk has, of course, been interviewed by right-wing hosts — like his interview with Tucker Carlson last month — so he doesn’t seem to mind a host with a partisan point of view since he went full MAGA last year, so long as it aligns with his own.
Last week, Musk responded to a video posted on X titled, “Elon Musk Should Go On Jon Stewart’s Daily Show.” At the beginning of the 11-minute video, the user said, “If Elon Musk actually went on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and talked about DOGE for an hour, Jon Stewart and Elon Musk, the amount of headway and the amount of progress we would get as a country to actually get a lot of those things codified and actually propagate through the entirety of the United States, not just at a federal level, not just at the executive branch but through Congress, through all the local governments, I think it would go a really, really long way.”
In response, Musk wrote, “I will do it if the show airs unedited.”
The Daily Show then replied on X last Wednesday, “@elonmusk we’d be delighted!”
Musk followed up with, “Jon Stewart is much more a propagandist than it would seem. Jon is too set in his ways. He used to be more bipartisan.”