There was a time this writer found Jon Stewart mildly entertaining, even occasionally informative. His post-9/11 remarks remain one of the most emotionally raw, impactful monologues in media.
But this? He's either willfully ignorant or straight-up lying because there's no way he actually believes American legacy media isn't on-par with Hungary's. Or Pravda, for that matter.
How do I even start to prove Stewart wrong?
I suppose we'll look at USAID first because if there was ever evidence of American state-run media, we'd find it there. DOGE unearthed the fact USAID gave $40 million to The New York Times for 'subscriptions'; that's on top of $8.1 million to POLITICO and tens of millions to the supposedly 'free' Associated Press.
That last one is especially galling. I peruse the AP frequently for my work here at Twitchy and -- without fail -- I get a pop-up begging me to donate to them.
As if I ever would.
If major media outlets are taking tens of millions of dollars from the federal government, how is that not state-run media? How can we expect honest and objective reporting on any issue when the fiscal security of these outlets depends on the will of politicians holding the purse strings?
And it doesn't matter if a Republican or Democrat is in the Oval Office. Yes, American media is the propaganda arm of the DNC, but -- until Donald Trump -- no Republican president had the spine to cut off the media gravy train.
Throughout the election, media told us Kamala Harris was a fantastic candidate, that she had the momentum, and that she was even leading Trump in all the polls -- including Iowa by +3.
For years, they've continued to perpetuate the lie that Donald Trump praised 'very fine people on both sides' in Charlottesville, which was the impetus for Joe Biden getting in the presidential race in 2020. They also gladly pushed the 'bloodbath' narrative, claiming Trump threatened political violence if he lost the election (instead, he was referring to the economic havoc a Kamala Harris presidency would cause in the auto sector). When Kamala Harris repeated both lies at the debate, media didn't bother to correct her.
But, believe it or not, the money isn't even the worst part of it. For the past four years, every single legacy media outlet worked to cover for former President Joe Biden and is obvious cognitive decline.
Videos of Biden looking lost, being directed by everyone from France's Macron to the Easter Bunny, were smeared as 'cheap fakes.'
When Robert Hur declined to prosecute Biden based on his cognitive decline, media helped Democrats like Adam Schiff smear Hur, saying he had no business making this claim because he wasn't a doctor.
They reported that Biden was 'sharp as a tack' after his abysmal debate performance, and only days before forcing him out of the race.
And after the dust of the election settled, The Wall Street Journal was the first to 'report' (a term I use loosely) what I knew back in 2020: Joe Biden was cognitively impaired.
Jake Tapper, one of the biggest names on one of the biggest news networks, couldn't be bothered to ask about Joe Biden's cognitive health, but he made sure to strike a lucrative book deal on it after the fact.
Meanwhile, any time President Donald Trump makes a statement, media are quick to claim he did so 'without evidence.'
I'm convinced that if Donald Trump said the sky is blue, we'd get a week's worth of media think pieces about how it's cyan and how Donald Trump is just like Hitler for saying it's blue.
The evidence of state-run media is all around us. If I -- a freelance writer with a nursing degree -- can see it, why can't a guy like Jon Stewart?
Because he's part of it.
And fish don't know that they're wet.
