Jon Stewart returned to his roots this week, and by that we do mean the roots of his hair. While calling out Republicans for their hypocrisy around free speech, the Comedy Central host threw on a black wig as a callback to what his hair used to look like in the 2000s.
After playing several clips of rightwing pundits calling the left the “thought police” and comparing Democrats to George Orwell’s “1984,” Stewart pointed to the many words the Trump administration is removing from the federal government as well as their actions toward pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil. The Trump administration is currently trying to deport the Columbia University graduate in the wake of his activism. Columbia has also agreed to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under “academic receivership” for at least five years as a “precondition” for restoring funding.
“See, these guys don’t give a f–k about free speech. They care about their speech,” Stewart said on Monday night. “It’s so blatant, the hypocrisy, it’s so old-school ‘Daily Show’ gotcha. You know what, I’m just going to put on the wig I used to wear during those years.” And with that, Stewart threw on the poorly fitting wig to the applause of his studio audience.
The comedian then pointed to further proof of Trump’s hypocrisy, showing a clip of the president saying that criticizing judges he appointed “should be illegal.” The late night host then highlighted a Truth Social post that was written four days after Trump’s initial comments, calling a judge a “radical left lunatic.”
“The hypocrisy, it burns,” Stewart said. “You can’t protest in a way that offends the Right. You can’t teach things that the Right don’t want you to teach. You can’t read things that they don’t want you to read. You can’t use words that they don’t want you to use. But they love free speech.” Watch the full opening monologue above.
