Jon Stewart has “gone there” on his latest podcast, comparing Joe Biden and the conspiracy and “deceit” over his health to the dishonesty of the Trump White House.
It’s a particularly brutal blow, given that the one remaining argument in Biden’s favor is that he is not Donald Trump.
On the latest episode of The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, the talk show host tore into the Democratic Party for protecting Biden and the “omerta” around discussing his increasingly apparent health problems.
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Stewart’s guests included Tommy Vietor and Jon Favreau, the former Obama staffers who already called for Biden to stand down on their own podcast, Pod Save America.
“If we are taking an honest look at what our best chance to defend ourselves against a perceived threat,” Stewart said. “I think we are selling ourselves short. And in a lot of ways, using, as Tommy put it, ‘omerta,’ to stifle what could be an incredibly productive, at least conversation, even if Joe Biden came out and said, ‘Look, I understand where I’m at in my lifespan and cycle and what I do, here’s how this government works.’ Rather than coming out and becoming Trumpian and saying, ‘You think someone else could hold NATO together? They could never. Only God can tell me to get out of the race.’”
The reference to God came after Biden appeared to indicate that only divine intervention would make him consider standing aside, during his attempted debate cleanup interview on ABC News last week. “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race. The Lord Almighty’s not coming down,” the president told George Stephanopoulos.
Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton staffer, was subsequently caught on camera saying, “I don’t think he can serve four more years.”
Jon Stewart, who was one of the first to call out Biden’s increasing frailty, said the response to the shockwaves caused by the debate debacle had been profoundly depressing. “Nothing that’s been done inspires any confidence other than the fatalism of, ‘It is what it is, and this is what we’re stuck with.’ And that’s the part that I think has degraded people’s trust in institutions and the government from the get-go, that’s a problem.”
The failure to respond convincingly to the debate was matched by the inability to prepare the public for the reality of Biden’s health situation, Stewart said.
“What do I do with my anger at a Democratic Party that honestly has put us in this rock and a hard place position? That wasn’t honest over this past year about what was happening internally at the White House. Was not in any way preparing the public for Kamala Harris. Wasn’t doing any of that. There was a—I don’t know if it’s complacency or deceit or whatever it was—but a Democratic Party that missed all of the threats that were coming their way and has left us vulnerable here,” he said.
