Jon Stewart began his monologue Monday by addressing the elephant in the room: Elon Musk’s offer to do an interview on The Daily Show.
He made the offer in a post on X last Tuesday, saying that he would agree to the sit-down—but only if it “airs unedited.”
Stewart, for his part, said he was game.
“After thinking about his offer, I thought, ‘Hey, that’s actually how these in-studio interviews normally air,‘” Stewart said. “So, sure.”
Stewart added, “As a matter of fact, let me sweeten or un-sweeten 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 f--- we want, as long as we wrap before the new season of South Park comes out," Stewart said.
“I am game,“ Stewart continued. ”I think it’ll be a very interesting conversation. But then I checked X again and I saw another tweet from Elon, because you can’t not.”
Stewart recapped the posts from Musk seemingly backing out of an interview on The Daily Show, declaring that Stewart is a “propagandist,” and is “not bipartisan.”
It’s an argument that Stewart did not find convincing in the slightest:
“The guy who custom-made his own Dark MAGA hat, that he wears to opine in the Oval Office with the president he spent $270 million to elect, thinks I’m just too partisan,” Stewart replied.
“Look, Elon,” he said. “I do have some criticisms about DOGE... If you want to come on and talk about it on the show, great. If you don’t want to, sure.”
He continued, “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 bulls--t.”
Stewart concluded, “You know it. I know it. Bulls--t.”
