Jon Stewart responded with characteristic wit Wednesday after a New York Post story, centered around a right-wing commentator’s tweet, tried to depict the Comedy Central host as a hypocrite after he criticized Donald Trump’s justification of bank fraud as a “victimless crime.”
The Post quoted podcaster Tim Pool, who baselessly wondered whether Stewart committed “fraud” when he sold his New York City penthouse for $17.5 million in 2014. The publication based its conclusion on the fact that assessor records from that year showed the property’s estimated market value sitting at $1.882 million. According to the Post, the property’s assessor valuation was under $850,000.
On Monday’s episode of The Daily Show, Stewart explained why Donald Trump’s claim that his bank fraud judgment for inflating property values to secure better loans—and then using lower values for tax purposes—was not a “victimless crime.”
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“Money isn’t infinite. A loan that goes to the liar doesn’t go to someone who’s giving a more honest evaluation. So the system becomes incentivized for corruption,” Stewart said then.
These comments, apparently spurred Pool—and later the Post—to look into Stewart’s own past.
“Did [Stewart] commit fraud when he sold his penthouse for $17.5M? NY listed its market value at $1.8M [and assessed value] at around 800k,” Pool asked in a post on X.
But Stewart wasn’t having it.
“OMG!! I've been caught doing something not remotely similar to Trump!” he wrote in a tweet late Wednesday afternoon. “I guess all I need to do now is start a fraud college, steal classified docs, bankrupt casinos, pay hush money, grab pussies, discriminate in housing, cheat at golf and foment insurrection and you'll revere me!”
While Trump presented his inflated property values to lenders in order to get favorable loans, Stewart sold his property to a buyer who was willing to pay $17.5 million, which is an entirely different scenario. Stewart did not, for instance, submit documents tripling the size of his penthouse, like the former president did with his own in Trump Tower.
Additionally, it is quite common for a property’s assessed value and its market value—what someone would pay for it—to vary, according to Forbes, with the latter often being higher.
Trump, despite having his appeal bond drastically reduced Monday, is still on the hook for some $454 million following the case—a verdict he says he will appeal.
