Tucker Carlson on Thursday addressed comedian Jon Stewart’s recent advocacy on a veterans’ health care bill by ignoring the legislation entirely and focusing on what matters more to him: Stewart’s height and general appearance.
Spurred by Republican senators voting against the Senate bill to help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, Stewart made several appearances on Capitol Hill last week into early this week, when on Monday he was filmed shouting at right-wing conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and calling him a “fucking troll” not acting “in good faith.”
Carlson decided to highlight that encounter instead of anything else Stewart said over the past few days. After playing the clip, Carlson said Stewart looked “like a guy who lives in the men’s room at your public library, eating imaginary insects out of the air.”
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Carlson didn’t bother to explain why Stewart was there. In fact, the Fox host actually mischaracterized Stewart’s purpose on Capitol Hill, claiming he showed up to yell at Posobiec. “He was there to get—for some reason—into a shouting match” with the fringe figure, as Carlson framed it.
He then diminished the significance of the legislation that he failed to describe. “What’s really the most interesting part of [the video] is not the policy debate,” Carlson said, using a mocking tone for those last two words, “but Jon Stewart himself. He’s totally unrecognizable. He looks demented.”
Carlson wasn’t done, though. After a few more comments about Stewart’s appearance, Carlson fixated on his height. Stewart, he said, is “very short. Really short. Too short to date. Was he always that short?”
Stewart responded to Carlson on Twitter late Thursday night. The primetime Fox host “believes me too short to date… and yet somehow, miraculously, I remain tall enough to not know what Victor Orban’s ass tastes like!” Stewart wrote, referencing Carlson’s frequent praise for Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, who warned against a “mixed-race world” in a speech last month.
In an MSNBC interview last Thursday, Stewart also skewered Fox News for not having him on to discuss the PACT Act. The network responded by booking him the following morning, during which Stewart explained the legislation while throwing in a few quips at Fox for good measure.
