745
Jon Stewart on CNN’s Biden book: ‘Selling you a book about news they should have told you’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
745 points (98.2% liked)
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It's just bizarre how much drama around Bidens declining health, which is normal for a person of his age. But not a single peep about massive corruption by Trump, dismissal of laws and actual criminal shit like sexual assault of women.
This isn't, "drama around Bidens declining health," it's another symptom of a sickness within the Democratic party. Ruth Bader Ginsberg refused to retire when Obama was in office, so her death gave Donald Trump another Supreme Court nomination. Dianne Feinstein would not leave office despite having severe dementia, and instead died during her term. Jerry Connolly was made Democratic Chair of the House Oversight Committee despite being diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He died yesterday, made him the third House Democrat to die in the last 2 months.
The Democratic Party is led by geriatrics who refuse to relinquish power even as they drop dead in office. We should drag every single person who knew about Biden's failing mental state into the light and make sure they never work in politics again. We should demand to know if his cancer diagnosis was known before the election, and if not, why he didn't receive a cancer screening for over a decade. We need accountability for the people who allowed the party to reach this state. And before 2026, we need to go to every single House and Senate Democrat over the age of 65 and say, "Thank you for your service, but you're retiring now. Would you like to endorse anyone for your seat?"
Jon Stewart, in particular, talks about Trump's corrupt and illegal activities on a regular basis and has been doing so for a long time.
"But you see he also had moral consistency and called out Biden's issues, therefore he's guilty of enabling Trump!"
That's an incredibly frustrating problem.
I have a fairly technical background. How technical? When you mention Black-Scholes to people you get a variety of responses.
Most people just say, "WTF are you talking about? Why doesn't that guy just wipe his feet?"
Finance-curious people may have looked it up on Wikipedia.
Actual finance professionals may get excited and talk about, "the Greeks".
I'm the kind of nerd who went through the entire derivation from fundamental concepts like the stochastic discount factor and then had to compare the calculated and observed convexity of utility functions to rediscover the equity premium puzzle.
Many Democrats are happy to listen to me shred the economic "theories" that Trump blathers on about and are very satisfied to see proofs that their numbers don't actually work in real math. Many of those same people absolutely loose their shit at the implication that Democratic policies are anything less than perfect.
Don't get me wrong. Trumps economic and foreign relations policies are absolute monkey turds and I'll never get tired of throwing them in the toilet, where they belong. At the same time, hypocrisy doesn't do Democrats any favors.
Did you literally wake up from a coma the day Biden's cancer diagnosis was announced or something? Or are you the rare person who isn't part of Trump's cult but also only watches right wing news sources?
"President Trump shits on Constitution in novel way!" could paraphrase a headline from literally any week this year after 1/20. And only after 1/20 because before then he was merely President-Elect Trump.
Beyond that, the news cycle is pretty short - for example, unless we have revelations about Trump sexually assaulting a woman we didn't already know about or some movement in an existing court case, it's not going to continue to be litigated in the news media because there's nothing new to say.
Dunno, is CNN a right wing news? I watch American CNN as source of what's happening over the pond (I'm European). I'd consider CNN as mainstream as news can possibly get.
Center right
I see multiple articles about Trump's corrupt and illegal actions every single day.
It goes far beyond conspiracy theories at this point: Most major media outlets and centralized social media platforms in the world are sanewashing the entire conservative bloc in America.
They're literally copying Germany in the 1930s, with secret police, sending people to camp based on ethnicity(For all those who seem to not know: Dachau concentration camp was opened in 1933, thousands held there by 1934), etc. Elon Musk did a full blow, Hitler style Nazi salute on stage during the inaugration celebration, twice. And all the media, including pages like Snopes, are acting like "It's impossible to tell what he actually meant".
Front Burner just did a podcast about all of this and how is similar with Nazi Germany. Mostly helps that this isn't an American news outlet (it's Canadian, part of CBC) about how they honestly spoke about it (Trump can't threaten to take away their broadcasting license)
Pretty sure Stewart's point is exactly that. They're putting out a book now to have "content" instead of going after trump for the real content. Like Puppy-Killer Noem, his secretary of Homeland Security not knowing Habeas Corpus. or, blatantly stating the exact opposite before a congressional hearing.
the stuff in CNN's book was news years ago- and they talked about it years ago, too. CNN is complicit
I think his point was more that politicians are just so used to coverups and lying that they do it even when it's right in front of our faces. We could see for our own eyes that Biden was unfit to run, but were gaslit up until the debate when he stood down.
And the same things are all true of Trump; we can see with our own eyes how unqualified he is, but everyone insists on pretending otherwise.
This!
Both of my parents have dementia. I have relatives that died after living with dementia for a while.
Biden's level of dementia takes 3-6 years to reach that point. There is no way people around him and higher ups in democratic party didn't know he had dementia.
I am deeply sorry to hear about your parents, that is a horrid disease and I hope they can be peaceful.
Oh they knew, I suspect that if Biden won, the cabinet would have used the 25th Amendment and put Harris in control. Not the worst plan in the world, but a stupid one.
Yeah. I feel like almost everyone misunderstands Jon. He calls out shitty government behavior.
Republicans being a bursting cornucopia are statistically certain to spend more time in his sights, but Jon has never given Dems a "pass". Also, his monologues aren't just "Republicans dumb", they're incredibly informative about how the systems are supposed to work. He sneaks in legitimate government literacy lessons. Jon is a genius of our time.
This is what every other comedian trying to be Jon... Even on the tonight show, doesn't seem to have internalized.
Jon deserved a break... But his original retirement left such a void.
I remember when Jon wanted Biden to drop out after his poor debate performance, and people said he was being unfair because he [checks notes] wanted Trump to lose.
Or they were rightfully worried that changing course that late in the game would have consequences.
Biden should not have run in the first place. Speaking up that he should step aside like 2 months before the general is not the time to do it, all that does is sow further dissention.
And look how that turned out.
Biden had internal polls showing he would lose and Trump would have 400 EC votes. That's a bigger loss than Harris had later that year. That's why he dropped out (along with pressure from the donor class.)
Dude, if Biden had run it would be super majority for republicans.
Democrats own internal polling showed that Trump was going to win 400+. This is why Nancy Pelosi picked up to phone and started pressuring him to drop.
Don't bother, Biden stans don't listen to the news, they think its all a grand conspiracy like Trump supporters.
Really well until it was Harris saying she was just going to do everything Biden told her form off stage and dismissed the pain if the average citizen?
I still haven't figured out how to download only the Monday episodes of TDS. Until then I guess I'm stuck watching on yt. The others are OK but Jon makes the show.
Agreed. Lying is the default. No one is surprised at all if politicians lie. And theres no accountability because of it, so why not lie.
I don’t know, I feel like I hear about Trump’s corrupt ass every day as long as I’m not watching Fox.
People are just grumpy at Biden and his team because they helped this guy get back in office. At the end of the day, it’s not about Biden. It’s about us being stuck with Trump.
Kinda horseshit. Everyone knew trump. Only people responsible for trump 2.0 are those that voted for him or didn't care enough to vote.
That has Jack shit to do with Biden. A Ham sandwich is a better alternative and we should stop giving cover to shitty people acting like it was at all any contest.
Kinda horseshit. The Democratic Party needs to stop racing to the bottom and running candidates that are so bad they can only win against garbage like Trump. Because sometimes they're even wrong about that. Apparently 2/3 of the time.
And his mental decline. Let's not pretend Trump is in peek physical and mental shape like the news is telling us.
Beacuse:
Trump is worse, that does not excuse having a bad track record.
Hell, my wife was watching an episode of Designing Women and I overheard them shitting on trump. That episode was aired back in 91. Pretty sure his tendency toward fuckery was established once he became known.
Trump has always been the butt of a joke, Biff Tennan in Back to the Future 2 is based on Trump. Rosie O'Donald had a famous beef with him. He has always been known as a shithead.
When he announced his candidacy, my mom laughed out loud because she hoped this would be impossible and backfire in his face. She knew his stick for decades at that point. One of her rare times of being right the entire time, as her son.
Also follow up that I forgot, I was watching Northern Exposure, at some point in season 2, the conservative former-astronaut character said that Trump was a reason to excuse his actions. This aired in the 90s as well.
"Worse".
There isn't even a word to describe how much worse...
The bar is in hell, and Trump is limboing with the devil.
I think its a bias built around expectations. For some kids who like to rub feces on their faces and have a low IQ, you are just happy if they smell fine and dont disrupt the class. For other kids we assert a normal civilized standard of politeness, cleanliness, and output. If the teachers/administrators mess up too much, maybe the feces smearer gets pushed into a position of influence in the class out of desperation.
To move forward with the metaphor, we had higher standards for a democrat-- or we used to-- and we expect corruption and nastiness from republicans. And when the kids who we know to not have low potential start whining that how come they dont get treated with the tolerance we have of the face feces smearer, they get slapped and told thats not a measure they should be aspiring to. We dont judge ourselves by the lowest common denominator. We strive to live our lives better that that. The slap is a hint not to dwell in the gutter.
edit: and yes, I'm an old person who got slapped plenty growing up. And I grew up just fine and am now a joy to be around. (but yes, maybe rhetorical slapping is best)
One name for this phenomenon of higher standards is "the bigotry of high expectations" (as opposed to the 'soft bigotry of low expectations').
What?
You seriously have heard anything about that? That's absolutely unbelievable, even rightwing news sources talk about it to deny it.
Where are you getting your news from that you haven't heard any of that stuff?
It's up to regular people to create that stuff and share it but we just don't.