‘The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart Says Republicans “Don’t Give A F*ck About Free Speech” & Jokes Pete Hegseth Was Distracted By ‘The White Lotus’ When He Set Up War Group Chat With Journalist

The Traitors, Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen and The White Lotus all caught strays as Jon Stewart took on the topic of free speech during his Monday night monologue.

The Daily Show host kicked off his latest episode by tackling the news of the day, notably Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s group chat blunder.

“Oopsie poopsie,” said Stewart in reference to Hegseth accidentally including The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a group chat about the U.S. plans for military strikes on Yemen.

“Back in my day if you were a journalist who wanted leaked war documents, you had to work the sources, meet them in a dark garage, gain the trust, pound the pavement. Now, just wait for the National Security Director to be distracted by The White Lotus while he’s setting up his bomb Yemen group chat,” Stewart said.

But Stewart spent the majority of his TDS opening by talking about free speech, and in particular, The Republican party’s hypocrisy when it comes to the topic.

“These guys don’t give a f*ck about free speech,” he said, bluntly.

“There are certain hypocrisies and absurdities that we find in our cultural moment that make for great fodder for humorous dialogue: a facial expression, a nod and a wink. Then there are other actions by our government that are so baldly bullshit, even if you know it will have no effect, that these powerful creatures have been genetically modified to resist shame or self-reflection of any kind, you just can’t help yourself but to go old school Daily Show gotcha,” he said.

While pointing out that the Republicans, particularly the MAGA-end of the spectrum, spent four years under President Biden decrying Democrats for running a “thought police”, he highlighted that the U.S. now has a President that truly believes in free speech, as long as it tracks with his own views.

Then, of course, Stewart played a number of clips of Trump claiming that news organizations such as ABC, CNN and MSNBC should lose their licenses for saying things that he doesn’t like.

“Watch What Happens Live. I think Bravo should also lose their license. What they did to Dorinda on Traitors… they should be sent to a Salvadorian hellhole,” joked Stewart in his own Trumpian way.

“This is so blatant, they fetishize free speech, this thing that they do not in any way practice,” he added, before highlighting Trump’s fight with the AP over the designation of the Gulf of Mexico and the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil.

“These guys don’t give a f*ck about free speech. They care about their speech. It’s blatant hypocrisy,” he added. “The hypocrisy burns.”

Stewart then had some fun with Trump demanding that an “unflattering” painting of him must be taken down in the Colorado Capitol, before closing out.

“Doesn’t this bother you at all?,” he said. “Pass us all the motherf*cking sick bucket.”