Jon Stewart: ‘Trump is the real cancel culture - emphasis on cult’

Late-night hosts talked Harrison Butker's commencement speech, final arguments in Donald Trump's hush-money trial and the "Stop the Steal" symbol outside the supreme court justice Samuel Alito's home.

Back in his usual Monday night slot on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart looked into the brouhaha surrounding the Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker's commencement speech at the conservative Benedictine College, in which he railed against Pride, "dangerous gender ideologies" and working women.

Despite widespread backlash to his comments, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, confirmed that Butker was invited to the White House along with the rest of his Super Bowl-winning team. But according to rightwing news, Butker has been cancelled - as the left wanted to "destroy" Butker's career as part of a "war on faith", to quote the Fox News host Jesse Watters.

But "nothing about the rightwing reaction is surprising", he continued. "Because the idea that there is an all-pervasive, all-powerful threat to free speech called 'cancel culture' has become a central tenet of modern conservatism. They celebrate their being silenced at conferences. They celebrate their being silenced on podcasts and streaming outlets. They celebrate their being silenced with over 700 book titles about 'being canceled'. Why are there so many of these fucking books?"

Stewart detoured for a brief tirade on the social platforms incentivizing outrage from all sides: "We are not censored or silenced. We are surrounded by and inundated by more speech than has ever existed in the history of communication. And it is all weaponized by professional outrage hunters of all stripes, scouring the globe for graduation speech snippets, offhand comments during promotional tours, out-of-context comedy bits, lame marketing ideas, or any words and phrases they believe they can latch on to to generate, monetize clicks. Outrage is the engine of our modern media economy."

Sometimes it unfairly costs people a job, he added, "but contrary to conservatives' victimization complex, there is no organized cancel culture conspiracy where even the slightest misstep can get someone on the right 100% canceled. Actually, there is one."

That would be opposing Trump, which will get Republicans blacklisted from their own party. "There is no level of loyalty deep enough to be free of Trump cancel culture," Stewart concluded. "Truth is, Trump is the real cancel culture - emphasis on cult."