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‘OMG just put a knife in my skull’: Jon Stewart floated as ‘fairly serious’ 2024 Dem ticket contender

July 9, 2022 | | Print Article

Over the years, some pretty odd names have been floated for a presidential run — names like Oprah, The Rock, and Kanye West come to mind — but the one that sent Mother Jones journalist and Hollywood actor Ben Dreyfuss over the edge was former “Daily Show” comedian and political commentator Jon Stewart.

“Oh my god just put a knife in my skull,” Dreyfuss tweeted in response to a Politico op-ed written by public affairs guru Juleanna Glover in which she makes the “fairly serious” case that Jon Stewart is “exactly the person the Democrats need” if President Joe Biden bows out of another run.

https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1545471249484091393?s=20&t=VJ2X0dVrqPb3_xReJzaFrw

“Joe Biden should run for president in 2024,” Glover writes. “But if he decides against it for whatever reason, and the Democrats want a serious shot at retaining the White House, Jon Stewart should run on the Democratic ticket instead.”

According to Glover, “Stewart’s definition of being an entertainer has him wrestling with the kind of big, serious topics that actual politicians specialize in avoiding.”

“He spends his time recording an AppleTV show and podcast interview show on policy issues such as abortion, climate change, gun control, misinformation, modern monetary theory and other wonky-current topics with the occasional Jud Apatow and Mark Cuban appearance thrown in for gloss,” the Ridgely/Walsh CEO continues. “So he’s clearly engaged enough for the job.”

“But the bigger reason,” Glover contends, “is that he’s a better fit than most politicians for what modern politics has become.”

It was all too much for the son of legendary Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind star, Richard Dreyfuss.

“Like ok fine,” Ben Dreyfuss tweeted, “I never thought it would come to this but I’ll vote for trump.”

“One of the many reasons Biden needs to run for re-election is to save us from this nonsense,” he stated. “Please, mr president [sic], the columnists are out of control!”

https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1545472116425797632?s=20&t=VJ2X0dVrqPb3_xReJzaFrw

So, argues Glover in her column, is the presidential race.

“The 2024 presidential race is guaranteed to be a carnival, waged 8 years after former President Donald Trump blew up the whole idea of ‘normal,’ and four years after a Covid-shadowed, conspiracy-fest of a campaign,” she writes. “Stewart is not just one of our most wildly popular comedians: His years hosting the Comedy Central’s Daily Show made him one of the effective communicators in public life. He’s living a fairly low-key existence, and using his multiplatform showbiz skills to advocate for issues he cares about.”

Trump cemented the entertainment “It” factor into the world of politics, Glover contends, and it’s a quality Stewart embodies.

“Trump turned an entertainment career into a political one not by growing into the moment, but by dragging politics further into the zone of entertainment,” she explains. “Since then, if anything, he’s been one-upped by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a professional comedian and television star who played a president on TV, and, in face of the brutal Russian onslaught, has parlayed that deftly into a real-life role as one of the world’s most admired and effective leaders.”

Dreyfuss was not impressed.

“Showing someone this column is like the dude in Stand By me: ‘wanna see a dead body?'” he tweeted.

But what about Stewart’s nonpartisan appeal?

“If Stewart ran for president, could he reach a wide swath of Americans?” Glover asks. “Stewart is known as a liberal, but his biggest cause has been deeply patriotic, and very nonpartisan: He has been the most profoundly effective and powerful engine behind efforts to provide support to the 9/11 first responders and victims. That effort has grown into a fight to provide benefits and supports for U.S. veterans who suffer from exposure to the toxic effects of burn pits while deployed overseas. He’s famous for trying to help firefighters, police and veterans, a generally right-leaning bunch.”

“That’s a hell of a base to run on,” she states.

“I would take any democrat that ran for president in 2020 over this sh*t,” Dreyfuss declared. “Including Bloomberg and Bernie. Even de Blassio.”


For Dreyfuss, the guy who famously read the gagged Pentagon Papers aloud in a hearing would be better than Stewart.

“Is mike gravel [sic] still alive?” he asked. “I’ll take mike gravel.”

Sorry, Ben. He died last year. He was 91 years old.

So upset was Dreyfuss at the mere suggestion of a Stewart 2024 run, he couldn’t contain his response to Twitter.

In a Substack post, he stated, “If you think Jon Stewart should run for president, you should go to a mental asylum.”

He then repeatedly begs readers to “kill me” before asking Glover, “What the f**k are you talking about?”

“Even in the promotional photo for the [AppleTV+] show,” says Dreyfuss, “Stewart looks like the type of man who is willing to buy a 13 year old beer as long as they listen to his homoerotic interpretations of the New Testament.”


Awww… chin up, Ben.

She could have suggested Bill Maher.

Melissa Fine
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