His 2,614th and last episode as Daily Show host was finished. Stewart traded his custom-made Armani suit for a T-shirt and khakis in his Daily Show office one more time. Buses took the correspondents and staff from the studio to a party on the flight deck of the USS Intrepid, where the war stories on this night were about two decades of field pieces.
As a DJ spun hip-hop and fireworks exploded over the Hudson River, Stewart hugged Noah. During the previous month, as the old guy was getting ready to leave, the new guy had been frantically preparing for his debut, which would come just seven weeks after Stewart’s finale. Now Stewart whispered in Noah’s ear: “Thank you for never making me feel like the old furniture that was getting thrown out.”
Many of Stewart’s top staffers—including executive producers Steve Bodow, Jen Flanz, and Adam Lowitt—and his rank-and-file crew—including Chuck O’Neil, Kira Klang Hopf, and Adam Chodikoff—stayed, ready for the challenge of remaking The Daily Show with Noah. Stewart, in his final months, had encouraged the holdover staff and the new boss to thrash out a show that followed Noah’s vision, instead of asking themselves, “What Would Jon Do?”
One day before he left, Jon called me into his office and he had a pair of shoes and he said, “What do you think of these shoes?” And I said, “Oh, they’re good shoes.” He said, “What size are you?” I said, “I’m a size eleven.” He said, “I’m a size eight.” And he said, “Will these fit you?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Don’t let anyone ever tell you, you can’t fill my shoes. You’re not meant to fill them.”
It was an important message in light of the fanfare surrounding Stewart’s departure. Unlike Stewart in his first few years at The Daily Show, Noah didn’t have the luxury of experimenting in relative obscurity.
Jon told me that when he was building the thing, no one was paying attention to him. For me, it’s as if I’m renovating my house, but now I have neighbors watching, and there’s permit restrictions, and there’s zoning laws, and there’s all of these things that didn’t exist back then. So that is a big thing. But Jon also said, “Take solace in the fact that I also had to go through this with Craig Kilborn.” There were people who thought Jon couldn’t do it. I mean, people joked that Jon was the King of Failures. He had, what, six shows before The Daily Show?
The people who’ve gone on from The Daily Show to their own shows—they’re not my competition. I’m only competing against half-black, half-white, African hosts. Barack Obama is my closer competition than anyone else. He could definitely do standup.
I guess my long-term vision of the show is to shift away from it being media criticism, have somewhat more of a global perspective, and move toward a more Juvenalian style of satire. More pointing out the folly on both sides. Jon’s style was more Horatian. You see that with Sam Bee as well. Really polarizing, very end-of-the-world pessimistic. And I want to connect the show with a younger audience. Jon’s audience was the oldest viewership on Comedy Central. Which is unsustainable.
Getting people to accept a different style or a different way of doing something, it has been harder than I thought it would be. Both the staff and the audience, yeah. I remember when people would say, “He smiles too much,” or, “He’s not angry enough.” That’s your style. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had very different ways of tackling the same thing. You can’t say one was right, one was wrong. You can say they were different.
I think compared to Jon, I’m more Martin Luther King. Jon went straight for the jugular. But he told me that as well: “Do you know how many years it took me to get angry?” It has to be genuine. You saw that with Jon around the stolen election and the Bush presidency. You saw that with the Charleston shooting. You saw that with 9/11.
Way back in 2001, that tragedy had first pointed The Daily Show’s comedy toward a new purpose and gravity. Now, both fittingly and infuriatingly, the long aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center provided a coda that demonstrated what a powerful political and cultural force The Daily Show and its extended family had become, and it provided in some ways the real end of the Stewart Daily Show era.
In 2010, after Jon had done those shows applying pressure, Congress had passed the Zadroga bill, with health care for first responders. But the coverage expired after five years. So at the end of 2015 the fight was happening all over again.
The issue this time was whether it was going to be permanent or another five-year or ten-year bill. We strongly believed that there’s no reason why these guys should have to go back to Congress ever again to beg for health care. Especially when there are similar programs that are all permanent, for black lung workers and nuclear workers. These guys shouldn’t be treated differently. More than a hundred FDNY members have died of Ground Zero illnesses; another nine hundred are sick.
Stewart had been keeping busy: rubbing pig bellies on his wife’s farm sanctuary in New Jersey, advising Colbert on taking over from Letterman at CBS, signing a deal for a new project of his own, a real-time animation show for HBO. He joined 16 Daily Show writers, producers, and performers onstage in Los Angeles to collect the show’s twenty-third Emmy Award. Oh, and Stewart got body-slammed by the WWE’s Jon Cena at a wrestling match in Brooklyn. Unplugging from the Daily Show grind was physically transformative: Stewart’s blood pressure dropped and the insomnia that had plagued him for years vanished.
But as the end-of-the-year deadline for Congress to reauthorize the Zadroga health-care funding rapidly approached, the bill was stalled, with Democratic as well as Republican senators balking at the cost. So in mid-September Stewart and more than one hundred first responders went to Washington, walking the halls of Congress and holding a press conference outside the Capitol. Stewart and Ray Pfeifer, a retired New York firefighter who had spent eight months working at Ground Zero, also spoke to the weekly Senate Democratic Caucus lunch.
Ray Pfeifer, truly one of those most gracious guys you’ll ever meet. Stage IV cancer. His leg is basically a metal rod. He’s having ministrokes because he has a lesion on his brain, and he’s going down there to try and get these people to look him in the eye.
I have such a lowered bar of expectation, and they managed to crawl underneath it. They give you a lot of, “Yeah, we’ll take a look at it.” Take a look at what? It’s a bill that expires in thirty days.
Through September and October prospects for a permanent renewal of the Zadroga bill appeared to improve. Stewart was wary, though, and prepared a backup plan in case Congress dithered. Caplin, now a private consultant, provided advice.
If necessary, he’d go back to Washington, but this time with a camera crew gathering footage for a field piece that would “name and shame” individual politicians. To exert maximum pressure, it would need to air near the end of the 2015 legislative session, but Stewart couldn’t be sure of the date. And because he didn’t want to interfere with Noah’s early days as host of The Daily Show, Stewart planned on running the Zadroga field piece on John Oliver’s HBO show.
I didn’t discuss this with Kirsten, but Jon told me, “Here’s the thing, I’m going to do the bit on Oliver’s show, but it’s going to be very nasty and very personal and you need to know that. But I also need a deadline at which point the negotiation game is over and we need to do it. So you tell me when you guys are ready in Washington.” He said he needed about a week to put something together.
That’s the end of September. I kept holding him off, because it looked like Zadroga would be attached to the transportation bill, which would move during the first week of December.
They were still trying to be tactful. I didn’t know how effective I could be until they were ready to throw up their hands.
Near the end of November, the bill starts to fall apart. I had Sunday, December 6, in my head as the date Jon could go on Oliver’s show. So I’m getting ready to call Jon and tell him it’s time to push the button. But first I fucking Googled John Oliver’s show—and sure enough, his last show of the year was right before Thanksgiving. So I called Jon and said it’s time to push the button—but Oliver’s show is dark. He said, “No problem. I’ll go on The Daily Show.”
Jon called me and said, “Hey, I need a favor. I know this is a weird thing to ask, I don’t even know how to ask it.” He told me about the Zadroga thing being close to his heart. I was like, “Look, man, I haven’t grown up in American culture, so all of the TV cultural things, I don’t have. I don’t have beefs with other shows. I don’t have qualms with other networks. I don’t have time for that. We’re all working. You’re still Jon Stewart. It’s still The Daily Show. Come and hang out any time.”
Jon is a smart strategic thinker. He says, “The mistake Truman made was not dropping a nuke in the ocean first. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll go down to Washington the week before we might need to run the bit, and I’ll bring a camera crew. I’ll tell people I’m doing a bit about Zadroga. That will be the warning.” At that point, the transportation bill hadn’t fallen apart completely yet. We were hoping Zadroga would get done in the transportation bill and that the show wouldn’t be necessary.
The first responders, they’ve got the stamina, the integrity, the heroism. All I have is a camera and an inherent sense of dickishness. And if that is what is needed right now, then that is what I will provide for them.
The threat of being embarrassed by Stewart on national TV seemed to have its intended effect. He and John Feal, the leader of a first responders advocacy group, encountered Ohio Republican senator Rob Portman in a hallway. Portman was one of thirty-four senators who had not signed on as a cosponsor of the Zadroga bill.
Jon Stewart: [in voice-over, as he and the first responders, including Pfeifer in a wheelchair, make Portman squirm] We finally caught up with Senator Rob Portman on his way from voting to make sure people on the terrorist watch list could still buy guns.
Senator Rob Portman: As I’ve said, we’ll let folks know, as I have already, that I support it. The question is, let’s find a way to pay for it.
John Feal: Listen, when you guys want to find money, you can find money. So that “pay for” stuff, it’s really not reaching the litmus test with me. At all.
Jon Stewart: [in voice-over] That night, Senator Portman of Ohio signed on to the bill. So maybe shame does work.
Jon sees Lindsey Graham in the hallway. He gives Lindsey his cell phone number. An hour later Lindsey called Jon and said, “I spoke to Mitch. We’re going to get this done.” [New Hampshire Republican senator] Kelly Ayotte calls Jon, same thing. But there’s nothing in stone here. It’s late and no one is saying how long, how much, and how it’s getting paid for. Until it’s done it’s not done. So as late as Thursday night Jon was asking, “Do we have the show for Monday?”
Then the transportation bill fell apart. I called Jon on Friday and said, “Before I give you a whole explanation, let me just give you the headline: Unfortunately we have a show to do on Monday.”
McConnell would meet with the responders, as long as he didn’t have to meet with me.
McConnell sat down with five of us. The first words out of his mouth were, “You guys should feel good about yourselves. You’re beating me up pretty good in the media.” And I said, “Sir, you haven’t seen anything. I think you’re the world’s biggest asshole.” I said, “You took us off the transportation bill because of an oil deal that you didn’t like. Shame on you for playing God with human life.” So we went at it for about a half an hour.
A couple of them I believe are actively evil.
I did meet with [Utah Republican senator] Mike Lee. I think something’s wrong with him. We’re talking about the attack, and the first responders are going around the room telling their stories. And one of the guys says, “No, I was in the South Tower when the North Tower collapsed,” and Lee smiles and says, in that kind of voice that Diane Sawyer uses when she wants you to think she cares about something, “Oh, you must have some stories.”
And you’re like, “Yeah, it’s the story of how three thousand people got fucking pancaked.” It was such a fucking weird nonhuman response that I thought, “We’re fucked.”
Yeah, it was bad, man. It’s bad. They’re bad people.
On Monday, December 7, four months after his final show as host, Stewart returned to The Daily Show and sat in the guest chair. He was gray bearded and fifteen pounds lighter, but his indignation was vintage, with Stewart laying into McConnell for blocking the Zadroga bill.
The field piece he’d shot during his second trip to Washington, with its scenes of congressional staffers ducking questions and Feal rebuking Portman, made for a sharp eight minutes of satire. But Stewart had also wanted to reassemble his 2010 panel of first responders for an in-studio discussion. The fact that it wasn’t possible made the segment even more of a gut punch: Chris Bowman and Ken George were too sick to make an appearance. John Devlin had died of throat cancer. Only Kenny Specht, a former FDNY lieutenant suffering from thyroid cancer, was able to return, sitting next to Stewart and three empty chairs.
Kenny Specht: We were able to meet with Mitch McConnell last week, four of us. Boy, we got pats on the back and we were told by so many people how happy we should be that we got a chance to meet with an elected official in the United States. Mitch McConnell gave us his word that he’s going to attach [Zadroga] to the omnibus bill and he’s going to fully fund and permanently extend the Zadroga health-care act. That’s what he told us. As this bill comes up this week, we’re gonna keep him to his word. And this show is doing that.
Jon Stewart: We need your help… all politics are local. Kentucky, it’s up to you. I would like you, right now, write Mitch McConnell a letter—
Trevor Noah: Jon, sorry to interrupt. No one really writes letters anymore.
Jon Stewart: A sharply worded editorial in your local paper would be—
Trevor Noah: Jon, people don’t really read the newspaper… just tell the people to use social media.
Jon Stewart: Social media! Ooh! Great! Something catchy like this: “End the fuckery!”
But in the Daily Show editing room afterward, Stewart was frustrated: Earlier that day, Donald Trump had declared that if elected president he would ban Muslims from entering the United States. Stewart knew that Trump’s bigoted proposal would dominate mainstream news coverage for days. To keep up the pressure on Congress he would need to co-opt the prevailing infotainment trend: Three days after his surprise return to The Daily Show, Stewart crashed Colbert’s Late Show monologue to deliver an earnest pitch for reauthorization of the Zadroga Act.
Stephen Colbert: Jon, the media won’t pay attention to anything at all unless you are Donald Trump!
Colbert plopped a garish blond wig on Stewart’s head and rouged his cheeks orange with Cheetos.
Stephen Colbert: Bring da noise! Bring da Trump!
Jon Stewart: [in his best thuggish New York white-guy accent] Ay, lemme tell ya somethin’, these 9/11 first responders are the most top-notch, first-class, diamond-encrusted heroes America can produce! Tweet at your congressman with the hashtag “worst responders”! Tell them Donald said pull up your big-boy pants and make America great again! Pass the Zadroga Act or I will glue Congress together, dip them in gold, and wear them around my friggin’ neck!
The next day Politico broke the news, in a story headlined, MCCONNELL POISED TO GIVE JON STEWART WHAT HE WANTS. One week later, the bill passed: A $3.5 billion reauthorization of medical care for seventy-two thousand known responders and survivors of the September 11 attacks.
There was a lot of fuckery that went on until the very last minute, trying to cut the funding. Kirsten Gillibrand and her staff, plus Ben Chevat on Carolyn Maloney’s staff, they were relentless on the inside, fighting back. You needed an outside game keeping up the pressure, too—that’s John Feal, the first responders, and the Daily News. But there’s zero percent chance of this bill happening without Jon Stewart going to DC.
It was a combination of everything. We made three hundred trips to Washington over twelve years. It was a lot of moving parts, and a lot of moving assholes in Congress. But it took a comedian to shed light on such a serious issue. Would the bill have passed without Jon Stewart? Probably. Don’t know. But I don’t think I would’ve wanted to take that chance.
In some ways the Zadroga thing was the subtext of the whole show, the whole sixteen years. A bewilderment, a bewilderment over something which seems obvious that was not being accomplished. The whole show was that: “Does anyone else think this is fucking weird?” That’s it. That’s all the show was.
I don’t think that’s a noble thing. But it’s something. It’s a shared moment.