Jon Stewart on Wednesday urged caution about simply mocking serial liar Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) for his many, many fabrications.
The comedian warned people against making the same mistake with the beleaguered first-term lawmaker that he made with Donald Trump when he announced his presidential ambition before the 2016 election. Santos’ “mediocrity” is allowing him to avoid true consequences for his scandal, said Stewart.
“The thing we have to be careful of, and I always caution myself on this, and I ran into this trouble with Trump, is we cannot mistake absurdity for lack of danger, because it takes people with no shame to do shameful things,” Stewart said on the latest episode of his podcast, “The Problem With Jon Stewart.”
“In absurdity is where the real danger always is,” he added.
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Stewart, former host of “The Daily Show,” has admitted he first thought Trump was a comedic “gift from heaven” when he announced his candidacy in 2015.
Stewart later acknowledged that he failed to realize that the then-reality TV personality’s “shamelessness is what made him dangerous.”
“I thought it made him a buffoon, and I thought that’s what would disqualify him,” Stewart told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “What it did is made him the perfect vessel. You have to be shameless to do shameful things.”
“I’m not saying he’s the same as these figures, but the most dangerous figures are the ones that seem comic and absurd,” Stewart added at the time. “Saddam Hussein seems absurd. Muammar Gaddafi would stand in a kaftan and rant like a madman.”