‘Utter trash:’ Jon Stewart is under fire for defending Tony Hinchcliffe
Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian only by the loosest definition of the word, shocked America with his racist jokes at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday. He cracked that Puerto Rico was, “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,” and make crude comments about Black people and watermelons. He had nothing to contribute except bigotry … but Jon Stewart wants us to know that he finds Hinchcliffe funny.
Stewart made the comments on The Daily Show on Monday. “Obviously, in retrospect, having a roast comedian come to a political rally a week before election day and roasting a key voting demographic, probably not the best decision by the campaign politically,” he said, after showing clips of the rally. “But to be fair, the guy’s just really doing what he does.”
He then showed a clip of Hinchcliffe making racist and antisemitic jokes at the “Roast of Tom Brady.” Hinchcliffe referred to comedian Jeff Ross as being “so Jewish he only watches football for the coin toss,” in case you’re wondering how low he went. But Stewart said, “Yes, yes, of course, terrible, boo. There’s something wrong with me. I find that guy very funny. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to tell you.”
He went on, “I mean, bringing him to a rally and have him not do roast jokes? That’d be like bringing Beyoncé to a rally and not have— oh.” Stewart had been hung up earlier on Beyoncé appearing at a Kamala Harris rally and not performing any songs.
This is certainly an interesting hill for Stewart to die on. Precious other few people think Hinchcliffe was funny at the rally and now that his old tweets have resurfaced people think even less of him. One of them reads only “Anyone wanna go halfsies on a slave?” There’s no joke to that, nothing but shock value. Another one says, “I bet the best part of having a r*tarded child is not having to buy it Christmas gifts.” Seemingly there’s nothing but pointless cruelty going on inside Hinchcliffe’s head, and the fact that Stewart chose to defend such a man says a lot about him.
Posters on X, formerly known as Twitter, also aren’t impressed at all with what Stewart had to say.
Interestingly, about a third of the way through the show Jessica Williams showed up to do a bit. It was funny (actually funny) but the undercurrent was deadly serious. After Stewart said he was “sad” about Trump’s plan to deport migrants, Williams told him, “Everything’s going to be okay… for you, a white guy. A rich, old white guy.” She was making a point about privilege. “For non-old white people, for people of color, and women, and queer people, it’s gonna be a completely different story, all right?” she said about the election.
She’s right of course. And Stewart isn’t the one MAGA are aiming their nasty jokes at. He would do well to remember that in the future.
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