Kicking off tonight’s installment of The Daily Show with an acknowledgement of how cold it is New York City — by thanking the live audience for coming in and tossing out an obligatory joke about Mayor Zohran Mamdani turning the city into “Siberia” — Jon Stewart then delved into the second batch of recently unveiled Jeffrey Epstein documents.
“Yup, it’s Groundhog Day,” he began. “We call it Groundhog Day because this is the day when Donald Trump sees Epstein’s shadow and we get six more weeks of not knowing who any of the co-conspirators are in this multinational sex trafficking case and, also, because Punxsutawney Phil is all over the files.”
Elsewhere in the program, Stewart balked at being name-dropped in the emails themselves. Painting a picture, he set the scene: “It is midnight. Aug. 29, 2015. Jeffrey Epstein lies wide awake, his mind turning with ideas. He jots a quick note to a producer named Barry Josephson, saying, ‘I suggested to Woody [Allen]’ — y’all know which Woody, right? It’s the Epstein files, it ain’t Harrelson, or the cowboy from Toy Story, you know which one — quote: ‘I suggested to Woody that he do an exclusive new standup routine for either Apple TV or Amazon.’”
He continued, “Oh, Jeffrey Epstein always had his finger on the pulse of what America was clamoring for in 2015, but Barry Josephson, thinking like the out-of-the-box television professional that he was, pitched this idea — this is true, quote: ‘Make a true biographical experience with his standup being the capper. Somebody like Jon Stewart could host/narrate the biographical part.’”
Stewart feigned outrage: “Excuse me? I am offended. Somebody like Jon Stewart, or Jon Stewart? My point is, do I have the offer, or is this an audition?”
As the trove of documents revealed further connections between the late sex trafficker and the world’s rich and powerful — Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick — Stewart warned audiences not to forget there are still millions of pages left unreleased to the public.
“Look, man, we always knew that the people at DOJ releasing these documents weren’t on a fact-finding mission; they were running interference,” he stated. “And the guy they’re running interference for [Trump] seems very satisfied with these results.”
Concluding his monologue, Stewart also elucidated the ironic, frustrating parallels between the lack of legal accountability for those named in the Epstein files and the administration’s law-and-order crackdown toward immigration.
“Well, after watching the politically well-connected skirt any form of legal accountability for horrible fucking crimes, it seems pretty clear to me that there is a sanctuary city in this country. But guess what, this kid don’t live in it,” he said. “The real sanctuary city is where money and power protect you from the consequences of sex trafficking, or influence peddling, or taking half a billion dollars and giving away America’s AI infrastructure — not the small Midwestern city where trying to help a lady get up after she gets maced gets you shot in the back of the fucking head.”
