Jon Stewart Addresses Kimmel’s ABC Return & Disney’s ‘Tentacles’

Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show on Monday night (September 22), where he reacted to the news of ABC reinstating Jimmy Kimmel after pulling his late-night show from the schedule last week.

Stewart opened his monologue by poking fun at President Donald Trump‘s new claim that Tylenol used during pregnancy causes autism in children, saying, “Young Jimmy Kimmel is coming back to television! I’ll tell you, Jimmy Kimmel is flying high like Advil today. Acetaminophen is like boom, Advil’s like, ‘What’s up, motherf***ers? You got a headache, where are you going to turn?’”

The comedian then spoke directly to his audience, mocking, “The campaign that you all launched, pretending that you were going to cancel Hulu while secretly racing through four seasons of Only Murders in the Building, really worked. Congratulations!”

“Wasn’t it interesting, to try and figure out all the tentacles Disney has in your daily life?” Stewart continued. “It’s one thing to swear off cruises, but the Avengers? Nah. How is it possible that by getting rid of one company, I can’t watch Winnie the Pooh or Monday Night Football? Or listen to early Hilary Duff?”

Kimmel was “suspended indefinitely” on Wednesday (September 17) over comments he made about Charlie Kirk‘s fatal shooting on Monday’s (September 15) Jimmy Kimmel Live. This came after powerful station group Nexstar announced it would preempt the show on its 32 ABC affiliate stations late Wednesday.

Earlier that day, Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Stewart said this turnaround shocked him because he was told the decision to pull Kimmel off the air “had nothing to do with the Trump administration and their explicit FCC threat that they could remove the show the easy way or the hard way.”

He then threw to a clip of a Fox News correspondent saying, “My gosh, this had nothing to do with Donald Trump not agreeing with anything Jimmy Kimmel said or not. If Donald Trump wanted to take everyone off the air who had criticisms for him, there would basically only be a handful of individuals left on television.”

“That is funny, but it also may be a cause for self-reflection?” Stewart responded. “‘Hey, if everybody on TV is criticizing me, except for, like, four people, and one of them is my daughter-in-law, am I the drama?’”

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