Jon Stewart, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who once hosted “The Daily Show,” was ripped by fellow liberals when he vehemently (and in a quite funny way) declared nearly two years ago that the COVID virus emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China.
That was in June 2021. He took endless guff from critics.
Turns out he was right — at least according to a new report from the U.S. Energy Department.
“First of all, I wasn’t waiting on the Department of Energy to weigh in on this,” Stewart said this week on his podcast. And he pointed out that he was doing what humans do: Pondering. He wondered why the virus came from a place where there just happened to be a laboratory studying coronaviruses — like COVID.
“The larger problem with all of this is the inability to discuss things that are within the realm of possibility without falling into absolutes and litmus-testing each other for our political allegiances as it arose from that,” he said. “My bigger problem with that was, I thought it was a pretty good bit that expressed kind of how I felt, and the two things that came out of it were, I’m racist against Asian people, and how dare I align myself with the alt-right.”
Today @JonStewart talks to some of our staff about the news that the COVID-19 virus may, in fact, have leaked from a lab in China and what it reveals about the problem with the media narrative machine. Full episode drops Wednesday on @ApplePodcasts pic.twitter.com/tsaLUYzIRl
— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) February 27, 2023
That’s what happens when you question the conventional “wisdom” being pressed by liberal media — while social media supresses anything that runs counter to that wisdom.
Stewart let loose on his critics who blasted him back in June 2021. “The part that I don’t like about it is the absolutes and the dismissive, like, ‘f*** you, I’m done with you,’ ‘I will never forgive you, you have crossed an unforgivable line.’ ‘You’ve expressed an opinion that is antithetical to mine, or not mine,’” Stewart said.
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The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the COVID virus most likely originated from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report from the U.S. Energy Department.
The report, which was included in an update to a 2021 document by the Director of National Intelligence’s office, was recently delivered to the White House and top lawmakers in Congress. Sources told the Journal that the updated assessment from the Energy Department is the result of new intelligence.
That report followed a declassified intelligence report released in November 2021 by the FBI that concluded with “moderate confidence” that the virus emerged after a “laboratory accident.”
In a wild appearance on “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert, an animated Stewart went on a rant about the origin of COVID.
Toeing the liberal line, Colbert asked: “Do you mean perhaps there’s a chance that this was created in a lab? If there’s evidence, I’d love to hear it.”
“A chance? Oh my god!” an incredulous Stewart replied. “There’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China, what do we do? Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab! The disease is the same name as the lab! That’s just a little too weird, don’t you think?”
Stewart then pretended to be a Wuhan scientist, claiming the virus emerged when “a pangolin kissed a turtle” or “a bat flew into the cloaca of a turkey, and then it sneezed into my chili and now we all have coronavirus.”
He went on to note the absurdity of the virus emerging in a city with a coronavirus lab.
“There’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania — what do you think happened?” he said. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean … or it’s the f***ing chocolate factory. Maybe that’s it!”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.