Comedian Jon Stewart threw some sharp criticism at Utah Sen. Mike Lee on national television — and used a personal anecdote about 9/11 first responders to drive it home.
On Monday night’s edition of “The Daily Show,” Stewart delivered a 28-minute monologue about the news over the weekend — the military parade on President Donald Trump’s birthday, the “No Kings” protest marches nationwide, the missile attacks between Israel and Iran, and the shooting deaths of a Minnesota state representative and her husband.
Stewart ended with four minutes on Lee, over his reactions on X to the shootings in Minnesota. Stewart called Lee “the avatar for the insanity of this moment.”
Content warning: The video below includes strong language.
Stewart wasn’t the only commentator to react strongly to Lee’s X posts. Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune’s editorial cartoonist, drew a depiction of a zoo’s monkey house, with poo-flinging “splat” sound effects coming from Lee’s enclosure. Screenwriter and TV producer David Simon (“The Wire”), posting Sunday on Bluesky, called Lee “fecal,” and that “for his written thoughts on the horror in Minnesota alone, any healthy republic would immediately expel him from its national legislature.”
On “The Daily Show,” Stewart detailed Lee’s reaction on X, formerly Twitter, to Saturday’s killing of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the shooting injuries to State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. The man accused in the shootings, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, was arrested early Monday morning after a two-day manhunt.
On his personal X account, Lee posted a photo of the suspect, captured by a porch camera, with the comment “This is what happens … when Marxists don’t get their way.”
“He didn’t just post that,” Stewart commented Monday. “He pinned that to the top of whatever the f--- it is you pin stuff on on Twitter.”
“Then, to let all of us know that that is not the depth of his depravity, that he can go deeper,” Stewart said, Lee posted that photo with another image of Boelter, with the caption “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” apparently referencing (and misspelling the name of) Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
First, Stewart said he objected “as a comedian” to reaching to the “Nightmare on Elm Street” horror franchise for a bad pun. “You’ve got ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ just sitting there,” Stewart said.
More seriously, Stewart said, “I want to know why those deaths in Minnesota are worth only a night of edgelord s---posting.”
On Tuesday, The Salt Lake Tribune reported, Lee deleted some of the posts that contained misinformation, but left some of them on his account. Lee has, as of Tuesday, issued no apology.
Stewart, for context, contrasted the rhetoric of conservative lawmakers who demand billions to be spent to deport undocumented immigrants — using criminal violence as their reasoning — with the lack of attention those same lawmakers give to gun violence within the United States.
“Is it that the only acceptable deaths are those that are made in America?” Stewart asked rhetorically. “Our only response now is to tally up the psycho scoreboard on whose side the perp belongs to?”
Stewart said he has met Lee — and noted that Lee comes “from the great state of Utah,” where a man was killed Saturday at a shooting at the “No Kings” march in Salt Lake City.
About Lee, Stewart said sarcastically, “he’s the best.”
Stewart described a meeting in 2019, when the comedian was working to lobby Congress to authorize permanent health coverage for first responders to the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks.
Stewart said he and a group of first responders met with Lee, who responded to one police officer recounting how he survived being in one of the towers when they collapsed. “Sen. Lee smiled and said, ‘I bet you’ve got a lot of stories,’” Stewart recalled.
“We met a lot of people in Washington,” Stewart said. “That was the only meeting where we all walked out and looked at each other and went, ‘What the f--- is wrong with that guy?’”
