Jon Stewart has remained relatively quiet since retiring from his long-standing post as the acerbic and acutely funny stalwart of The Daily Show. But anyone who had forgotten about his ability to eviscerate his ideological foes was given a quick reminder during his Stand Up for Heroes performance on Tuesday evening.
Stewart took aim at Donald Trump a week before the general elections and at a time where shifting polls are leaving both sides of the debate feeling jittery, particularly after one from ABC showing the embattled Republican nominee creeping ahead of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton with a one point lead. Such a narrow margin leaves the election too close to call at this stage, but also places the billionaire business mogul ahead for the first time since May.
At the otherwise politically neutral fundraiser for wounded veterans in New York, Stewart urged the audience to use their vote carefully after sharing a vignette of when Mr Trump began attacking Stewart on Twitter for being “overrated” and a “phoney”. In tweets Stewart described as “toxic”, Mr Trump suggested he wasn’t proud of his Jewish heritage because he changed his name from Jonathan Leibowitz.
“It’s a little something I entitled ‘the day I woke up to find out somebody was tweeting weird shit about me,” he explained. "So, on 24 April 2013, at 11am, somebody comes into my office and says, ‘Donald Trump just tweeted: “I promise you I’m much smarter than Jonathan Lebowitz, I mean Jon Stewart, who by the way is totally over rated.”
“So I start to think to myself, ‘oh, I think this guy is trying to let people know I’m a Jew,” Stewart continued, recalling how the tweets from Mr Trump’s account became increasingly bizarre.
A tweet from Mr Trump's official account added:
Stewart eventually retaliated.
“The man who will more than likely, given the FBI’s preference, be our next president, then tweeted, ‘Amazing how the haters and losers keep tweeting the name F**k Face Von Clownstick.’
“What happened, as it turned out, was a lot of people had picked up on the name F**k Face Von Clownstick and began tweeting it at him.”
After four days of “radio silence“, Stewart said Mr Trump's account finally responded to his tweet about hitting a “von nerve stick” with a “p***y” comment, a response that now carries more significance in light of the lewd ”grab her by the p***y comments“ that threatened to derail his bid for president.
“I shit you not, perhaps the next president of the greatest country in the world, at 1.30 in the morning, tweeted, ‘Little Jon Stewart (?) is a p***y and would be hopeless in a debate with me.’
Since leaving The Daily Show, Mr Trump now has to contend with being mercilessly parodied by Jon Oliver, the host of Last Week Tonight, his satirical deconstruction of Mr Trump’s claims the election is being rigged being a recent case in point.
But Stewart had one final warning before leaving the stage on Tuesday evening: “Vote wisely this 8 November.”
