announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: chris smith, jon stewart, thank you for doing this. we talked a lot about a lot of things. chris, why an oral history? yeah, why? chris: the title was taken. because -- charlie: it is an oral history. chris: the voices of people who wrote and performed the show are interesting and not terribly

known outside the 22 minutes a night that jon and everyone else did for 16 years. certainly stephen colbert has done interviews, samantha bee has done interviews. but the actual process, the making of the show, that was not something that was exactly kept secret, but it was kept close because jon and everyone else was so focused on those four days a week and getting it done and that is a really hard job. the actual process, the making of the show, the evolution, the growth internally and externally was a story best told by the people who lived it. charlie: you have to go to jon and everyone else and ask. when you do this, would you cooperate. jon: i have known chris for a long time. i have always enjoyed his reporting and i have known chris for a long time. it was never -- he always came at things from a really thorough and fair, when you were reading his work in "new york" magazine

and other places, it always felt purposefullynot pejorative. really well done. i thought, we were so involved over those 16 years and people have said what was it like, what was your favorite parts? i do not know. charlie: you learned something about the perspective of the guys you were with, the men and women who made up "the daily show." jon: it was going to be told i want it told as thoroughly and fairly, warts and all, as it could possibly be. i thought chris was a great reporter to be able to do that. charlie: over the 16 years, how did the show evolve? what did it become that it was not at the beginning? jon: the evolution of the show, we just became better at doing it.

there is two separate things, what the show became and what people thought of the show and the outside perspective of it. that was the thing that i think i talked to chris a lot about which is you have to ignore, what we tried to develop was a decent, internal barometer of what worked for the show and how well we could execute it. you could never look at a piece and go, i do not know if this is emmy-worthy. we are an emmy award-winning show. you had to try and keep your own morality and integrity as the beacon for where you wanted the material to go. charlie: was your instinct almost always write about what would be funny and what would not be funny? jon: i think we got better at that. there is something fragile about comedy. and somewhat musical. one man's meat is another man's

pratfall. thatnot know, i can say there were things that we wrote that i thought were really funny, where the audience might not. and other things where you would do a joke they would be a pun and you woulde up stop. we spent the whole day crafting this beautiful comedic essay but they just like the pun on the 007, ok. chris: in terms of the evolution of the show one of the things , that was fascinating to go back and look at in great detail, people often forget "the daily show" existed before jon. craig kilborn was the host for close to three years and they laid a good foundation with the -- in some ways with the mock correspondents, the satire of news. the tone and the focus was different. it was much more of a parody of

local newscasts in a way that -- there could be a mean-spiritedness to some of the material they were much more , interested in celebrity and hollywood and showbiz stuff. it punched down at times in a way that could be funny, but was kind of ephemeral. and one of the things that was interesting in talking to jon and other folks when he came in in 1999, he knew he wanted it to be more substantive. he did not have a master plan, he did not really have a blueprint of, ok here is where , we are going. charlie: you said i just wanted to last nine months. jon: i had been fired enough. that was my general goal. charlie: do you know why you are successful this time? was it the best extension of your talent? jon: i believe it was the best extension of what i know how to

do and perhaps i did not necessarily know that at the time but beyond that, cable is a very different animal, especially during that time, the network is, it has a different level of pressures. and a different level of performance. you are able to use it as a laboratory in ways that you would not be able to do on a network. the network lives or dies by the overnights, whereas in cable, they had this crazy deal worked out where they live and die by the carriage. charlie: they have to revenue streams. jon: their goal was to throw things out there. i knew we had more time and i think maybe that allowed me a little bit more confidence to push it. i had to push them as well because it was not necessarily the direction that they wanted to go. charlie: you were running the show, too, you were there in the trenches.

jon: i would not refer to it as -- chris: if you have a craft services table, generally that is not the trenches. it is the number of metaphors that were involved in the creation of "the daily show." charlie: it became for all of us a kind of cultural event. more than a show. chris: yeah, and jon started to touch on this, too. it was easy to forget what the media looked like in 1996, 1997, 1999 where comedy central was still kind of a sketchy proposition, where msnbc and fox news had just launched at the same time that "the daily show" was coming into being. facebook did not exist and now it has had a major influence on a presidential election.

jon: food came in frozen dishes. and you had to heat it by hand. charlie: we just went through an election. jon: what? charlie: your reaction to this election? chris: surprise. jon: it all ties together. here is what i would honestly say. i do not believe we are a fundamentally different country today than we were two weeks ago, or than we were a month ago. we are the same country with all of its grace and flaws and volatility and insecurity and strength and resilience, it exists today as existed two weeks ago, the same country that elected donald trump, elected barack obama and those contradictions are, this election to me is just another

extension of the long argument that we have had from our founding. which is, what are we? that is, are we an ideal, or are we some form of ethno-state? that argument has existed for on a philosophical and theoretical level i feel badly for the , people for whom this election will mean more uncertainty and insecurity. but i also feel like this fight has never been easy. it is on, it is like we were a couple when we met. the first fight we had when we met was, i mean, look, the people on our money had slaves. the people we honor had slaves. the people who wrote all men are created equal had slaves.

it is not like they did not know what was wrong. charlie: and many came from a slaveowning state. jon: right. the argument between rural and urban, the ideas of -- ideals of in alienable rights and slavery we had the same argument over , and over again. at times it has been more volatile. at times it has been more violent, but it has never been easy. and fighting for this, i do not see this as some form of endpoint. it is a continuation of a long battle to determine what we are. it made me wonder, one of the things that i think struck me odd about this election, and maybe i just missed it. nobody asked donald trump what makes america great. that was the part -- charlie: nobody said to him, what is it that makes america great, what is it you want to do, what is it that we are not

doing now? jon: what are the metrics. it seems like from listening to him, the metrics are that it is a competition. and that it is wins and losses. we are going to win more and that is what makes us great? and i think what many would say is, what makes us great is, america is an anomaly in the world. there are a lot of people, and i think his candidacy has animated that thought that a multi-ethnic democracy, a multicultural democracy is impossible. and that is what america, by its founding and constitutionally is. charlie: and is becoming more and more, year by year. some people were worried that it meant different things to them and their life was changing because of that. and there was a certain fear. jon: no question.

the insecurities that people feel as marginalized populations, a rust belt worker who lost his job in manufacturing, feels insecure -- and insecurity that you can say that but look at all the , terrible things he says and they might say, i live in an area that voted for him. charlie: did democrats and did secretary clinton open the door for donald trump because she did not or could not speak to them? jon: whether or not she opened the door or not, i do not think it was her door to open. i think it is, you're talking about a global issue. globalization and the push back of that, in ethno-states, it makes more sense that we have an ethnic identity, but when you live in a state that is an ideal, what is the bar of entry? the bar of entry is, i agree with you. people have inalienable rights and you can, and i can i come

in? as long as you behave within that manner, but let's not pretend that this is a battle that has been revisited time and time again. that is why i feel we have a resilience to it, that we have to continue to fight. charlie: but do you think this is healthy now, this tunnel, this sense of finding out who we are. whether we have gone off track in some way. jon: absolutely. i would rather have this conversation openly and honestly than in dog whistles. someone was saying there might be an anti-semite that is working in the white house and, have you listened to the nixon tapes? forget about advising the president. the president. have you read lbj? do you know our history? and we also have to caution ourselves to the complexity of that history. i thought donald trump disqualified himself at numerous

points, but there is now this idea that anyone who voted for him has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric. i think it is a big mistake. i think that our relationship status with our own worst impulses is complicated and you have to remember, who is the most progressive president in our history who is lionized? it is roosevelt. franklin delano roosevelt who also interred asian americans during world war ii. we are a complicated and real people. i know the hardest thing for me during this election was the disconnect i had between watching the rallies which i think animates generally because it is a rally, the wisdom of crowds is never particularly moderate.

but to see lock her up and shouting at the media, and usa, and some terrible things that happened, and his inability to in any way tamp that down and in some cases, inspire it, to view that with my own experience with real people that i knew were voting for trump who are friends of mine who i do not tolerate because, well, they are irredeemable and deplorable, i love. there are guys in my neighborhood that i love, that i respect, that i think have incredible qualities, who are not afraid of mexicans and muslims and not afraid of blacks. they are afraid of their insurance premiums. this idea that they represent, they have given tacit approval to a dictator and a madman, look

at your phone, look at him everything we have. we make those kinds of compromises every day for exploitative purposes. i have gone on too long. charlie: no you haven't. you have come to the right place. did you miss it during the campaign? jon: no. charlie: you did not want to be there and to be able to do what you just did, tell us what you thought with satire and comedy and reason. jon: not at all. no. because impotent rage wears on you. charlie: meaning that you could be full of rage but it would not make any difference? jon: correct. almost any artistic pursuit for whatever effect it has on its audience is a relatively selfish pursuit. it is a catharsis for the

individual. it is a way to express ideas and get them out and feel the seduction of it is, it is going to score, it is not going to score. that is the hit, that is the adrenaline. what begins to wear on you is where it is taken. i think this election could be a great lesson in that controlling the culture is not the same thing as power, and a viral video eviscerating racists is not the same as a grassroots movement that seeks to have common ground with people and create a multiethnic coalition that understands that other people's hierarchy of needs is not necessarily your hierarchy of needs. charlie: the idea of what "the daily show" became is not the idea banging around in your head when you took this job. jon: what was banging around in my head is, is there a better

way to execute public affairs comedy that means something to me. if i am going to spend this time, i have hosted talk shows, i did one on mtv and i did one syndicated. i was spending 12 hours a day on things that did not feel substantial and meaningful to me. this was a chance to, can i express my comedy in a way i -- about things i care about in a way that is entertaining enough because i have been fired. when your name is on the show, it is easy to go, you might suck at this. you have to reevaluate.

if i am going to put myself in that position, i'm going to lay it on the line and i am going to put out what i care about. it could rick -- it could get rejected. i will go down the way i feel like i am going to do it in a way that i think is the best iteration of my abilities and if down, i can bartend. charlie: yes, you could. ♪

charlie: was there a moment, a time, an event that you said, we have got it, we have traction, i can be confirmed in my belief that what i was rolling the dice on has come up a winner? jon: no. charlie: in terms of the confidence, what i was insisting on doing. jon: jon: i would say that it was never about, it was more would we be able to develop a process to do that well. it is the inherent juxtaposition is, creative pursuit which

can we build a machine that is redundant enough and rigid enough that it can sustain improvisation and creativity? charlie: five days a week. when did that happen, did the process kick in? that you knew. jon: that was not my concern. when did that happen? chris: it took shape through the 2000 campaign and the recount, the day-to-day process. the technology caught up with what "the daily show" was doing. they pioneered not just the form but the assembly of these kinds of montages. what was equally important was not simply the process of, ok, we are a meeting at 9:00 and we need these clips. what they found early on was a

tone to what they wanted to do, and while it events -- while events went on in the outside world that changed what they thought, they found a tone in a piece steve carell did with john mccain on the straight talk express in late 1999 where carell does a preamble where he is chasing the bus and trying to get on the bus. they would not let us on. they had to press buses. had air-conditioning. they had a bathroom. chris: and they go to cindy mccain and she is appalled and she says, come on. what you do not know is all the work that went into this. it became a prototype of how jon shifted field pieces away from in his phrase, abject cruelty to an actual point of view.

carell and the producer of that piece, a guy named nick had laid it out. if you asked the question and he says x, this is how you respond. one of many difficulties is you have world-class improvisers working with civilians who do not know they are in an improv. so they develop all these questions of what they are going to ask mccain and most of them are softball like, what kind of tree would you be? what became famous at the end of that piece, at a turning point in the development of the show was carell asked mccain, senator, you have been a strident opponent of pork barrel spending. how can you justify when you are chair of the commerce committee,

you ok'd billions of dollars in pork barrel spending and mccain freezes. it is a deer in the headlights moment. and then carell bursts the tension by saying, i was just joking. i do not even know what that means. what was fascinating to me and carell had not remembered it until i talked to him. they found the question in "time magazine" driving over to the shoot and that kind of structure and in last-minute improvisatory -- and last-minute improvisatory genius is something that jon held through his run of the show. jon: it also brings up the "daily show" paradox in that -- which is in that moment, you hold to account a senator whose entire identity is based on a hypocritical behavior.

i am against this type of pork barrel politics unless it benefits -- we nailed you, and what do we have to do at that point? we let you go. it is catch and release. we have to undercut it with a laugh. it gets to the joy and frustration of doing that type of job. it is when we realize that access did not help us. it is that idea, i got you and here's my one moment and i am going to with a scalpel, go at the crux of your identity as a politician and expose it for everybody to see and then i will have to make a joke about it and walk away and you are going to laugh and it will humanize you. one of the difficulties of this is satire began to take the this has-- i think

been given a greater place in the discussion and a larger role in the discourse than is warranted. and once that started to happen, i think you begin to question if it is a good thing or bad thing. i know it is not a black and white issue. but controlling the culture, as much fun as we can make of the tea party, well we were up there passing around viral videos of it this rations, they are taking over a schoolboard. election where the democrats won a popular vote by more than a million votes and they do not call the presidency the house or the senate, they do , not control governorships, they do not control state legislatures. this may be the largest

disconnect between majority rule and majority power that we have had in this country in ages. i am in no way saying -- and i am responsible. [laughter] but what i am saying there is a comforting culture that can be mistaken for real power. there is only two towns in the world i have ever been that i thought were delusional. one was washington, d.c. and the other was los angeles. the only difference between los angeles and washington, in los angeles, they actually believe they have power. charlie: in washington dc they have power, in los angeles, they just believe they have power. but the same arrogance? jon: that is correct. charlie: it is saying essentially that whatever we are saying about culture and the influence you have on the culture, in the end, it is not political power and it is not. jon: it is not real cultural influence.

it is a story we tell ourselves about the rightness of our position. but it is argument. , but not without weight not with so much weight. i believe that culture played a good role in marriage equality. i think it brought a story out -- so much of what occurs with inequality is ignorance. i don't mean that in a malevolent way -- i mean ignorance as an, i don't know what that is. do you think people came as guests because they wanted the numbers you had? or because they enjoyed it? it gave them a sense of being part of something that was hip and in? jon: i will say they did not enjoy it.

chris: to that point, chris wallace of fox news said almost exactly those words to me, his kids were never more impressed with him than when he went on "the daily show," and it felt like you had been invited to become a member of a hipper club. charlie: and you had to take it to the club. that is power. jon: to a club. it is power in the way that a bouncer has power. [laughter] i have to tell you. drive down 14th street down by 2nd avenue, palladium ain't there anymore. do you know what i mean? it is a condo now. over: i lookedy at fox news world headquarters there is a marching band and , dancing girls and free jell-o shots. charlie: speaking of fox news, it was the gift that kept on

giving. jon: it was not the gift that kept on giving. of,as the relentless offer they were a good foil because they were offering cynicism, which they continue to offer. there is no more cynical enterprise then fox news. for whatever they want to say about the liberal media -- charlie: or fair and balanced. jon: which may be the most cynical expression of any slogan in the history of slogans. that is like if coca-cola went out there and said, healthy vitamins for children. it is completely not fact. [laughter] fox news is reactionary. in a way that "the daily show" is reactionary. in a way that a lot of this new media is a reaction to what they see as either unfairness or something hidden. charlie: did you see what you

were doing as simply offering an alternative to what fox is saying? jon: no. the headline for it on "the huffington post" is stewart eviscerates arguments against gay marriage -- in we would think of it as "the daily show comes up with a somewhat humorous look at where they think is a hypocritical stance on personal freedoms." that is the week it should be given. charlie: you saw hypocrisy like you have not seen. if you thought it was critical, that would be the point where you would say-- jon: it was animated by visceral feelings, no questions. that is the stuff that this show is basically, if you imagine in general, and i hate to do this

to your audience and i do not know if this is pbs. if you want to do a trigger warning. "the daily show" was a satirical expression of me sitting in my underwear yelling at the television, and now i get to go back and do that. [laughter] jon: i am just not surrounded by farm animals. chris: a guy has been pushing for health care for 9/11 first usponders -- they walk didugh what jon and others to get the permanent extension of the bill a little while back. we can debate influence and power. there were points where the daily show had real word impact. jon does not get up and raises

hand and say, i did that. there are a lot of first responders that will have to have their medical bills paid because of their focus on this. point john in the book says, in some ways the debate "the dailya was what show" was all about. a lot of people looking at it in a commonsense way and saying, isn't it crazy that this isn't getting done? charlie: the commonsense argument. chris: he and the show were ahead of the curve and people talk about this in the book, and recognizing on the left and the right how government was not functioning for a lot of average americans. they pointed that out in all sorts of ways from the health care debate to the government shutdown, minimum wage, all sorts of things.

and at one point, there was a former correspondent, who had an unhappy experience there in some ways. but some think about what worked and what different. talks about how he doesn't think bernie sanders would have been possible without the daily show. that there is a people -- a government -- a generation of people that have grew up thinking about government and to see and politicians in terms that jon and "the daily show" defined. you have a lot of reporters who grew up watching. and maybe in this campaign it was too little, too late. maybe it was more print than tv. can we curse? there were a lot of people in the campaign who pulled bullshi t. and annotating lies.

footnoting every light in a donald trump speech is something that j in the daily showon had done. bush, obama, all along. that you can point to filtering through the media culture. jon: if you have to meet force with force, i am not saying this to denigrate what we did. this was the best iteration of for me what i could do with satire. and we prosecuted it to its fullest extent, as far as my brain could go. one of the reasons that i left, i was just going to be redundant and keep going back-and-forth to the same thing .i was going to i'm going to do a terrible analogy. we were patrick swayze after he died in "ghost."

we were in the subway yelling at dead people. and raging, and no one could hear us, but if we focused everything we had in one moment at just the right time, at just the right moment, with everything we had, we could move the can just a little bit. do you understand? we are impotently raging. zedroga was 10 years of backbreaking labor. it was corruption at a government level at the highest order that could be done. it was the people that had been hailed as heroes that was told by our government, that the epa, that the air was safe. they continue to try to this

day. they were forced with all their afflictions to go down and hat in hand, knock on doors to people who would not meet their eyesight and those 10 years of , working, they did all the construction. and at the very end, cindy lou who came out with a little star little mored got a than they deserve. the ultimate irony of this election is the cynical strategy of the republicans, which are position is that government doesn't work we're going to make , sure that it does not work. charlie: draining the swamp? jon: they are not draining the swamp. mcconnell and ryan, those guys are the swamp. and what they decided to do was i am going to make sure government does not work and then i will use the lack of working as evidence of it. donald trump is not just a reaction to democrats but republicans. he is not a republican. he is a repudiation of republicans but they will reap

, the benefit of his victory in all of their cynicism and all of their, i will guarantee republicans are going to come to jesus now about that power of government. they are going to suddenly realize, you know what, it is actually not tyranny. when we have won it. it is actually authority and consent to the people. and you want a infrastructure project, let me give you tax cuts and see how far you take it. that is the irony of it. charlie: when we began this conversation, you are arguing that this country has a long and tortured history of going back and forth on these debates. jon: not on that debate. on race. i am talking about the foundational creed of the country. originally we were white anglo-saxon protestant. like with immigration. you know who symbolizes the complexity and frustration,

almost more than anybody, susan b anthony. she was a suffragette. she fought desperately for women, she was a hero and people were voting for hillary. they were putting stickers on her grave. racism also steeped in and did not want black men devote before women got the vote. that would not have been fair to her because white women, white is better than black men. [laughter] those are the inherent contradictions. did that negate all the good that she did? of course not. it tells the story with the complexity that it deserves and hopefully allows us to see each other more clearly. and have an empathy and compassion to the complexity of people's hierarchy of needs and not negate people for the worst statement they have ever did or in the liberal community, you

hate the city of creating people as a monolith. do not look at muslims as a monolith. they are individuals. but everybody who voted for trump is a monolith. is a racist. that is again, that hypocrisy is also real in our country. and so, this is the fight that we wage against ourselves. america is not natural. natural is tribal. we are fighting against thousands of years of human behavior and history to create something that no one has ever -- that is what is exceptional about america and this ain't easy, it is an incredible thing. chris: one of the things i had hoped the book does is illustrate that in some small way. jon and the show made over the course of the years of the show , evolved a very determined

effort to diversify the ranks to off-camera to on camera. run, therend of jon's was a hubub about a confrontation he had with one of the correspondence, why it senate -- wyatt, an african-american. we go into detail about how and why that happened. i think it is a fascinating illustration of how people of good intention, strong values, these are tough things to wrestle with day in and day out in workplaces and creative environments. and a total coincidence when this story broke, ta-nehisi coates was a friend that day. ac,was a friend of wyatt cen did not know the back story about any of this. i interviewed ta-nehisi coates

and he said, people struggle with racism in good ways all the time that we do not see and hear about. we hear about the confrontation, the conflict. to him, yeah, what jon did over the course of a number of years sometimes did not make everybody happy, but was moving the ball forward, was good intention and progressive in every way. charlie: to create diversity there. jon: yes. when you're faced with that type of criticism, your first response is generally defensiveness. that is when we first started the show, comedy, especially late night was the realm of late-night ironists. just very witty, and people did very well in their sats, and

they wrote for their rivals, parody papers at their colleges . and the room was populated with a variety of relatively unathletic white men. charlie: who loved sports. jon: who did not love sports. usually one guy, did you see the yes,ts game last night? then we go back to the marvel universe. [laughter] when you are in it, sometimes the systems that perpetuate different forms of either racism or patriarchy, or any of those things, you do not realize you are in it when you are in it, right? you certainly do not think of that as yourself. an article came out that said they do not have women writing for the show and on and on. my first response to it, is they

do not understand, there are women here, they are in power, this is not a sexist environment, i was raised by a single mother. i went through every little who do they think -- and i think there were things in the article that were cheap shots. and i sat in the writer's room and looked around and oh-- [laughter] we are just white dudes with different facial hair. i took that as diversity. when i looked at as the methods of diversity in a running staff -- that guy is a one line guy, that guy thinks more in terms of structure, that guy is a pretty good narrative guy. this guy is crazy, we will stay out of his way. every three weeks he will say something and we will go, that is great. [laughter] charlie: that justifies your existence. jon: right. we had had a policy that you do not put your name on your submissions and i thought that is what made us progressive. what we forgot was the system

does not funnel you women, it funnel's you the same people letter to been funneling for 20 to 30 years. when i call an agency and go, i am looking for writers, they are going to send me 100 white male writers. i'm not going to look at their names because i do not want to be prejudiced but what you , forget is change is effort. it is not effort for effort's sake. it is effort because it makes the show better, stronger, different viewpoints are what gave the show strength. what we had to say is, by the way, thank you for sending those things. send me your women. get me those submissions, please. the same with when we are adding correspondents. you have to do that actively. you deserve no credit for that. you have to, to a large extent, inertia is tacit in its

complicity with the system. charlie: by doing so you are ignoring half of the population. jon: and you're not getting the best stuff. chris: right. this was certainly not publicly known. jon in a variety of respects over the years felt the need, ok i am going to be out there , talking about veterans, i will make jokes, i should go to the va and actually talk to veterans. charlie: what did you do? did you have that ah-ha moment in the writer's room? jon: everyone has blind spots . and it is hard to overcome your ignorance. that is what i had to face in is gutwrenching sometimes. ♪

charlie: do you think because of all this and you found the right expression, that you can find something that is equally right for you again? or do you simply hit a home run there, you found the perfect place for you and it was 17 years of -- jon: yes. and i will never have that again, but i shouldn't.

it was a gift that was, that i was fortunate enough to be graced with for all that time, and be in contact with all those incredible people but i do not expect to find that again. what i found is a more balanced existence where i get, there is a difference between satisfaction and joy. this gave me great satisfaction. they gave me great confidence, but joy, joy. driving a couple of knucklehead kids home from school. i get to sit and listen to -- joy. joy. you need to have that as well. this was an obsession that i think, to be able to do it as well as we did, to me felt like the only way we could do it, but at a certain point, you have to hang up your cleats and go, i got out of this more than anybody, my cup runneth over and

it is time to cede that to someone whose vigor and intellectual curiosity will carry this forward, and evil it in new ways. lve it in new evo ways. charlie: did you find that joy in making movies? jon: work is work. people say when you're not working, when something happens and you are not at work, you are like, i wish i was at work. has that ever happened to you in your life? [laughter] when you are not at work and you i workears of, oh wow, in a bar and i just heard of muslim people came in for drinks, -- i work in a bar and i heard a bus load of people came in for drinks, i wish i was back there. charlie: what is the most unusual insight from the book, all these interviews of people who were part of the family that you had the privilege to talk to and to get their sense of what

was going on? chris: i do not know that -- unusual so much as striking that so many of the people working there were -- unaware is too strong, but did not realize or take in how much the outside world was paying attention, because the grind of doing the show day in and day out and the ethos that jon set, we won all those emmy awards, aren't we speaking truth about -- it wasn't about that. it was about doing the best show every day. sure, they knew people were paying attention, they would go out to the emmys and accept awards. but the ability to stay in the moment of the creation of the show to me was really kind of surprising. charlie: you do accept the idea

that because of the audience, even people who said it was their source of news, as you know, were influenced by "the daily show" in terms of curiosity and the mindset and those young people especially are going out now and doing this with interesting stuff. they were influenced by you. as a teacher, as an influence. jon: if it stimulated curiosity for people to make arguments. if it stimulated a curiosity for people to look at much a look behind the veil of what is seen publicly and try and deconstruct what they see on television and what they see in political campaigns, i would consider that an incredible compliment to the show and legacy. charlie: and to you. jon: my name was on it. i would also caution everybody, it did come from our perspective. there were a lot of people out

there who thought it was unfair. one of the big things people said, when people pushed back you say, i am just a comedian. i never really said that. chris: i had every utterance of jon's in 20 years. i will vouch for that. he never said i am just a comedian. he took responsibility in all kinds of ways for the point of view as well as the jokes. jon: and the material. it was on "crossfire," i'm just on comedy central. the point of that is not to say, this is comedy, it does not matter. the point is to say that the language of satire is different than the language of news and the language of media. our weapons are hyperbole and satire and hard juxtapositions that are a cudgel, when news media could use a scalpel. charlie: the book written by chris smith, forward by jon stewart.

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>> the dollar climbs to its highest in more than a decade. and a right hike next month is all but certain. marching seventh to the dollar, emergent markets continuing their declines. >> the latest fed minutes show more policymakers agree the case were in -- case for an increase has strengthened. >> opec input has improved