>> from our studios in new york ity, this is "charlie rose." charlie: christmas, jon stuart, thanks for doing this. charlie: this is the today show. chris, why an oral history. >> come on. >> the title, if i did it, was taken, so we had to go with the other title. >> because it is an oral history. >> and the people who performed this show are so interesting and are really not terribly well

known outside of the 22 minutes a night that jon and everybody else did for 16 years. but the actual process of making the show, that wasn't kept secret but kept close because jon was so focused on those four days a week and just getting it done and that's a 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: go to jon and say, will you do this and cooperate. and you said yes, let's do this. it was i thought he was

really well done and we were involved in the 16 years and people say, what was it like and what was your favorite parts? i said i don't know. charlie: you learned something? jon: the perspective of the men and women. if it was going to be told, i want it told as thoroughly and as fairly, words and all, as it could possibly be and chris was a great reporter to be able to do that. charlie: over the 16 years, how did it evolve? what did it become that it was not in the beginning? jon: we became better at doing

it. it's not that it's -- there are two separate things, what the show became and what people thought of the show and the outside perspective of it and that was the thing that i think -- i talked to chris a lot about, you had to ignore. what we tried to develop was a decent internal barrowmeter for the show and how well you could execute it. you couldn't say, i don't know this is an emmy award-winning. you had to try and keep your own morality and integrity as the beacon a you wanted the material to go. charlie: was your instinct right about what would be funny and wouldn't be funny? jon: i think we got better at that. about that.gile

so i don't know -- i can say there were things that we wrote that i thought were funny where the audience might not and other things where you would do a jock, a pun to come up with a houlder and the crowd would go bananas. we spent the whole day crafting a buteautiful commeedices like 0007. chris: one of the things that was fascinating to go back and look in great detail. the daily show," chris kilbo rmp n, and they laid a good foundation in some ways, the mock correspondents, the mock satire of news.

the tone was different. it was much of local newscasts and meanexpire he hadness and they were much more interested in hollywood and show biz. and it bunched down at times in a way that could be funny but omprmp aal and talking to folks, he knew he wanted it to be more substantive, but he didn't have a master plan or a blueprint of here's we're going. on: i had been fired enough. charlie: do you know why you were successful this time? was this the best extension of your talent? jon: it was the best extension

of what i knew how to do. cable is a different animal, especially during that time. 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 wouldn't be able to do on a network. the network or lives or days by the overnights and the cable lives or dies by the carriage. and so their goal was to throw things out there. i knew that we had more time. and i think that maybe allowed me a little more confidence to push it. and i had to push them as well, because it wasn't necessarily the direction they wanted to go in. charlie: but you were running the show, too. ou were there in the trenches.

chris: if you have a craft services table -- [laughter] hmp are a number of metap ors. charlie: it became for us a kind of cultural event. chris: yeah. charlie: more than a show. chris: and jon started to touch on this. easy to forget in 2016 what the media world looked like in 1996, comedy 999, where " central" was a sketchy proposition where nbc news that "the daily show" was coming into being. in facebook had a major

influence on the election. [laughter] charlie: we just went through an election. jon: what? charlie: your reaction to this election? !on: surprise it all ties together. charlie: fear? jon: here's what i would honestly say. i don't believe we are a fundamentally different country today than we were two weeks ago or where we were a month ago. the same country, with all its grace and flaws and volatility and insecurity and strength and resilience exists today as existed two weeks ago, the same country that elected donald trump elected barack obama. and those contradictions, this

election to me is another extension of the long argument that we've had from our founder, which is what are we. nd that's, you know, are we an ideal or egget knowstate and that argument that is on a philosophical and theoretical level. i feel bad for the people for whom this election will mean more uncertainty and insecurity. this fight eel like has never been easy. and i think -- it's odd. we are a couple and we met. and the first fight we had when we met was -- i mean, look, the people that had money had slaves. the people who wrote all men are

created equal had slaves and it's not like they didn't know it was wrong. charlie: they came from a slave-owning state. jon: the argument between unalienable rights and slavery. we have had the same argument. at times it has been more violent but never been easy and fighting for this -- i don't see this as some sort of end point, it's a continuation of a long battle to determine what we are. and i think it made me wonder -- one of the things that struck me odd about this election and maybe i just missed it is nobody asked donald trump what makes america great. and that was the part -- charlie: he wants to make america great again.

nobody said what is it you want to do that we aren't doing now. jon: what are the metrics, because it seems like listening to him, that it's a competition and there are wins and losses and we are going to win more and is that what makes us great. and i think what many would say what makes us great is nobody's -- america is an anomaly in the world. there are a lot of people -- and i think his candidacy has brought that thought that a multi cultural democracy is impossible. and that is what america, by its founding charlie: and is becoming more and more year by year and some people were worried that it meant different things for them and that their life was changing because of that and there was a

certain fear. chris: no question. the fear that people are feeling are also felt, a rust belt worker that lost his job feels an insecurity. jon: look at all the terrible things he says and look, i live in an area that voted for him. harlie: and did democrats open the door for donald trump because she could not speak to them? jon: whether or not she opened the door or not, i don't think it was her door to open. you are talking about a global issue. globalization and pushback of that. get knowstates it makes more sense that when you live in a state that is an i'd deal, what is the bar? unalienable ve

rights and as long as you behave within that manner, but let's not pretend this isn't a battle that has been revisited time and time again. and that's why, i feel we have a resilience to it that we have to fight. charlie: do you think we have this battle, this sense of finding who we are? jon: yes. charlie: where whether we have gone off track in some way? jon: absolutely. i would rather have this conversation openly rather than dog whistles. there might be an anti-semite working in the white house. i say have you listened to the nixon tapes? 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 now there is this idea that anyone who voted for him has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric. and i think it's a big mistake. and i think our relationship status with our own worst impuses is complicated. who is the most progressive president. franklin roosevelt who interned asian americans during world war ii. so we are a complicated and real people. i know the hardest for me during this election was the disconnect i had between watching the rallies, which i think animates because it is a rally. he crowds isn't particularly moderate, but to see lock her up

and shouting at the media and jewu.s.a. and 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 who were voting for trump who are friends of mine, who i don't tolerate because -- well, they are deploreable, i love. but there are guys that i love, that i respect, that i think have incredible qualities who are not afraid of mexicans, mississippi or blacks, they are afraid of their insurance premiums. and this idea that, you know that they represent -- they have iven tacit approval to a

dictator and a madman, look at your phone, man. look at everything we have. we make those kinds of compromises every day. i have gone on too long. charlie: no, you haven't. [laughter] charlie: you have come to the right place. ♪

charlie: did you miss it during

the campaign? jon: god, no. charlie: you didn't want to do what you just did. tell us what you thought, both with satire and with comedy and with reason. jon: no. not at all. no. wears on you. charlie: meaning you could be full of rage, but it wouldn't make any difference? jon: correct. any pursuit like this. any artistic pursuit is a relatively saffleish pursuit. and it's a way to express ideas and get them out. and feel the seduction of it, it's going to score or not going to score. that's the hit. that's the adrenalin. but what begins to wear on you

is where it's taken. and 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 aadvice rating 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 hirke arcy of needs isn't your needs. charlie: it wasn't banging around in your head when you took this job. jon: what was banging around in my head was, is there a better way to execute public affairs comedy that means something to me. if i'm going to spend that much time. i had hosted talk shows, did one . mtv and on a syndicated

and i was spending 12 hours a day on things that weren't -- didn't feel substantial or meaningful to me. so this was a chance to, can i express my comedy about things that i care about in a way that's entertaining enough that i won't get bias, because i had been fired. and when you get fired and your name is on the show, it's hard suck ato, oh, you might this. and you have to re-evaluate. you know what? if i'm going to put myself in that position then, i'm going to lay it on the line and i'm going to put out there what i care about. charlie: go down going my way. jon: i'm going to do it in the

way that i think is the best iteration of my abilities and if bartend. down, i can [laughter] charlie: was there a moment -- was there a time, event that you said, we've 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? not in terms of success but in terms of the confidence that what i wanted to do and what i was insisting on doing has been -- jon: you talked to a bunch of people. i would say it was never about like -- it was more that would we be able to develop a process to do that well. and it's a juxtaposition of a creative pursuit that can we

build a machine that is redundant and rigid enough that creativity.in charlie: when did the process kick in that you knew? jon: that wasn't my concern. charlie: when did that happen? chris: it really took shape through the 2000 campaign and the recount and the day-to-day process. like jon said, the technology caught up with what "the daily show" was doing and they pioneered it but the form. what was equally important was not simply the process of ok, we are having a meeting at 9:00. what they found early on was a

tone. to what they wanted to do. and while events went on in the outside world that changed what they thought, they found a tone, john correll did with john cain on "the straight talk express" and john is chasing the bus and -- jon: they had a main bus, two press buses. mainstream press. and the other one had a bathroom. chris: and go to cindy mccain that the rollover bus. and she said come on the main bus with john. what you don't know is all the work that went into this and became a prototype of how john shifted pieces away from his cruelty to point of view.

correll had laid out a series of questions. nd he is a world class improvisor. if he says x, this is how you respond. the difficulty is one of mr difficulties. you have them working with civil yabs that they don't know they are in improv and develop these questions they are going to ask mccain like what kind of tree would you be? and what became famous in the turning piece was correll asked mccain, senator, you have been a strident opponent of pork-barrel spending, how can you justify when you were chair of the

ommerce committee. and mccain freezes and deer in the headlights moment. and he says, i was just joking. now what was fascinating to me nd co rmp r emplmp l had not me. and they found that question driving over to the chute. and that kind of structure and genius is impro something that held it during the run of the show. dayy hat is the crux "the show" paradocks. in that moment, you hold account a senator whose entire identity based on a hypocritical

behavior. i'm against this pork-barrel politics. we nailed you. and what do we have to do at that point? we let you go. it's catch and release and we have to undercut it with a laugh. d it gets to the joy and frustration of doing that type of job and it's when we realized that access didn't help us. o it's that idea, i got you. and here's my one moment and i'm going to go at the crux of your identity as ar politician and expose and have to make a joke about it and walk away and you are going to laugh. one of the difficulties of this is satire began to take the place of -- i think this has place in a greater

the discussion and a larger role in the discourse than is warranted. and once that started to happen, i think you began to question if it's a good thing or a bad thing. and i know it's not a black or white issue, but controlling the culture and as much fun we could make of the tea party and passing around viral videos, they weren't as friendly off the highway as taking over a school board and we just had a election that the democrats won by one million votes and don't control the presidency, house, senate or governorships or state legislatures. his may be the largest disconnect between majority rule

and majority power that we have had in this country in ages. and i'm in no way saying i'm responsible. [laughter] jon: there is a comforting culture that can be mistaken for real power. there are only two towns in the world that i have been that is delusiononal and one is washington, d.c., and los angeles and the only difference is they actually believe they have power. but d.c., like, that's where it is man. and the irony. charlie: d.c. has power, l.a. believes they have power. whatever we are saying about culture, in the end, it's not political power and in the end it's not. jon: in the end jon: in the end it's not

cultural influence. it's a story we tell ourselves about the rightness of our position. but it is argument. and it's not without weight. but it is not with so much weight. i believe that culture played a good role in marriage equality. i think it brought a story out that had been -- so much of what occurs with inequality is ignorance. and i don't mean that in a malevolent way. i mean it in a way of, i don't have experience with it that. i don't know what it is. exposure can be positive for that. charlie: do you think people came as guests because they, a, wanted the numbers you had, wanted to reach the audience you had, or because they enjoyed it, it gave them a certain kind of sense of being part of something that was hip and in? jon: i will say they did not enjoy it. charlie: really? >> to that point, chris wallace

of fox news said almost exactly those words to me. that his kids were never more impressed with him than when he went on his show. it felt like you'd been invited to become a member of a hipper club. chris. charlie: and you had a power to that club. hris: i was a bouncer. jon: i'm going to tell you, man. drive down 14th street. paladium ain't there anybody. it's something else now. chris: on the way over here i walked past fox news world headquarters. there's a marching band, there's dancing girls, there's free jello shots. apparently they won. charlie: but speaking of fox news. it was the gift that kept on giving. jon: it was not the gitcht that

kept on giving -- gift that kept on giving. was the relentless offer of -- they were a good foil because they were offering cynicism. which theyen to offer. there is no more cynical enterprise than 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's like, if coke cola went out there and share -- coca-cola went out there and their slogan was, healthy vitamins for children. it's completely not that. fox news is reactionary. in the way that my 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: but did you see what you you were doing as simply --

what you were doing as simply offering an alternative to what fox was saying? jon: no. charlie: ok, go ahead. jon: we saw it as -- so the headline for it on "the huffington post" would be, stewart eviscerates arguments against gay marriage. and we would think of it as, "daly show" comes up with a somewhat humorous look at what they think is a hypocritical stance on personal freedoms. and that's the weight that it should be given. charlie: but you licked your chops when you saw hypocrisy like you hadn't seen before. when you saw them, if you thought it was hypocritical, that would be the point where you would just say -- jon: it was an matted by -- animated by visceral feelings, no question. because that's the stuff that -- this show is basically just -- if you imagine in general, and i hate to do this to your audience, i don't know if this is pbs, so, you want to go a -- to do a trigger warning, but,

"the daly show" was a sat rimbings ical expression of me sitting in front of my television in my underwear yelling at the television. chris: there's a point in the book where a lot of different people, among them a guy named john feel, who has been a leader in pushing for health care for 9/11 first responders. charlie: the feel good foundation. chris: right. they walk us through what jon and others did to get the permanent extension of the zadroga bill a little while back. and jon at one point -- charlie: saw as much passion from you on the issue. chris: yeah. we can debate influence and power. there were points where "the daly show" had real impact. real world impact. jon does not get up and raise his hand and say, i did that. but there are a lot of first

responders who are going to have their medical bills paid in large part because of his focus on this. but in that discussion, jon at one point in the book says, in some ways the debate over zadroga is what "the daly show" for me was about. a lot of people looking at something in a commonsense way and saying, isn't this crazy, that this is this isn't getting done -- that this isn't getting done, why isn't this happening? charlie: it was the commonsense argument. chris: yes. and show the and he were ahead of the curve and people talk about this in the book. in recognizing, on 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 to minimum wage. all sorts of things over the years.

>> at one point there was a former -- at one point there was a former correspondent who wasn't on the show for a long period of time, and in some ways had an up happy experience there, but in some ways people who have had unhappy experiences think deeper about what worked and what didn't. he talks in there about how he doesn't think bernie sanders would have been possible if not for "the daly show." there's a generation of people who grew up thinking about government and hypocrisy and politicians in terms that jon and "thedale show" defined. i think that's -- -- "the daly show" defined. i think that's true in the sense that you have a lot of younger reporters that grew up watching "the daly show" and in this campaign, maybe it was too little too late, maybe it was more print than tv. but, can we curse? there were a lot of people in this campaign who called bull beep].

anotating lies. footnoting every lie in a donald trump speech was something that jon and "the daly show" had done with bush, had done with obama, all along. and that kind of thing, you know, you can point to filtering through media culture. you have to meet force with force. and "the daly show" is, what i would say we are, and, again, i'm not saying this to denigrate what we did. i am so incredibly proud of -- 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. jon: one of the reasons i left was i was going to be redundant and go back and forth with the same thing. i'm going to really 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 that we had in one moment, at just the right time, at just the right moment, with everything we had, we could ove the can just a little bit. do you understand what i'm saying? charlie: yes. jon: we're impotently raging. zadroga was 10 years of backbacking labor by john feel and these first responders. 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 ran into burning buildings, that were told by our government, the e.p.a., that the air was safe, but the air was not safe. they are dying. they continue to die to this day. they were forced, with all their afflictions, to go down

and, hat in hand, knock on doors to people who wouldn't even meet their eye sight and those 10 years of working, they did all the construction. at the very end, cindy came in with just a little star and went, bink. and got way more credit for it than was deserved. they deserve that and continue to. and the ultimate irony of this election is the cynical strategy of the republicans, which is, our position is government doesn't work. we're going to make sure that it doesn't work. charlie: drain the swamp. jon: but they're not draining the swamp. mcconnell and ryan are the swamp. what they decided to do was, i'm going to make sure government doesn't work and then i'm going to its -- use its lack of working as evidence of it. donald trump is a reaction not just to democrats, to republicans. he's not a republican. he's a repeedation of republicans. but they will reap the benefit of his victory. in all of their cynicism.

and all of their -- i will guarantee you, republicans are going to come to jesus now about the power of government. they are going to suddenly realize that, you know what, government authority is actually not tearny when we've won. it it's -- turny when we've won it. it's actually authority. and consent to the people. you know what, you want an infrastructure project, and let me give you that and tax cuts. and let's see how far we can take that. that's the irony of it. ♪

charlie: when we began this conversation, you were arguing that this country has had a long and tortured history on debating on these things. jon: not that debate. on race. i'm talking about the foundational crede of the country, which is, we are not, you know, originally we were just white anglo-saxon protestant. like with immigration -- charlie: men. jon: you know who symbolizes the frustration of this country, is probably more than anybody, susan b. anthony. she was a suffrage et. she fought desperately for women. she was a hero. when people were voting for hillary, putting stickers on her grave and all. that but she was also, i think, steeped in racism. and did not want black men to vote before women got to vote. because that wouldn't have been fair to her because white women

, right, white is better than black men. so, it's -- those are the inherent contradictions. does that negate all the good that she did? of course not. but 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 for the complexities of peoples, you know, ire -- peoples', you know, hierarchies of needs, and not negate people for the worst statement they ever did or, in the liberal community, you hate this idea of creating people as a monday legitimate. don't look as muslims as a monolith. they are individuals and it would be ignorance. but everybody who voted for trump is a monolith, a racist. that is, again, like, that hypocrisy is also real in our country. this is the fight that we wage against ourselves and each other.

because america's not natural. natural is tribal. we're fighting against thousands of years of human behavior and history to create something that no one's ever -- that's what's exceptional about america. and that's what's, like, this ain't easy. it's an incredible thing. chris: one of the things i hope the book does is illustrate that in some small way, jon and the show, made, over the course of the year, as the show evolved, a very determined attempt to diversify the ranks. from off camera to on camera. near the end of john's run there, -- jon's run there, there was a little hubbub about a confrontation he had with one of the correspondents. an african-american. we go into some detail about how and why that happened. i think it's a fascinating

illustration of how people of good intention, of strong values, these are tough things to wrestle with day in and day out, in workplaces an creative environments. a fascinating total coincidence, when this story tanahasee coats was his guest. i interviewed coats for the book. he said, i thought something really interesting, he said, u know, people struggle with racism in good ways all the time that we don't see and hear about. we hear about the confrontation, the conflict. and to him, yeah, what jon did over the course of a number of years sometimes didn't make everybody happy, but was moving the ball forward.

was of good intention and progressive in every way. charlie: to create diversity there. chris: yes. jon: when you are taced -- faced with that type of criticism, your first response is generally defensive. when we first started the show, comedy was the -- especially late night, was the realm of late night ironists. just very, very witty and people who did very well in their s.a.t.'s and wrote for eir parity papers at their colleges. the room was populated with a variety of relatively unathletic white men. charlie: who love sports. jon: who did not love sports. and you would find, usually i'd have one guy who would be like, did you see the giants game

last night, yes, and then we'd go back to the marvel universe. [laughter] when you are in it, sometimes the systems that perpetuate different forms of either racism or patriarch or other things, you don't even realize you're in it when you're in it. and you certainly don't think that of yourself. so an article that came out that said, they don't have any women writing for the show and, you know, on and on about that sort of thing. my first response to it was, they don't understand, there are women here, they're empowered, this is not a sexist environment. i was raised by a single mother. i went through every little, you know, who do they think -- and there were things in the article that i thought were like cheap shots and, what are they -- then i sat in the writers' room and i looked around and i was like, oh. we're all just white dudes. in various forms of facial

hair. i took that as diversity. what i looked ases -- at as the metrics of diversity in the writing staff was, that's a one-guy -- one-line guy. that guy thinks more in terms of structure. that's a good narrative guy. this guy's crazy. we're going to stay out of his way. every three weeks he's going to say something and we're going to go, that's great. charlie: that justifies your existence. jon: right. so we'd had a policy at the show that you don't put your name on your submissions. we thought that's what made us progressive. but what we forgot was, the system doesn't funnel you women, it funnels you the same people it's been funneling for 20, 30 years. it's a self-perpetuating system. so if i call a bunch of agents and go, i'm looking for writers, they're going to send me 100 white male writers. now, i'm not going to look at their names because i don't want to be prejudice. but what you forget is, change is effort.

and it's not effort for effort's sake. it's effort because it makes the show better, stronger, different view points are what gave the show strength. so what we had to say is, by the way, like, thank you for sending those things. send me your women. get me those submissions, please. the same with when we're adding correspondents. but you have to do that actively. and you deserve no credit for that. but it is -- you have to, to a large extent, inertia is as it its in its complexity with the system. charlie: by doing so you're ignoring half of the population. jon: and you're not getting the best stuff. chris: and this is something, it was certainly not publicly known, jon in a variety of respects over the years felt the need, ok, i'm going to be out there talking about veterans, i'm going it make jokes, i should go to the v.a. and actually talk to some

veterans. and see -- charlie: what did you do? did you leave that ah-ha moment in the writers' room? did you change immediately? did you in g in there and say, look, i realize -- yes. jon: everybody has blind spots. it is very hard to overcome your own ignorance. that's what i had to face in myself. which is, you know, it's gut wrenching sometimes. charlie: do you think, because of all this, and you found the right expression, is the word i used earlier, that you can find something that's equally right for you again? or do you just simply hit a home run there, you found the perfect place for you, and it was 17 years of -- jon: yes. i'll 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 to be in contact with all those incredible people. but i don't expect to find that again. but what i found is a more balanced existence that, where i get -- there's a difference between satisfaction and joy. this gave me great satisfaction. and it gave me great confidence . but joy, joy, driving a couple of knucklehead kids home from school that i get to sit and listen -- 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 that 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 runeth over.

and it's time to cede that to someone else whose enthusiasm and vigor and intellectual curiosity will carry this forward. and evolve it in new ways. and bring it to a place that it needs to be. that i am incapable of doing. charlie: did you find that joy in making movies? jon: work is work. people say, like, oh, when you're not working, man, when something happens and you're not at work, do you think, like, oh, i wish i was at work. you're like -- has that ever happened to you in your life? where you're not at work and you think to yourself, oh, wow, i just heard there was -- i work at a bar and i heard a bus load of people came in looking for drinks. man, i wish i was back there. charlie: what's the most unusual insight from the book? from all the interviews, all the people that were part of "the daily show" family, that you had the privilege to talk to and to get their sense what have was going on? chris: i don't know unusual so much as striking, that so many

f the people working there were unaware is too strong, but didn't realize or didn't take in how much the outside world was paying attention. because the grind is actually doing the show day in and day out and the ethos, the -- that jon was insurgent was, you know, we're not a run -- that jon set was, you know, we're not running around, we won these emmy awards, speaking truth to power, it was about howing up and doing the best show that day possible. sure, they knew people were paying attention, they knew, you know, they'd 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: do you accept this idea that -- you do accept this 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 their curiosity in terms of a mindset, and that those young people especially are going out now and doing things, really interesting stuff. they have been influenced by you. jon: right. charlie: as a teacher has an influence. jon: if it stimulated a curiosity for people to make arguments, you know, if it stimulated curiosity for people to look at, to look behind the veil of what is seen publicly and try to deconstruct what they see on television and what they see in political campaigns, i would consider that an incredible compliment to the show and to the legacy. charlie: and to you. jon: as my name was on it. but i would also caution anybody into -- like, 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 say is, oh, when people push back you say, i'm just a comedian. i never really said that. chris: i claim to have seen and heard every utterance of jon's in 20 years, but i'll vouch for that. he never said, i'm just a comedian. he took responsibility in all kind of ways for the point of view as well as the jokes. jon: the attention was not to propagandize. the intention was to see if could you make your argument in and smart eresting way. charlie: you come away with, both from the book and this conversation, is that comedy and satire ain't easy. "daily show" the book, an oorl history, is told by jon stewart, the correspondent staff, and, yes, written by chris smith, forward by jon stewart. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

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