Jon Stewart says that, in part, the upcoming presidential election pushed him toward his decision to leave “The Daily Show,” which he has helmed since 1999.
“I’d covered an election four times, and it didn’t appear that there was going to be anything wildly different about this one,” he told The Guardian.
Stewart, who describes himself as a “lefty,” also bemoaned the scandal over Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails, calling the story “absolutely everything it’s supposed to be about.”
The 16-year host of the show said that he is not getting the same level of satisfaction from hosting that he once did, and that motivated him to call it quits.
“These things are cyclical. You have moments of dissatisfaction, and then you come out of it and it’s OK. But the cycles become longer and maybe more entrenched, and that’s when you realize, ‘OK, I’m on the back side of it now.’” he said during the interview.
One of his biggest regrets, he told The Guardian, was not pushing hard enough with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2011.
“He just went into the general gobbledegook,” Stewart said, but added that while he felt the interview went poorly, it was only that — an interview.
“He’s the one who has to live with the repercussions of what he really did, so there’s nothing that could happen on my show that carries that same level of regret,” he said.
Stewart also acknowledged the daily grind of watching cable news channels like Fox News and MSNBC as a factor in leaving the show. “Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing,” he said. “I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don’t get turd lung disease.”
Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old South African comedian, will take over “The Daily Show”when Stewart leaves Comedy Central. The move will come either later in 2015 or early in 2016.
by Nick Gass
