Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | June 4, 2024
Last night, Jon Stewart delivered maybe his best Daily Show episode since returning earlier this year. I think this is a clip that everyone should watch. Not for the jokes about Biden or the fallout from the Trump verdict. It’s the part where he talks about how the courtroom is the only place where reality still exists in America. Politicians — and especially Trump and the Republican party — will say whatever the hell they want in public, and the news media will transcribe and amplify, but in a courtroom, they have to tell the truth. This is why Donald Trump wouldn’t testify in his criminal trial. It’s why Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty in the Georgia election case — they couldn’t argue in court that Biden stole the election because he didn’t. No evidence exists to prove it. They did the only thing they could do when they were confronted with reality.
This is what scares me most about another Trump term: The idea that he can distort reality in the courtroom the way he has in the rest of America. If we get more Supreme Court judges like Alito or Thomas, that’s what will happen. If he fills the federal courts with more judges like Aileen Cannon, that’s what will happen. Our court system is far from perfect — just listen to the third season of Serial to see how badly it is broken — but for the most part, its primary function is to seek the truth. If Trump destroys that, reality ceases to exist anywhere.
Moreover, as Stewart rants, the news media has to stop speculating about the future, examining polls, and asking whether this Senator or that governor will accept the results of the 2024 election. “Who f**king cares?” Stewart asks. “No one knows what the future holds. Ask this person what it was about the 2020 election that they found objectionable and then litigate the realities of their objections to them. In front of them. So when they say to you, ‘I never said ‘lock her up,’ you can say, ‘I object!’ f**king do that. What is wrong with you?” We do not live “in two different realities” because this is not the multiverse, and it’s the news media’s job to “present the evidence of our shared reality.”
Our news media is pathetic. In its desperation to please shareholders and compete against social media and TikTok, it’s forgotten its function as the Fourth Estate. Instead of defining reality for the American public, it allows Donald Trump and other politicians to define it for them, forcing the news media to operate within their definition of reality. Someone needs the courage not to define reality but to present it.
