Daily Show audience had no idea how bad it was until Jon Stewart started getting upset

Imagine your first inkling that Kamala Harris lost the election was Jon Stewart staring straight at you and yelling "FUUUUCK!"

By William Hughes  |  November 6, 2024 | 6:23pm
Screenshot: YouTube
TV News The Daily Show
Daily Show audience had no idea how bad it was until Jon Stewart started getting upset
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When last night happened, it happened—as is almost constantly the case in our ever-more fractured world—to different people at different times. (If you were staying up late to watch results while people you loved slept, envying their blissful slumber, and fearing the pain of an unpleasant wake-up call, you get it.) If you’d like a very direct, somewhat surreal illustration of that fact, you need look no further than the experience of people in the audience at The Daily Show last night. As noted by Variety, attendees at Jon Stewart’s election night special for the Comedy Central series were asked to shut their phones off at 10:30 p.m., i.e., a time of night that existed in a state of what we would now, in hindsight, characterize as “pleasant uncertainty.” Which means that the first indication they got that Donald Trump had been re-elected President of the United States was Jon Stewart, at the end of the broadcast, looking directly into the camera and yelling “FUUUCK.” Which might be the most direct version of receiving that bad news that we can personally imagine.

Among other things, Variety notes that the commercial break playlist pumping through the show’s studio during downtime also reflected the deflating air of the evening: The pre-show song was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run,” but as the evening wore on, whoever was programming the tunes started working in more tracks like “Crazy Train,” “Help!”, and, close to the conclusion of the night, CeeLo Green’s “Fuck You.” Which feels like the sort of detail you’d see in a movie about an election like this, but, y’know, the ol’ grey reality, she ain’t what she used to be.

Attendees at the taping weren’t even given the usual comfort of a back-and-forth with Stewart, who usually takes questions from audience members during commercial breaks; the live nature of the episode meant Stewart spent that downtime getting news updates and checking his phone, just like the rest of us. Stewart ended his on-air broadcast with an effort to keep spirits up—at which point, audience members went back out into the New York air to catch cabs home and saw the New York Times‘ election needle pointing toward a 90 percent chance of a Trump win. An amazing mental image, honestly, a perfect illustration of coming out of a more protected bubble out into the cold air of the long and miserable winter ahead.

 
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