Jon Stewart to Elon Musk: ‘Guns don’t protect our free speech’

Late-show hosts discuss Elon Musk jumping around on stage with Donald Trump , the former president’s fixation with Jimmy Kimmel’s Oscars joke and why people are leaving his rallies early.

The Daily Show

During his Monday night guest-hosting stint on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart mocked the billionaire Elon Musk’s appearance at Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally this weekend. Stewart recalled how, in 2016 and 2020, Trump accused the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, of election interference. Now Musk, owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, is campaigning with him – a clear double standard.

During his appearance, Musk said: “The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. You must have free speech in order to have democracy. That’s why it’s the first amendment.”

Stewart begged to differ: “Elon, were you not watching the rest of the show? A movie Trump doesn’t like is going to get sued. A tech mogul he doesn’t like, he wants to put in prison. It’s not free speech if only Trump’s admirers get to do it without consequence. That’s just not how it works. It doesn’t go that way.

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“But at least the constitution remains intact and is there to ensure that we have the first amendment,” he added, followed by another clip from Musk’s speech in which claimed the second amendment “is there to ensure that we have the first amendment”.

Stewart, once again, disputed this with increasing bile. “Guns don’t protect our free speech. Our free speech is protected by the consent of the governed, laid out through the constitution,” he ranted. “It’s not based on the threat of violence. It’s based on elections, organizing referendums, a judicial system. Our social contract offers many, many avenues to remedy these issues and allows sides to be heard and adjudicated. Guns, from what I can tell, seem to mostly protect the speech of the people holding the gun.

“It is a tool of intimidation, and one that I think is actually being irresponsibly and recklessly invoked,” he continued. “Because some people in your crowd thought they might have been shadow-banned by Facebook.

“The whole point of a society is guns don’t decide it,” he added. “I would prefer at this moment not to trade in a government that offers me many remedies for my concerns, legitimate or illegitimate, for a situation where my rights are determined by how many militia members agree with me.”

Addressing Musk directly, Stewart concluded: “The country ain’t perfect, and there’s a lot of issues we don’t agree on: choice, immigration, shrinkflation of snack chips, the unholy marriage of penguins and hippos. But, honestly, dude, a country that can adjudicate these complicated issues through a sometimes frustrating, overly bureaucratic constitutional system of checks and balances and peaceful transfer of power is the only kind of country that I want the children of Pesto and Moo Deng to grow up in.”

Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel noted that on Sunday, Trump “took a break from again bragging about how he likes to stiff workers out of overtime” to once again complain about Kimmel’s joke at his expense at the Oscars in March. Trump opened the Truth Social post, featuring a photo of Kimmel hosting the ceremony, with the caption: “Remember this?”

“Yeah, we do remember,” said Kimmel. “And you know why? You keep bringing it up.”

Trump added that Kimmel “suffers from TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. All of this on top of really bad ratings for Jimmy, just like failing Bill Maher and the two clowns on CBS and NBC! NO TALENT EQUALS BAD RATINGS!”

“This is what he’s stewing about on a Sunday afternoon 28 days before the election,” Kimmel laughed. “He’s still whining about a joke I made seven months ago. Not even the winners of the Oscars last year think about the Oscars as much as Donald Trump. I hear from Donald Trump more than I hear from most of my uncles.”

Kimmel added that though Trump probably thought he hated the digs, in reality, he loved the attention. “I want to know every tiny detail of the whole thing,” he said.

Seth Meyers

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers examined the multiple issues plaguing Trump’s campaign rallies, starting with the photos of people streaming for the exits mid-speech. According to Trump, those people were in fact leaving their seats to be photographed with him afterwards. “You want us to believe that all those people streaming for the exits are actually coming up to the stage to take a photo with you after the speech? The stage that is famously the opposite direction of the exits?” Meyers joked.

“It’s so funny when Trump comes up with a very elaborate excuse that’s obviously BS,” he added. “He sounds like a 13-year-old at a haunted house insisting he didn’t pee his pants.”

Part of the issue for attendees is that in recent weeks, the average time of Trump’s rallies has nearly doubled. “That’s Trump’s gravest sin as an entertainer: he doesn’t know when to get off the stage,” said Meyers. “You’re supposed to leave them wanting more. Trump leaves them wanting out.

“So now, he’s decided to spice things up and win back his audience’s attentions by making his rallies even weirder,” such as bringing Musk on stage to literally jump around. “Dude’s jumping like he’s trying to reach the rope ladder on a rescue helicopter,” said Meyers on the Tesla CEO, “the first person I’ve ever seen with a negative vertical. When he jumps, he looks like he’s falling.”