A Look Back at Jon Stewart's Daily Show
LU STOUT: Coming to you live from Hong Kong, you're back watching News Stream. Now the American comedian Jon Stewart is heading into his final week as host of The Daily Show. Now Jake Tapper takes a look at the highlights of the past 16 years of controversy and satire.</s>JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": Craig Kilborn is on assignment in Kuala Lumpur. I'm Jon Stewart.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Sixteen years ago, when Jon Stewart took the helm of "The Daily Show," it would have been difficult to predict the stature he and this show would achieve -- the location where candidates would come during a tough primary season.</s>STEWART: Tomorrow is perhaps one of the most important days of your life. And yet you have chosen to spend the night before talking to me.</s>STEWART: Senator, as a host, I'm delighted; as a citizen, frightened.</s>STEWART: Your response?</s>HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: It is pretty pathetic.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Or to declare a candidacy.</s>SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: I am on your show to announce that I am a candidate for President of the United States.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): That he would hold a well-attended rally on the National Mall.</s>STEWART: Are you ready to restore sanity?</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Or that he would be perceived as so influential, especially among young voters, that the President of the United States, whom he obviously greatly admired, would privately chide him to not feed cynicism. Stewart's influence grew quickly with the election of President George W. Bush, when Stewart's politics found ripe targets.</s>STEWART: "I spread democracy. I'm a pusher, not a user."</s>TAPPER (voice-over): And Democrats, hungry for anyone to challenge the Bush administration, turned to him.</s>SAMANTHA BEE, THE DAILY SHOW: Jon, when the waters from Katrina began to rise, it would have been easy to rush back to Washington. This president stuck it out for two more vacation days. What do you call that?</s>STEWART: What do I call that? An abdication of...</s>BEE: Oh, yes, I agree, dedication.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): He's the one "Daily Show" reporter that makes the others look like a bunch of</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Long-time correspondent Samantha Bee tells us that Stewart was an even-keeled captain of their ship, with a clear eye on where they were headed.</s>BEE: His editorial point of view was always so sharp and so -- we always went out into the field with a really clear point of view and we would just hit that point of view again and again and again and again.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): The media, especially CNN, we were frequent targets.</s>STEWART: The truth of what a reporter's saying is all in the direction they're face is turned. News story, war story. Trust me on this,</s>TAPPER (voice-over): But his influence was great and his researchers quick and able to find clips exposing politicians.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."</s>DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, I never said that.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. I think that is.</s>CHENEY: That's absolutely not.</s>STEWART: He absolutely never said that. Hmm.</s>CHENEY: It's been pretty well confirmed --</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Also with a genuine eye for talent.</s>STEVE CARELL, THE DAILY SHOW: How do you reconcile the fact that you were one of the most vocal critics of pork barrel politics and yet while you were chairman of the Commerce Committee, that committee set a record for unauthorized appropriations? I'm just kidding.</s>CARELL: Well, I don't even know what that means.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Some critics thought the show lost its edge with the election of President Obama, who appeared on the show seven times, for usually friendly chats.</s>STEWART: How many times a week does Biden show up in a wet bathing suit to a meeting?</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Though other times the Stewart knife could cut.</s>STEWART: It wouldn't be, "Yes, we can," given certain conditions.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): And his skewering of the botched healthcare.gov website was something of a tipping point.</s>STEWART: We're going to do a challenge. I'm going to try and download every movie ever made and you're going to try and sign up for ObamaCare and we'll see which happens first.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Perhaps the most powerful moments were when Stewart realized his influence and used it, such as when he shamed Congress for stalling the passage of health care legislation for 9/11 first responders.</s>STEWART: But before I rush in, you got to promise me, McCluskey, you got to promise me and my family that this will not affect the Swiss pharmaceutical companies' offshore tax status. You got to promise me that.</s>STEWART: Or I'm not going in there. You're an</s>TAPPER (voice-over): He's now credited with its eventual passage.</s>BEE: We don't claim that victory for ourselves. People have been in the trenches working on that for years and years and years and they've been laying all this really heavy-duty groundwork. And sometimes it just takes that little tiny extra push to get it over the hump.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Stewart's fans will miss him and so will the public square.</s>STEPHEN COLBERT, COMEDIAN: You're making no sense.</s>STEWART: Zero sense.</s>COLBERT: We're done.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Jake Tapper, CNN, Washington.</s>LU STOUT: You're watching News Stream. Just after the break, we've got a report from Beijing where families are desperate for news on what could be the first physical trace of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. And later in the hour, one of the most prominent fixtures of the New York skyline pays tribute to the lion who suffered a slow and painful death. We'll explain.