Jon Stewart ‘Working on Staying’ as Daily Show Host

Jon Stewart has said he’s not going anywhere, and he’s trying to put that in writing.

The comedian, whose contract to host The Daily Show is up in December, said “we’re working on staying” during a conversation with New Yorker editor David Remnick at Sunday’s New Yorker Festival, when Remnick asked if the Comedy Central host was going to “sign another” contract.

Beyond that, when asked by Remnick if he does indeed want to stay at the helm of the Comedy Central late night show he left in 2015 and returned to in early 2024, hosting on Mondays, Stewart agreed. If it’s up to him, he wants to stay.

It was roughly a year ago when Stewart announced he was staying on at The Daily Show through December 2025, but since then Donald Trump has returned to the White House and Paramount has merged with David Ellison’s Skydance.

Stewart even referred to Paramount Skydance CEO Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, as his “new boss.”

In recent months, Stewart’s Paramount colleague and former Daily Show co-worker Stephen Colbert announced that CBS’ The Late Show would be ending, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel had his show suspended. CBS, which like Comedy Central is owned by Paramount, announced in July that Colbert’s The Late Show would come to an end in May 2026. Though the network claimed it was “purely a financial decision,” the move came just days after Colbert criticized Paramount for a $16 million settlement with Trump in a lawsuit he had filed over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his 2024 Democratic challenger Kamala Harris. ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! was suspended for less than a week after comments Kimmel made in a monologue about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassin went viral, FCC commissioner Brendan Carr threatened ABC’s affiliate licenses over the host’s remarks and at least two affiliate groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, planned to pre-empt Kimmel’s show.

Stewart too has criticized the 60 Minutes settlement and suggested that the Late Show cancellation was connected to Colbert’s critical comments about the lawsuit and President Trump. And he skewered the Kimmel suspension with a satirical, “administration-compliant” edition of The Daily Show.

“The fact that CBS didn’t try to save their No. 1 rated late night franchise that’s been on the air for over three decades is part of what’s making everybody wonder: Was this ‘purely financial’? Or maybe it’s the path of least resistance for your $8 billion merger to kill a show that you know rankled a fragile and vengeful president who’s so insecure that he’s suffering terribly from a case of chronic penis insufficiency,” Stewart said on The Daily Show days after news broke of The Late Show cancellation.

He added, “If you’re trying to figure out why Stephen’s show is ending, I don’t think the answer can be found in some smoking gun email or phone call from Trump to CBS executives or in CBS QuickBooks spreadsheets on the financial health of late night. I think the answer is in the fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America’s institutions at this very moment, institutions that have chosen not to fight the vengeful and vindictive actions of our … commander-in-chief. To those corporations and advertisers and universities and law firms, all of them, if you still think that bending the knee to Trump will save you, I have one thing to say [breaking into song]: I know you’re scared, I know you’re weary, I know your plans don’t include me, but these are troubled times, so sack the fuck up!”

And he said at the time of his own late night future: “I’m not going anywhere. I think.”

Paramount Skydance has also made changes at CBS News. The conglomerate has hired the former CEO of the conservative-leaning Hudson Institute, Kenneth Weinstein, as CBS News’ ombudsman and contrarian journalist Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, with Paramount acquiring her The Free Press.

When Remnick asked specifically about the “I think” comment on Sunday, Stewart merely quipped, “I’m neurotic,” but he indicated throughout the conversation — which covered Trump’s second term, Stewart’s issues with the Democratic party and the dangers of social media algorithms — that he plans to keep fighting and urges others to do the same.

“You don’t compromise on what you do, and you do it until they tell you to leave,” he said

Stewart also spoke about his satirical approach to Kimmel’s suspension.

“I think it rattled everyone to some extent, but it also presented great opportunity, and so I don’t know that we’ve had as much fun as we did that Thursday morning, coming up with all the stupid little shit that you see, including, like, gold pictures and red ties. You know, it gave us some purpose.”

That said, Stewart argued that comedians aren’t “the victims of this administration.”

“We are a visible manifestation of certain things, but the victims are the victims are the people that are struggling to have any voice and are being forcibly removed from streets by hooded agents, those are the victims of this administration,” he said.

Stewart also spoke about the recent controversy over a number of comedians performing in Saudi Arabia, yet he took a more nuanced approach and seemed reluctant to attack those who performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

“I don’t touch other people’s money,” he said, “It’s hard, man.”

“I thought the only person who should’ve done it was Pete Davidson, because they owe him money,” he quipped, alluding to how Davidson’s firefighter father famously died responding to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He added, “I want to fix my house. I want to operate with integrity, but I don’t want to gate keep. … I think a lot of comics who came out and really shit on those guys, I know a couple of them, and I know them actually to be. like, garbage humans, so it’s hard for me to watch that sort of thing. I would prefer if they would have just come out and said, it’s money and not, like, it’s a way to start a conversation. Like, would you have started the conversation for $2,500? That’s the difference. … We all have our lines that we are willing to cross … We get into a problem when we’re unforgiving in any way, when we offer no grace. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t have lines that I draw … but I do try to not be so rigid in the way that I think society has become.”

As for Trump, Stewart pointed to his ability to tap into a dissatisfaction with the government and “harness the anger and catastrophizing” of social media as explanations for his electoral victory.

“There’s a reason Donald Trump came to power, and that is that in the general populous mind, government no longer serves the interests of the people it purports to represent,” he said. “That’s a broad-based, deep feeling, and that helps when someone comes along and goes, the system is rigged, and people go, yeah, it is.”

Stewart was unsparing, though, in his critique of the Democratic party, condemning the party’s “passivity… to stick with the status quo that most people felt was not working for their needs.”

And though he praised Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy for New York City mayor, comments that earned cheers and applause in Manhattan’s Webster Hall, Stewart struggled to name a national leader for the Democratic party.

After pausing when he was asked, audience members suggested that Stewart himself could be that leader, which he saw as a sign of desperation and frustration.

“Have we really gotten to that point? … That’s also a function of frustration, a cry of desperation. I’m other; I’m none of the above,” he said, before later adding, “The Democratic party is ripe for what happened to the Republican party in 2016. But hopefully it will be somebody who uses that power for good and not for self aggrandizing and not for their own gratification.”

Still he did offer some indication of hope, pointing to the large attendance at the No Kings rallies last weekend.

“When 7 million people show up in America on a weekend for anything, I mean, honestly, anything,” he said. “We’re not Russia, and their history of autocracy or dictatorship … is an alien culture to us, and it is uncomfortable, and that discomfort may be our saving grace. And don’t think we’re going to wear that well. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to be in some kind of soft autocracy where news is controlled, but we have a lot of different avenues, and suppression creates opportunity and a populace that is thirsty for inspiration and leadership and morality and integrity … that’s fertile ground for that opportunity.”