Jon Stewart is disgusted by Republican Senator Mike Lee, not only for his recent social media posts but for something Lee once said to him in person.
“I’ve met Senator Lee,“ Stewart revealed in his Monday monologue, sarcastically adding, ”He’s the best.”
Lee has been embroiled in controversy after posting a response to the assassination of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman over the weekend. During his monologue Monday night, Stewart recounted his own experience with the GOP Republican.
The recurring Daily Show host explained how, when he was trying to extend the 9/11 victim compensation fund in 2019, he’d had a meeting with an apathetic Mike Lee.
“All these first responders are going around the table,” Stewart explained, “And they are sharing their stories to try and get Senator Mike Lee to support this bill that’s gonna provide life-saving coverage and money to the victims of this terrible terrorist attack.”
Stewart continued, “When the one cop says his story about being in the tower that collapsed and the aftermath, when he told Senator Lee about that experience, Senator Lee smiled and said, ‘Ha, I bet you’ve got a lot of stories.’”
“We met a lot of people in Washington,” Stewart continued, “That was the only meeting where we all walked out and looked at each other and went, ‘What the f— is wrong with that guy?’ The only one.”
Stewart explained, “I say this for context, for why I use Senator Lee as the avatar for the insanity of this moment.”
He showed a clip of Lee in 2024, talking tearfully about the tragic murder of nursing student Laken Riley at the hands of an undocumented immigrant.
“Look, he’s right to be upset at our leaders for allowing unsafe conditions to happen. That’s fine,” Stewart said. The problem, he argued, was that Lee is only upset about the murder of innocents when it supports his side’s issues.
Case in point: in the aftermath of a right-wing shooter killing and injuring multiple prominent Democrats in Minnesota on Sunday, Lee posted on X saying, “This is what happens … When Marxists don’t get their way.”
Lee has since been widely condemned for both politicizing the shooting and for spreading misinformation about the shooter’s motives. Stewart noted that Lee had posted this “just hours after we learned about this tragedy.”
“By the way, he didn’t just post that,” Stewart said. “He pinned that to the top of… whatever the f— it is that you pin stuff on on Twitter, your Twitter refrigerator, to show off your Twitter work.”
Stewart continued, “And then, to let all of us know that that is not the depth of his depravity, that he can go deeper, he posted this…”
He showed Lee’s second post about the shooting, which read, “Nightmare on Waltz Street.”
“Mocking, of course, the name of the Minnesota governor,” Stewart said.
Stewart wanted to know, “Why, in [Lee’s] mind, one death at the hands of an immigrant is worth $150 billion of border security” while “those deaths in Minnesota are worth only a night of edgelord s–tposting.”
“We should ask him why,” Stewart said. “I bet he’s got some stories to tell.”
