Jon Stewart doesn’t know whether The Daily Show will survive Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance—the one Paramount was willing to settle with Donald Trump to secure—but the show is adding yet another anti-Trump correspondent to its hosting rotation.
Staff writer turned correspondent and now host Josh Johnson will appear behind the desk from Tuesday to Thursday this week. Stewart will appear during his usual Monday night slot, but there’s mounting speculation that it could be his last. His Monday night appearance will be his first since CBS announced Thursday that it was firing Stephen Colbert and killing off the Late Show altogether in May.
That news sparked outcry as the decision was announced only days after Colbert called out Paramount for settling with Trump over his 60 Minutes lawsuit, calling it a “big fat bribe.”
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Stewart has never minced words about the outcome of the settlement either. During his July 8 show, he said of the $16 million settlement to soothe Trump over the 60 Minutes edit of Kamala Harris’ interview last year, “I’m obviously not a lawyer, but I did watch Goodfellas. That sounds illegal.”
Thus it would make sense if he went scorched earth in defense of Colbert when he gets behind the desk on Monday, Bill Simmons and Matt Belloni surmised on Belloni’s podcast The Town. “He’s gonna stand up for his dude… He’s not sitting this one out,” Simmons said, as Belloni said he wouldn’t be surprised “if Stewart just dive bombs the entire company, quits on the air, drops some F-bombs, names names, the whole thing.”
Choosing Josh Johnson for a new host this week supports Belloni and Simmons’ theory that Stewart “could give two s--ts” about appeasing what he’s previously called Paramount’s “fealty” to Trump. Johnson’s no-holds barred takes on Trump have made his stand-up popular and catapulted him into the higher echelons of the Daily Show staff since joining the show in 2017.
Johnson hosted a Daily Show segment last year where he confronted Black voters with Trump’s tone-deaf comments on race—and since Trump’s taken office the second time, he’s been tapped to rip the president on air for his on-again, off-again tariffs and his embarrassing talks with African leaders.
It’s fair to expect that he’ll only fan the flames of anti-Trump sentiment on the show even more when he takes the desk this week.
As for Stewart, all eyes will be on him as he prepares to break his silence on Colbert’s outster Monday night.
For more, listen to The Daily Show’s Josh Johnson on The Last Laugh podcast.
