Jon Stewart was on hypocrisy watch on Thursday night, taking aim at Fox News host Megyn Kelly for condemning corruption abroad while celebrating it at home.
The host of “The Daily Show” first ran clips of Kelly and others chasing up recent stories of Hillary Clinton’s alleged favors for foreign donors contributing to The Clinton Foundation.
“The question remains, to whom does she owe favors, because of the politics donations,” Kelly said on her show.
Stewat said that while Kelly and the media were rightly suspicious about foreign donations, no one appears to care about corruption at home.
The host noted that Clinton supporters and super PACs will attempt to raise $2.5 billion dollars for her 2016 run, and reminded everyone of the GOP’s own money machines such as Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers.
He contrasted Kelly’s concern for special favors and big money in the Clinton case to her coverage last year when Democrats were looking to crack down on money in politics — which, as Kelly put it, was “basically an attempt to limit the First Amendment.”
“They think that money corrupts in politics and they’re looking to stop that, quote, ‘corruption,'” Kelly said.
“I guess the rule here is that money is free speech, unless that money speaks with a funny accent,” Stewart said.
As the coup de grace, Stewart brought up the case of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who vetoed an overwhelmingly popular measure to ban inhumane gestation crates for pigs.
“Why would Chris Christie care? Well, either he just feels in his heart pigs have had a free ride for too long,” Stewart said, “or, he was doing the bidding of GOP mega donor and Christie 2012 backer, Iowan Bruce Rastetter, who happened to be one of America’s top hog producers.”
Watch the clip, coutesy of Comedy Central:
Folks talk about how smart she is. I’m not sure I’ve seen that with my own eyes.
You want a conflict of interest, Every two years Fox News, like every other channel, makes its living from campaign ads at full ad rates. Where do you think those billions go? Well, force broadcasters, who hold public licenses, to sell them at steep discounts to candidates and watch the broadcasters squeal like pigs in gestation crates.
STOP WITH THE FUCKING AUTO PLAY VIDEOS!!! Why do you do this?
This was an example on the GOP side, but if we want reform on campaign finance, money in politics, and corruption, we have to recognize and show that this is a bi-partisan issue.
GOP policies probably cater to the top 1% more than Democratic policies (I say this because there is often a divide in what dems say, and what they do). So how do we explain that the GOP hold the house, the senate, and a majority of the state legislatures? Clearly +95% of GOP voters are voting against their self interests. This is probably due to other issues like gay marriage, abortion, immigration and foreign policy. But government corruption and big money donors affect them just as much as they affect dems. Liberals need to do a better job of reaching out to the right and showing that this isn’t a partisan issue.
The problem is that the GOP has the hot button scary issues–gay marriage, abortion, immigration, and foreign policy–and the Democrats have issues that evoke a smattering of fear based emotion. A lot of voters are only motivated to vote when they believe that something they fear is on the ballot. All other issues are irrelevant in the face of something that evokes a strongly negative response. Democrats have nothing really to counter that.