Late-night host Samanatha Bee claimed in a new Time article about late-night political humorists that former Daily Show host Jon Stewart "worked really hard to try to be nonpartisan," in spite of the show’s reported liberal leanings.
Bee, one of the show’s "correspondents" before departing to host her own show on TBS, said she does not want to hide her views now. Bee’s show, Full Frontal, has won praise from progressives for her screeds about various issues dear to the left.
"Jon worked really hard to try to be nonpartisan," Bee said. "It was important to him. But for me, a fatigue sets in. You just see the same patterns repeating themselves. I don’t care that much about being nonpartisan. Now that I have my own show, I get to say what’s in my heart."
When Trevor Noah took over the Daily Show anchor chair in 2015, he told the Associated Press that he and Stewart were both "progressives." Stewart’s partisan lines of attack were almost always directed at Republicans and conservative media hosts, to go along with his full-throated defenses of the Obama administration.
Stewart reacted defensively on his show to the idea that he carried water for Obama, so the Washington Free Beacon provided a helpful montage of him doing just that.
When he departed the show in 2015, liberal media personalities universally mourned, and he even got farewell tweets from President Obama and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
"You've been a great gift to the country." —President Obama to Jon Stewart on @TheDailyShow #JonVoyage pic.twitter.com/ku6QZx2nE1
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 6, 2015
Jon Stewart's last day on @TheDailyShow is the end of an era. Thank you, Jon. #jonvoyage pic.twitter.com/mWURTnLvfp
— DCCC (@dccc) August 6, 2015
The Time article delved into the increasingly left-leaning slant of late-night satirists and comedy hosts, who, to varying degrees, oppose the candidacy of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.