Jon Stewart knows someone who would do a better job running CNN and CBS News than Bari Weiss.
The host shared his thoughts on the Wednesday episode of his Weekly Show podcast after a fan asked whether he could run the entities, given his experience with The Daily Show.
“Oh, sure,” he said, “Look, how they’re run. I mean, I certainly couldn’t do any worse.”
He added, “I could reduce their viewership to under four million people a night. I could f---ing do that, easy. No problem. You have me in there. I’ll have them down to three, I think. I think that’s what they’re going for.”
Since Weiss was appointed head of CBS News in October and installed MAGA-coded news anchor Tony Dokoupil as the face of CBS Evening News, she’s overseen significant drops in viewership for the program. The nightly news show has consistently drawn fewer than four million viewers—a critical marker as it competes against rivals NBC and ABC, which regularly draw six to eight million viewers a night. As Weiss lays low during the fallout of the bloodbath firings at 60 Minutes, Stewart joked he’d be happy to step in.
“This is a euthanasia that’s being done to CBS News,” he said. “It is. They brought in Bari Weiss with a giant pillow to just be like, ‘I think I can smother this f---ing thing. Let me get it down to the smallest, and then we can get it small enough to throw out the window.’”
His comments echo those of fired CBS News and 60 Minutes veteran of nearly 40 years Scott Pelley, who was fired after he said that Weiss was “murdering 60 Minutes,” according to the Guardian. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that,” he added.
Now that Trump buddy David Ellison’s Skydance Paramount will soon acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, and with it CNN, Weiss is poised to oversee the network’s editorial operations. CNN would be harder to ruin, Stewart said, “because it’s 24 hours.”
“CBS News, it was 22 minutes, and half of it’s just what the f---ing, whatever viral video they found on YouTube about a crime.” When his producers pointed out that the job would likely require him to work more than one day a week as he does for his Monday stints on The Daily Show, Stewart joked, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Obviously, if you wanna improve it, that’s gonna be at least two days a week,” he quipped. But he’s still open to it, he concluded, after he was asked again if this was his official pitch for the gig. “Submit it, put it right on Monster.com or Indeed, whatever it is.”
