With Jon Stewart at the helm, “The Daily Show” had a strong track record of taking solid swings at the hypocrisy of the government. But a new Politico story reveals just how much the government was listening. On two separate occasions, the Obama White House invited Stewart in for private meetings with the president to discuss policy. Once, in 2011, he went there to discuss budget difficulties, and then he returned again, in 2014, to discuss what was happening with Russia and Ukraine. Politico spoke to politicians on both sides of the aisle to discuss Stewart’s influence over the years, with both indicating that he got in his share of hits on them,though some, of course, claimed not to care: Senator James Inhofe said, “I’ve never seen him.” Do we believe him? Obama adviser David Axelrod even goes so far as to acknowledge Stewart’s influence, saying,“I can’t say that because Jon Stewart was unhappy policy changed. But I can say that he had forceful arguments, they were arguments that we knew would be heard and deserved to be answered.” It’s not too late for him to unretire, is it?
Jon Stewart made secret visits to the White House to speak with President Obama
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