Back in June, the month before Stephen Colbert would find out that The Late Show would be cancelled by CBS, Colbert sat down with New York City mayoral candidates Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander. Both men were running in the Democratic primary, and had established a pretty unique alliance by cross-endorsing each other.
Colbert was heavily criticized for the conversation, which seemed to focus more on Mamdani’s opinions on geopolitics rather than the more immediate and relevant matters of his policy plans for New York City. If you go look in the YouTube comment section, you can see that there was ample and immediate negative feedback for how Colbert conducted the interview.
Just last week, it was also revealed that Colbert’s team had proposed playing a “thumbs-up-thumbs-down” game about the Middle East during the show. Excessively inappropriate to play under any circumstances, but especially for a Muslim candidate already being faced with excessive Islamophobia from opponents and the media. All of the empathy that Colbert has long been known for seemed to evaporate for this mayoral hopeful, and it led to an interview that was neither challenging nor interesting.
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When Mamdani went on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Monday night as the winner of the Democratic primary, things were substantially different. Stewart in no way went easy on Mamdani, but he took the young candidate seriously in a way Colbert clearly had not.
It made for the kind of TV that justifies the existence of late night. The 21-minute segment had the benefit of being longer than Colbert’s segment with two candidates, so if you’re in the business of wanting to grant grace, Stewart did have that advantage. (Though a later extended interview released on YouTube was also 21-minutes, and wasn’t any better.)
Stewart was also sitting down with a proven winner, someone New Yorkers came out in droves to support and who has been endorsed by some of the biggest progressive names in the Democratic Party. When Colbert interviewed him, Mamdani was less than 24 hours from winning the primary.
It’s dangerous to judge anything just by the comment section, but if you look at both the Stewart interview and the Colbert interview comment sections as temperature checks, there’s a stark difference in viewer response on YouTube. Again, the top comments on the Colbert video were rife with disappointment in how the interview turned out. But for Stewart’s interview, these were some of the top comments:
- “Never would have thought I’d care this much about a mayoral race on the other side of the country.”
- “How dare you. How dare you open my blackened, withered heart and make me feel hope again.”
- “I don’t smile much in these dark days but I found myself smiling listening to this.”
- “I hope Jon knows how much of a difference he made on millennials growing up and watching him every night. Glad he shared his platform with Zohran, someone who is fighting for the same values, policy, and integrity Jon has covered throughout the years.”
It’s worth repeating that Stewart didn’t let Mamdani just talk unchallenged for the length of the conversation. He asked about the expectation he was going to have to live up to; pointed out that his supporters now would be his biggest detractors if he failed on key campaign promises; and challenged him on what his definition of public safety would actually be.
There were also funny moments, but blessedly, no games were played. It was an exchange that respected the gravity of the situation and the intelligence of viewers. It didn’t lean away from the political. It was a great performance, and other people making late-night television should take note.
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