CNN’s Carol Costello broke Thursday with the chorus of media personalities calling for the return of left-wing funnyman and former “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, and took a shot at him instead for the way he used to mock her and her network.
“Everybody says ‘Oh, no publicity is bad publicity.’ But frankly, I’ll just be honest with you, [his criticism] did bug me,” she said in a SiriusXM interview.
Stewart routinely mocked CNN’s coverage during his time as the host of the “Daily Show.”
More recently, he accused CNN of not doing a good enough job of going after Republicans and the presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. In his mind, the cable news network plays it too much down the middle.
“Fox has found a way to work their ideology into the business model, which I think is, you know, having your cake and eating it, too. CNN doesn’t have an ideology other than narrating the news as it happens outside without knowing why,” he said in an interview with CNN contributor David Axelrod. “MSNBC would like to have the clarity of their ideology mesh with making money, but, so far that hasn’t just worked out.”
Stewart added, “News isn’t just another — in the same way that I view healthcare — it’s just not another commodity that is placed on your cable box. And I think the concerted effort has to be is to remove it from that system.”
After that, Costello said Thursday she doesn’t miss the former “Daily Show” host one bit.
“You know … he cherry-picks, right?” she said. “It’s easy to cherry-pick and you slam somebody and it’s great. And sometimes we deserve it and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes I deserve it, but oftentimes I really don’t.”
“I will say this about Jon Stewart. He doesn’t go to congressional hearings and sit through them for five hours like our correspondents do,” she added. “He doesn’t do that. He just takes our work and makes fun of it. So sometimes I find myself saying ‘Screw you, Jon Stewart.'”
