Jon Stewart Explains Why The Daily Show Canceled Its Milwaukee Shows

The Daily Show viewers have been in the dark about the exact details behind the Comedy Central series’ seemingly abrupt decision to cancel its week of live shows from the RNC in Milwaukee. While the show itself went dark on Monday, Jon Stewart was in the host’s chair on Tuesday to explain how it all went down. 

After greeting the crowd with a pretty universal statement—”What a terrible f*cking week!”—Stewart went on to explain the circumstances surrounding what went wrong with the team’s plans to be covering the Republican National Convention from on the ground in Milwaukee

“Obviously, we were supposed to be doing our shows from Milwaukee for the RNC this week,” the host explained. “But because of the attempt on the former president’s life… the venue in which we had planned to do this show, a theater, which was originally located in the ‘soft perimeter,’ as they called it, security-wise, was shifted—understandably so—to the ‘hard perimeter.’ 

“You really don’t want to be in the hard perimeter,” Stewart joked.

The Daily Show had planned to broadcast live from the Marcus Performing Arts Center, which is located less than a half-mile from Fiserv Forum, the arena in which the RNC is taking place. 

As a result, Stewart explained that their own venue “was locked down. They built cages around the theater. And because of that, we felt that we could not logistically put on the theater shows effectively—without people.”

Stewart did go on to praise the city of Milwaukee and its mayor, Cavalier Johnson, who he said were extremely accommodating and “gracious to us.” But he saved “the biggest slice of praise” for The Daily Show’s own production team and crew. “They turned this ocean liner around on a dime,” Stewart said. 

Finally, Stewart expressed hope that The Daily Show will be able to return to Milwaukee in the near future to make up some of the events they had to cancel—especially their InDogCision event, which Stewart explained is an initiative where “We get dogs adopted and people registered to vote. Or it’s the other way around. I don’t really remember.”

The Daily Show is going ahead with its planned live show on Thursday night, which will now be hosted by Jordan Klepper.

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