Jon Stewart and Tucker Carlson have clashed as much as any two ideologically opposed television personalities in their careers. But on whether the U.S. should wade into the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran, the two men have found themselves agreeing.
“It’s such a bizarro world,” Stewart said Thursday. “You’ve got me nodding my head to Tucker Carlson videos.”
“The Daily Show” host opened his podcast with an allusion to Carlson’s interview this week with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). During the conversation, Carlson laid into the Texas Republican for his calls for regime change in Iran, which has been targeted by Israeli strikes against its nuclear and military infrastructure.
“You’re a senator who’s calling for an overthrow of the government, and you don’t know anything about the country,” Carlson exclaimed in response to Cruz’s difficulty answering a question about the population of Iran. Cruz called the line of questioning “snide.”
The two men had several other testy exchanges during their hours-long conversation, including over Cruz’s support for Israel as it and Iran exchange tit-for-tat strikes.
In the introduction to this week’s episode of “The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart” podcast, which featured CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and former President Obama adviser Ben Rhodes for a discussion on the conflict, Stewart was beside himself.
“You’ve got Tucker Carlson going, ‘Why are we going to war with Iran, again,’ and I’m like, ‘You tell him, brother,'” he said, laughing. “That’s how f‑‑‑ing upside-down we find ourselves in this moment.”
Carlson, a noted isolationist, has rarely been aligned with Stewart on foreign policy. The two men clashed in February after Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin, a move that Stewart slammed on his show as uncritical and sycophantic.
In turn, Carlson later shot back that Stewart was “a tool of the regime in the most sinister way.”
Recently, the former Fox News anchor has been outspoken about his opposition to President Trump’s handling of the Middle Eastern conflict. In response, Trump took a swipe at Carlson, calling him “kooky” and questioning his perspective.
