Stephen Colbert declared “I am proud to say that we are the first show back up on Broadway.” This came as The Late Show returned to the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York City with a studio audience for the first time in 460 days. There were 420 people filling the seats, all vaccinated. There was no mask requirement, so most people were unmasked. Colbert joked that it felt like the first day of school. The New York Times writes:
The return to the stage of late night’s highest-rated host was one of the clearest signs yet, in television and in New York cultural life, that things were starting to get back to normal.
During an interview in his office last week, Mr. Colbert sounded eager to get back in the spotlight. “I’m like a dog who’s got his head out the window and can smell that we’re near the farm,” he said. “I’m ready to be out of the cage.”
Colbert’s first guest was his old boss and friend, Jon Stewart. The former host of the Daily Show created a bit of controversy during his appearance as he seemed pretty confident that COVID-19 was created in a lab in Wuhan. Here’s part of what he said:
“I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science. Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science… There’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China, what do we do? Oh, you know, who we could ask? The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab. The disease is the same name as the lab! That’s just a little too weird!”
Yahoo writes:
Chinese authorities have long rejected the lab leak theory, standing by the claim that the coronavirus came from bats. But Stewart isn’t buying it.
“There’s a coronavirus loose in Wuhan, how did that happen?” Stewart asked. “Maybe a bat flew into the cloaca of a Turkey and then it sneezed into my chili and now we all have coronavirus. Like, come on.”
Colbert followed up by asking, “and how long have you worked for Senator Ron Johnson?” Stewart fired back, “This is not a conspiracy.. but this is the problem with science. Science is incredible, but they don’t know when to stop and nobody in the room with those cats goes ‘I don’t know if we should do that.’”
Now people on both sides of the aisle are reacting to Stewart’s remarks.
I just watched it, and see the joke. But it is at the expense of people who know a LOT about this kind of thing working really hard to figure out where the virus DID come from. The "well it must be" narrative isn't science.
— Dr. Kiki Sanford (@drkiki) June 15, 2021
@jonstewart Kind of disappointed in you for the Lab Leak stuff. Not because it’s impossible – it clearly isn’t. But because stating something as obvious without evidence that has such profound consequences is irresponsible. I thought better of you.
— Tom Coates (@tomcoates) June 15, 2021
Stephen Colbert was hilariously uncomfortable that one of his heroes, Jon Stewart, came on his first show back in-studio to essentially endorse the lab leak theory. Six months ago he'd have to condemn Stewart as a right-wing xenophobic conspiracy theorist https://t.co/96DOh9BHRz
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 15, 2021
This is hysterical from Jon Stewart. But until a month ago Facebook would have blocked this from being distributed: pic.twitter.com/DnVcwMbytt
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 15, 2021
Watch more of the segment with Stewart above.