Jon Stewart defends comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's jokes at MAGA MSG rally—roasts Kamala for Beyonce's not concert in Houston

One-time free speech advocate turned progressive shill Jon Stewart has returned to his roots and come to the defense of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who came under fire for a joke he told at Donald Trump's massive MAGA rally at Madison Square Garden.  "It is absolutely wild times, it really really is," Hinchcliffe joked. "And you know, there's a lot going on. Like I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it's called Puerto Rico."

Stewart played several clips from news shows slamming Hinchcliffe for joking that there's an island of trash in the ocean and that it's called Puerto Rico. The joke didn't land at the rally, which had plenty of Latinos in attendance, a bunch of whom were probably from Puerto Rico, given that there's a large Puerto Rican population in New York. It didn't matter to the news hosts that Puerto Rico has been suffering a huge trash and landfill problem for years, instead what mattered was that they could use the joke to call all Trump and his supporters racist. For Stewart, who spoke about the incident on the Daily Show Monday, it was all just pretty funny. 

"Now, obviously, in retrospect, having a roast comedian come to a political rally a week before Election Day and roasting a key voting demographic probably not the best decision by the campaign politically," Stewart said.

"But to be fair, the guy's really just doing what he does," he went on, before playing a series of clips of Hinchcliffe roasting pretty much everyone. "I mean, here he is at the Tom Brady roast a few months ago." The clips show Hinchcliffe roasting Jeff Rocks for being Jewish, Kevin Hart for being black, and in the background, Stewart is just laughing. He likes the guy.

"Yes, yes, of course, terrible, boo, yes," Stewart says laughing through a smile. "There's something wrong with me. I find that guy very funny. So, I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you. I mean bringing him to a rally and have him not do roast jokes, that'd be like bringing Beyonce to a rally and not—Oh."

Kamala Harris held a rally in Houston, Texas, Beyonce's hometown. The campaign had widely advertised her appearance. Everyone who showed up thought Beyonce would perform, after all, she is one of the top singers in the entire world. Instead, she gave a short speech about how important abortion is and how she's planning to vote for Kamala because Kamala also supports the creation of a federal abortion legalization bill. But she did not sing.

Kamala's campaign was the first to attack Hinchcliffe on social media for making that joke and others jumped aboard the cancel train to declare that Hinchcliffe was the worst guy ever and that Trump is, therefore, a Nazi. MSNBC showed clips of the rally at MSG and compared it to a Nazi rally that happened at a previous Madison Square Garden in 1939 with the explicit motive of equating Trump to Hitler. They left out the many rallies that have happened there in the interim, from FDR to Bill Clinton to the Democratic National Convention.