Jon Stewart ‘surprised at the pushback’ his comments on the lab-leak theory received

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about his upcoming Apple TV+ show, Stewart touched upon the power of Twitter, as well as his passionate comments with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

"Oh, sure, it's democratized connection and also democratized destruction. It's like everything," said Stewart in regards to the power of Twitter. "Not to quote MC Hammer, but you can't take the measure without considering the measurer.

"It's kind of the point I was making on Colbert that everybody got mad about, which was, 'These are just tools, we're the ones that fuck them up.' So yeah, it's exciting and connecting and incredibly dangerous, like pretty much everything we've ever made," he continued.

"You're referencing your June appearance on The Late Show where you went all-in on the theory that the coronavirus originated from a lab in China. I couldn't tell if Colbert was entertained by your bit or maybe a little nervous," said reporter Lacey Rose.

"I don't think he was nervous. It's not like he doesn't know what I'm going to say," said Stewart. "Listen, how it got to be that if it was a scientific accident, it's conservative, and if it came from a wet market, it's liberal, I don't know — I'm just not sure how that got politicized.

"But it was an inelegant way to get to a bit that I've done for years, which is our good-intentioned brilliance will more than likely be our demise," Stewart added in regards to his June comments. "The bit is about the last words that man ever utters, which are, 'Hey, it worked.' I guess I was a little surprised at the pushback."

Stewart appeared as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in early June, where he went on a dive into the coincidences about the origins of COVID-19.

"I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science," he said. "Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science."

"Do you mean perhaps there's a chance that this was created in a lab?" Colbert asked.

"A chance?" Stewart replied. "Oh my god! 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!"

Stewart also questioned why the theory regarding the COVID-19 virus coming from bats was prominent, noting that Wuhan is not the only place with an abundance of bats.

"It's a local specialty, and it's the only place to find bats," he said. "You won't find bats anywhere else. Oh wait, Austin, Texas has thousands of them that fly out of a cave! Every night! Every night at dusk. Is there an Austin coronavirus? No, there doesn't seem to be an Austin coronavirus. The only coronavirus we have is in Wuhan where they have a lab called...what's the lab called again Stephen?"

"The Wuhan coronavirus lab," Colbert said.

Closely following Stewart's interview with Colbert, Dr. Hotez of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital told TMZ that Stewart's comments were "causing harm" to the scientific community.

"They're [Stewart] putting the entertainment value of this over and above what's reality. And it causes a lot of damage because a number of scientists who work on Coronaviruses including myself feel that we’re being under attack right now [...] The scientific community is open to the idea. But what I object to is the fact that they make it sound like it's fait accompli when in fact it's the less likely hypothesis of how COVID-19 originated, and it's tone-deaf to the collateral damage that it has on scientists and the scientific community," said Hotez.