Jon Stewart hit out at Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary over his remarks about Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud case.
Trump was ordered to pay $464 million on Monday, after Justice Arthur Engoron concluded that the former president had inflated the value of his assets to land bank loans and secure business deals.
“You might be saying to yourself, well, that sounds pretty straightforward. Whatever gains you got from lying, you have to pay back,” Stewart said in the latest episode of The Daily Show.
Michael Loccisano/John Lamparski/Getty Images Entertainment
“Well, that’s because you’re a f****** idiot,” the 61-year-old joked, before jumping into media coverage of the trial.
In a recent interview with CNN, O’Leary said the ruling “didn’t go over well with the investment community.”
“We’re all asking each other, who’s next?” the Canadian businessman said.
“Ah, who’s next? The persecuted minority of the investment community,” Stewart quipped in response to the clip, describing O’Leary as “such an a******, even the other people on Shark Tank think he’s an a******.”
Newsweek has reached out to Jon Stewart and Kevin O’Leary for comment via email.
O’Leary joined the reality show in 2009, sizing up entrepreneurs before deciding whether to invest in their business. The 69-year-old is known for his brutal assassinations of contestants, regardless of their back story.
The comedian said he was “surprised” to hear O’Leary defend the inflation of business assets, due to his previous comments on Shark Tank.
Stewart cut to a montage of O’Leary slamming entrepreneurs on the reality series, accusing them of over-valuing their business ideas.
“Which one of you do I tear to pieces now on a $28 million valuation?” he tells two hopefuls in one clip.
In another, he asks a contender: “You think this is worth $10 million?”
“Absolutely,” the man replies, to which O’Leary says: “Now I’m going to rip you to pieces, are you out of your mind?”
In other snippers, the business mogul calls entrepreneurs’ estimates: “Insane,” “crazy” and “stinky poo poo.”
At the latter, Stewart joked: “Canadians are so vulgar,” before asking “How is he not this mad about overvaluations in the real world?”
“They are not victimless crimes,” he continued. “First the banks got paid back at lower interest rates. Second, money isn’t infinite, a loan that goes to the liar doesn’t go to someone who’s giving a more honest evaluation.
“The system becomes incentivized for corruption.”
Wrapping up the segment, Stewart shared another clip of O’Leary’s CNN interview, in which he claims the charges against Trump are “done by every real estate developer everywhere on Earth.”
“This has never, ever been prosecuted,” O’Leary said, causing The Daily Show audience to loudly boo.
Stewart compared O’Leary’s logic to 2013 horror movie The Purge, in which all offenses are decriminalized for 12-hours annually.
“There is a theory in law that if enough people commit a crime, it automatically becomes legal,” he said.
“The f****** entitled arrogance. I don’t know if you know this, but most people can’t commit fraud and expect to face no repercussions, even if everyone is doing it.”
Stewart returned to The Daily Show in February, after originally hosting the late-night talk show from 1999 to 2015. The comedian back to cover the run up to November’s general election, regularly skewering both Trump and Joe Biden.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.