Jon Stewart Defends Tony Hinchcliffe: ‘The Guy’s Just Really Doing What He Does’

While other comedians raced to kick Tony Hinchcliffe in the crotch after his hate-filled, racist “stand-up routine” at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden, at least one of his comedy brothers is standing up for him. 

Well, sort of. 

On last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart laughed at the hand-wringing by news pundits, assembling a montage of talking heads decrying Hinchcliffe’s remarks as “unfunny, racist, cringeworthy jokes,” “the most repulsive racial jokes about Latinos,” “disgusting and hateful,” “so incredibly crude,” “frankly, just too X-rated to play here” and “extremely vile so-called jokes.” 

Stewart didn’t exactly disagree with the assessment, but asked a pertinent question: Just what did people expect?

“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.”

To prove his point, Stewart played a clip from Hinchcliffe’s recent appearance on the Tom Brady roast when the comic similarly offended — albeit in an environment that encourages such slurs. A few choice one-liners:

• “Jeff (Ross) is so Jewish, he only watches football for the coin toss.”
• “Gronk, you look like the Nazi that kept burning himself on the ovens.”
• “Kevin (Hart) is so small that when his ancestors picked cotton, they called it deadlifting.”

Stewart snickered coming out of the clips. “Yes, yes, of course,” he admitted. “Terrible. Boo. There’s something wrong with me. I find that guy very funny. So I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.”

It’s not clear exactly why Stewart finds jokes about concentration camps and slavery so hilarious, but he’s trying to make a larger point: The problem wasn’t Hinchcliffe. Tony Hinchcliffe has shown everyone who he is on blockbusters like the Brady Roast and his popular roast-centric podcast Kill Tony. If you want to get mad at someone, shake your fists at whoever booked an insult comic in the first place. It’s like being angry at a hungry dog after you let it loose in a butcher shop. “Bringing him to a rally and having him not do roast jokes? That would be like bringing Beyoncé to a rally and not… oh.” (She didn’t sing at a Kamala Harris rally. Get it?)

With all the rotting tomatoes being thrown his way, what does Hinchcliffe get out of all the uproar? Exactly this — a stand-up comic who most people outside of a very specific cultural circle never heard of before this weekend has become a household name, if only for this week. If any publicity is good publicity, then Hinchcliffe knocked it out of the park. 

Which is why it must have stung that Stewart never mentioned Hinchcliffe by name.