“I actually think that he needs them more than they need him,” said Stewart when asked by his producer Brittany Mehmedovic if the press pool should ignore Trump “instead of running after him” like his devoted aide Natalie Harp.
He continued, “[I think] that the access to Trump is nothing because the system has been designed to his advantage. You can’t ask follow-ups, you can’t do anything. It’s just designed for his own personal performance. So it really serves no purpose in terms of public value. It’s just another platform for him to spew.”
Stewart went on to argue that the reason the press corps likes covering Trump is because it’s a “content factory.”
“But as far as transparency, it’s not transparency. It’s — as my friend, Mr. Bill O’Reilly would say — a pettifog machine. It’s pettifoggery,” said the comedian, referring to the ex-Fox News host’s remarks during one of their famous debates.
“And it’s all nonsense.”
Stewart added that the press pool ignoring Trump and his lies would “deny him the thing that he craves the most”: to be the center of the universe.