Braxton Taylor
ATLANTA — In 2003, Jon Stewart was walking a fine line. He was an outspoken critic of the Iraq War at a time when questioning the Global War on Terrorism was widely considered akin to surrendering to al-Qaida. For the comedian who would eventually become “the most trusted newsman in America,” it was important to get all the facts straight, especially when it came to how the war affected those who fought it. To find out, he sought out and visited wounded veterans, those who carried the scars of the conflict in their very flesh.
“I operate a small, artisanal sh*t talkerie,” Stewart told a crowd of veterans gathered in Atlanta for the 2024 Military Influencer Conference. “We talk a lot of sh*t at ‘The Daily Show’ and I was talking about the Iraq War, but I wanted to get a sense of if I knew in any way what I was talking about … so I started going down and visiting the people at Walter Reed.”
Stewart would bring DVD copies of the hit series “Chappelle’s Show” to wounded and recovering service members at Walter Reed Army Medical Center because, he believed, they weren’t interested in “The Daily Show.” He went room to room, visiting anyone who would see him.
“Anybody who has done those kinds of walk-throughs, you become very invested in these incredible people,” he recalled. “You start to learn about the value of the human capital within the military, that it’s not about the hardware or the strategy; it’s about the people.”
Stewart also recalled when he got to see the U.S. military in action alongside American first responders while he was living in lower Manhattan during the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. He experienced the horror of that day in a “more visceral way,” describing the disorienting feeling of the terror attacks as though the world underneath him was “built on quicksand.”
“I remember distinctly that lower Manhattan was cut off from not just the rest of the city, but the rest of the world,” he said. “The one thing down there that made us feel kind of still connected were the first responders, the volunteers, the military that were down there. So I had already established this idea of the importance in a very personal and visceral way of the people that run towards trouble, whether it be military or first responders. So I felt very invested in that community.”
That investment has only grown in the years that followed. Stewart works with and supports veteran nonprofits like TAPS, Fisher House Foundation and the USO. He was critical in pushing Congress to pass the 2010 James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act that provided for health-care services and monitoring to 9/11 first responders. He was also on the forefront of passing the Honoring our PACT Act of 2022 that provided health care and compensation for veterans of all eras exposed to toxic substances. Today, Stewart is pushing for the expansion of the PACT Act to include U.S. special operations forces based in Uzbekistan and exposed to uranium.
“The average wait time for these kinds of things in Congress is almost 30 years,” he said. “I think, and you see it with Vietnam veterans who are still waiting on certain benefits from Agent Orange exposure; the lag time between the toxic exposure that veterans face versus the government’s responsiveness to it is a lifetime for many people. It is unconscionable.
“We have to change not just the way that you have to advocate for yourself to go through that system,” he continued, “but the way we send people to war and what we understand the effects of war to be. We’ve done better with TBI [traumatic brain injuries]. We’ve done better with PTSD. Toxic exposure is an IED [improvised explosive device] that goes off in your body three years later, five years later, eight years later. And we have to be better at understanding that.”
Stewart describes Congress as “in many ways, an assisted living facility” when discussing the problem of passing legislation. It’s not only the process of moving legislation that can be slow; the senators and representatives themselves are slow. He listed the PACT Act’s strongest allies in the Senate, a bipartisan list that includes Democrat Jon Tester of Montana and Republican Jerry Moran of Kansas.
“Boy, the battle that needed to be waged to get this just incredibly common sense, lowest hanging fruit of any legislative action done was incredible,” Stewart said. “There’s actually a video of Ted Cruz, [Pat] Toomey of Pennsylvania and [Josh] Hawley high-fiving and fist-bumping the sabotage of health care for two to three million veterans.
“It is appalling, and it’s what set off that weeklong firewatch on the steps of Congress. It set off those angry diatribes on the cameras,” he added. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a ton of skills. The only skill I really have is to be a giant pain in the ass.”
Stewart went on to explain how he got involved with the PACT Act, how different veteran service organizations helped craft the legislation and the “in-your-face lobbying” required to get it through Congress. The most important aspect of passing any major effort for the veteran community, he explained, was working together, staying focused and not allowing Washington special interests to divide the group. He went on to describe how those Walter Reed visits in the early 2000s impacted his own life and, ultimately, his advocacy for them.
“Anybody that signs up for this type of sacrifice, whether it’s helping the transportation chain or working in the kitchen or any of those things, you’ve disrupted your life in service of a larger goal,” Stewart said. “That oath must be honored. We must be a tiny part of making sure that the country doesn’t forget about that when your service ends, because our service to you should never end. And that’s the thing that I think we have to value.”
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