Remember this story? In mid-June 2021 — about the same time that the FBI concluded that COVID-19 most likely leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology — Jon Stewart appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to discuss the pandemic, among other issues. Stewart floored the live audience by making the common-sense observation that having a novel virus erupt in the same place where scientists experiment with novel viruses is one hell of a coincidence.

Let’s recall the exchange, as well as Colbert’s reaction — and that of the entire Left:

Asked how he’s feeling about the state of the scientific response to COVID-19, Stewart added, “So, I will say this—and I honestly mean this—I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science. Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science.”

Taken aback, Colbert asked his friend, “Do you mean perhaps there’s a chance that this was created in a lab?” referring to the ongoing investigation into the so-called “lab leak” theory that started as a right-wing conspiracy.

“A chance?” Stewart asked. “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!”

Then, when they asked the scientists who worked in that lab how the pandemic might have started, he joked that their response was, “Uhh, a pangolin kissed a turtle?” or “Maybe a bat flew into the cloaca of a turkey and then it sneezed into my chili and now we all have coronavirus?”

Colbert’s sneering reply, “When did you start working for Ron Johnson?”, was only the start of the backlash against Stewart in the media and among the Left. Despite the fact that the FBI had already reached the same conclusion with “medium confidence” and that the question had also been raised repeatedly by CDC director Robert Redfield before that, the Left went berserk. They accused Stewart of being everything from a Republican to a racist, and mainstream media platforms like the Washington Post tore into Stewart for his observation.

As one can imagine, Stewart is having the last laugh now, but it’s accompanied by no small amount of anger over how he got treated. “Litmus-testing each other for political allegiances” over every little issue is a dead end, intellectually and culturally:

Today @JonStewart talks to some of our staff about the news that the COVID-19 virus may, in fact, have leaked from a lab in China and what it reveals about the problem with the media narrative machine. Full episode drops Wednesday on @ApplePodcasts pic.twitter.com/tsaLUYzIRl

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) February 27, 2023

“The larger problem with all of this is the inability to discuss things that are within the realm of possibility without falling into absolutes and litmus-testing each other for our political allegiances as it arose from that. My bigger problem with that was I thought it was a pretty good bit that expressed kind of how I felt, and the two things that came out of it were I’m racist against Asian people, and how dare I align myself with the alt-right,” he continued.

“The backlash was swift, immediate, and quite loud. And again, I didn’t take that personally either. Like, we live in a world where, like, I have my opinions, I’m not mad at the backlash either because they’re doing what I’m doing, which is expressing myself,” he said.

Stewart then laid out his objections to his critics, who he argued took an all-or-nothing approach to his remarks.

“The part that I don’t like about it is the absolutes and the dismissive like ‘f–k you, I’m done with you. I will never forgive you, you have crossed an unforgivable line. You’ve expressed an opinion that is antithetical to mine, or not mine,'” he said.

I’m less concerned about these reactions among individuals. I have far more concern about these reactions among entire media platforms and government agencies, which clearly colluded to suppress dissent and debate over a clearly possible origin. And why? As I wrote yesterday, the lab-leak origin theory would implicate American officials at the NIH and NIAID who pushed to restart gain-of-function research and who sent money that funded it in China, even while analysts warned of failures to maintain proper Level 4 biosecurity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That’s why the agencies involved — the CDC especially — leveraged the Department of Justice and DHS to suppress the lab-leak theory as a “conspiracy” and “misinformation,” and even “racist” on social-media platforms.

Of course, we have always considered the lab-leak origin theory not only legitimate, but also the most obvious and common-sense explanation all along. We also predicted the efforts to “cancel” Stewart for his attempt to push back on the suppression and censorship of those discussions. For that reason, we’d love to offer Jon Stewart a one-time-only 40% discount for VIP/VIP Gold membership here at Hot Air, which he can claim by clicking this link and using the discount code STEWART! I’m sure he’d be happy to support those who supported him — and allow for independent platforms to push back on the government-media censorship regime.

Of course, if anyone else feels like claiming that discount, well … who’s to know?