Jon Stewart devoted his entire opening monologue to mocking the way Trump signed a bill that could save thousands of veterans' lives.
Stewart attacked the way he signed the bill.
And that tells you everything you need to know about where these two men's priorities actually are.
What Stewart Mocked While Veterans Were Dying
On the April 20 episode of The Daily Show, Stewart played footage of Trump signing the executive order and built his entire opening monologue around the signature.
He joked that Trump couldn't pronounce ibogaine.
He suggested Trump might already be on hallucinogenics – did you know I'm Jesus – and riffed on the "weird" way the president held the pen.
He acknowledged – buried in the middle of the routine – that the bill was "a good thing."
Then kept mocking it for another three minutes.
This is the same Jon Stewart who spent years lecturing America that the media wasn't taking veteran suicide seriously enough.
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He did entire segments on it.
He got emotional on camera.
He championed the PACT Act for burn pit veterans and took personal credit for pressuring Congress to move.
And when Trump signed an executive order that could genuinely save thousands of veterans' lives using breakthrough science, Stewart's response was: that signature is hilarious.
What the Bill Actually Does
The executive order Trump signed on April 20 directs the FDA to fast-track approval of ibogaine – a psychedelic compound derived from an African plant – for veterans suffering from PTSD, addiction, and other psychiatric conditions.
The need is catastrophic and has been for decades.
More than 6,000 veterans die by suicide every year in America.
The VA's existing options – antidepressants, talk therapy, exposure protocols – leave a massive portion of those veterans behind.
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Ibogaine has shown results where conventional medicine has failed completely.
A 2023 Stanford study found that a single ibogaine treatment reduced PTSD symptoms by 88 percent and depression scores by 87 percent in veterans – numbers no existing FDA-approved treatment comes close to matching.
These aren't fringe findings.
They've been sitting on the shelf because the FDA's standard approval timeline moves at the pace of peacetime bureaucracy while veterans are dying at the pace of a war.
Trump signed an executive order to close that gap.
The Reason It Took This Long
The ibogaine research didn't come from the VA.
It didn't come from Congress.
It came from veterans themselves – men like retired Army Special Forces operator Jesse Gould, who founded the Heroic Hearts Project after ibogaine treatment saved his own life following years of failed conventional therapies.
Stanford's 2023 study was funded privately and conducted in Mexico – where ibogaine is legal – because the FDA approval pathway in the United States was too slow and too expensive to navigate without a major pharmaceutical company behind it.
Here's why no pharmaceutical company pushed it: ibogaine works in one or two treatments, not a daily prescription.
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The entire reason this breakthrough sat on the shelf for years while veterans killed themselves is that it doesn't make business sense for the people who fund drug approvals.
Trump's executive order directs the FDA to create an accelerated pathway specifically for this compound and this population – bypassing the commercial incentive problem entirely.
That's what Stewart's writers could have spent the monologue explaining to their audience.
They chose the signature bit.
Jon Stewart told veterans their president's pen grip was funnier than their survival.
Sources:
- Alyssa Norwin, "Jon Stewart Mocks Trump's 'Weird' Bill Signing and Jokes He May Be on Psychedelics," Hollywood Life, April 21, 2026.
- Nolan Williams et al., "Therapeutic Use of Ibogaine in US Special Operations Veterans," Nature Medicine, February 2023.
- Heroic Hearts Project, Mission and Research Overview, HeroicHeartsProject.org.
