Controversial 2024 Interview: Guest Exposes Shocking Behavior of Jon Stewart

A Harvard professor with a prestigious background as a chief economic advisor to former President Barack Obama has described his interview with Jon Stewart as the “single worst interview” of his career.

Jason Furman, who is a renowned Aetna Professor of Economic Policy at Harvard, expressed his dissatisfaction with the 2024 conversation with Stewart in a social media post on X this Tuesday.

“I usually strive to remain composed and rational, but I completely lost my cool with him,” Furman, 55, revealed candidly.

He added, “I fear I may have alienated viewers and listeners, potentially reinforcing the stereotype that economists are more obnoxious than insightful.”

Reflecting on the hour-long interview, Furman admitted he left feeling “very frustrated with [Stewart]” and fellow guest Kitty Richards, while also being disappointed in his own performance during the discussion.

‘No good faith. No attempt to listen and learn. No humility,’ he added of Stewart’s behavior during the appearance.

The conversation on the September 19, 2024, ‘Weekly Show’ had surrounded the effects of raising and lowering interest rates during periods of inflation.

Stewart and Richards, a former Joe Biden Treasury official, both framed a then-recent rate cut from the Federal Reserve as a problem – accusing the government of pumping cash into the economy until working people got a taste. The cut occurred after an impressive jobs report.

Jason Furman, an Aetna professor of economic policy at the Ivy League university, slammed a 2024 sit-down he did with comic Jon Stewart as ‘the single worst interview I’ve ever done’ in a Tuesday post to X

He sat with Stewart for an hourlong conversation on the September 19, 2024’s ‘Weekly Show’

A confused Furman disagreed, pointing out how such cuts lower borrowing costs for Americans’ mortgages, credit cards, and auto loans. 

Stewart, however, called for a more ‘complex’ solution to inflation. He coitized Furman and other economists for framing pandemic-era stimulus packages as one of the main causes.

‘You can suggest that a little bit more money being injected into consumers just drives inflation, but we inject money into corporations all the time. 

‘But the $1trillion that went directly to consumers is the problem?’ Stewart said, referring to $800billion handed out to businesses during the pandemic by the Trump administration.

‘I guess I don’t know why you’re so upset about the Fed when they basically might just have gotten us to a soft landing,’ Furman asked.

Weeks before, the economist told the Washington Post that he feared a Kamala Harris win would bring ‘bigger shortages, less supply and ultimately risk higher prices and worse outcomes for consumers’.   

‘I’m upset, that when we look at the inefficiencies of supply-side stimulus, subsidies to corporations, billions that go out to them, that they flip, you know – corporate tax rates that get cut – and they flip that and they do buybacks,’ Stewart shot back, accusing the central bank of engaging in a ‘shell game’.

The economist recalled how the interview left him ‘very frustrated with [Stewart]’

Stewart and wife Tracey McShane attend the 23rd Annual Mark Twain Prize For American Humor at The Kennedy Center in April 2022

‘And they don’t efficiently pass whatever savings they’re getting on that or whatever profits they’re getting onto their workers. 

‘[They think] that we’re fine with that, that that goes on, that that never creates a problem in the economy.’

‘But as soon as consumers or as soon as labor start to get on top of things, the Fed pulls the plug on the economy and slows that down. That’s what I’m upset about.’

Furman said that corporate taxes had little to do with inflation.

The two continued to disagree for most of the interview.

The Fed raised rates 11 times between March 2022 and July 2023 to a 23-year high of 5.25 percent to 5.50 percent to combat inflation cause by the pandemic and cool economic activity.

Since then, it has carried out a series of cuts meant to jumpstart the economy.

The Fed maintained interest rates at 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent last month after three consecutive cuts in late 2025. Experts have predicted one to three additional cuts later this year – thought to be a cautious approach to curbing inflation.