As a highly successful comedian, actor, best-selling author and famed late-night show host, Jon Stewart could have used his immensely far-reaching platform for anything. He chose the frontline warriors of America, and it’s his role as a tireless advocate that we here at WATM admire the most.
“My family was very much the ultimate immigrant story, and there was always this sense of what America had allowed them to achieve. My grandfather drove a taxi and my other grandfather ran a dry cleaners,” he shared.
At the turn of the 20th century, Stewart’s Jewish grandparents immigrated to the United States from Europe and a Jewish community in what is now part of China. Stewart recalled how service was always part of life.
“It seemed like everyone around me had served in World War II or in Korea. My parents had just gotten married when the Army sent them to Fort Bliss in El Paso to serve during the Korean War. They were two New York kids who couldn’t even drive, and it had to have been a culture shock,” he laughed.
His parents divorced when he was just 11 years old. Born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, Stewart has been outspoken in interviews over the years about his complicated relationship with his father and his decision to change his last name.
Growing up in New York and New Jersey, Stewart had a longstanding reputation for being funny. In earlier interviews, his mother recalled being concerned about his choice to pursue comedy after graduating from college. He started hitting the New York City comedy circuit in the late 1980s, and by 1993 he developed and hosted The Jon Stewart Show for MTV for two years. He had numerous big-screen appearances throughout the 1990s, but in 1998, when The Daily Show hit Comedy Central, Stewart was officially a household name.
Though he recalled always having a deep appreciation for those in uniform, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 would amplify it to a new level.
“Living in New York City and downtown at the time, watching the residents, first responders and volunteers respond to such a catastrophe with such courage, grace and tenacity was indescribable. Their presence stabilized not just the city but really the whole country. It felt almost like there was this vertigo, but they righted it,” he explained. “Then, years later, to know that they were all struggling, it didn’t sit well. In 2002 and 2003, I was not a big fan of the Iraq War. In fact, I know I talked a lot of trash about it. But I wanted to talk to people who’d been there, so I started to go down to Walter Reed Medical Center in 2003. I was familiar with the fire and police work, but it was that experience that also informed me about the military community.”
Stewart began touring with the USO to Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as visiting the wounded troops healing from GWOT war injuries. He recalled visiting one gentleman at Walter Reed Medical Center and how hilarious he was, so they became friendly.
Later, he watched him be awarded the Medal of Honor.
“It was familiarizing myself with the power of human capital that made me really respect what this country is sacrificing when they don’t treat that human capital for the gift that it is. When I started seeing 9/11 first responders were getting sick or veterans being exposed to burn pits, it made me angrier about governmental decisions because it made me realize those decisions were even more grave than I had anticipated,” he shared.
That anger translated to criticism of America’s leaders and began his path to advocacy on The Daily Show. In 2009, he spoke against a White House plan to drop veterans from VA coverage if they also had private health insurance; the plan was nixed the next day. But the real work began when he joined the ongoing fight for the first responders left behind, sick and dying.
“Right after 9/11, the EPA came in and said everything is air safe because they wanted to get Wall Street back open again. Now these guys were all down on the piles for months-on-end, either searching for their brothers and sisters or clearing the area and bringing remains,” Stewart said. “It was the aerosolized remains of everyone and everything that had collapsed. Breathing that in long-term can quite literally bring some real issues, but in this case, the state was denying it.”
When first responders began seeking treatment for breathing illnesses, they were denied and brushed aside. As the science became indisputable, the state and federal government began their own fight over who’s fiscally responsible for those left sick, without treatment and mounting debt.
The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act was named in honor of a NYC police officer whose death was linked to exposure while working at Ground Zero, though the state initially tried to say it was drug use when he sought care and compensation.
“When he finally passed and they did an autopsy, they looked at his lungs. It basically read like the ingredient list of a building—from mercury to asbestos to human remains to whatever else he breathed in down there,” Stewart said. “Congress, in their ever-loving wisdom, was about to recess for Christmas, and we knew if we didn’t get this bill passed before they left, we were done; we had this one shot. We invited four first responders on the show who had been sickened. They were so powerful that evening that it shamed them enough that they felt there were going to be enough eyes on them that if they didn’t do the right thing, there would be consequences.”
Though introduced in 2006, the bill ultimately failed. It was reintroduced in 2009 and stalled when Stewart eventually got wind of it before Christmas in 2010. When he had four first responders of 9/11 on his show, he also replayed all the congressional representatives’ comments on social media regarding 9/11 and “never forgetting.”
“The reason I had even found out about this bill and met John Feal was because the Capitol Police kept getting called on all of these firefighters and cops going down to Congress, and it made the news,” he laughed.
The bill was voted into law three days later and signed by then-President Barack Obama, but the caveat was that it was only good for five years. When he left The Daily Show in 2015, Stewart went right back into the fray as the bill was set to expire. This time, he was on the ground with them.
“Once again into the breach, only this time I was able to be there with them physically. I was partnered up with a gentleman by the name of Ray Pfeiffer, who was a firefighter and a hell of a guy. He was the cooler head to my lunacy,” he recalled with a smile.
Stewart told stories of how he would roam the halls of Congress berating members and sometimes yelling at them. Pfeiffer would come up on his scooter (his cancer had metastasized to his bones, leaving him less mobile) and smooth things over, a fire chief to the end. Between the two of them and the other tireless advocates, they were able to get the bill extended again, but without proper funding.
Pfeiffer was an FDNY firefighter from 1987 to 2014 and a responder to Ground Zero, assigned to Engine 40/Ladder 35 in Manhattan. He was diagnosed with renal carcinoma with metastases to bones, lungs and brain in 2009 as a direct result of exposure to toxins from the piles. He died in 2017, and when Stewart went before Congress and gave his now-infamous address in June 2019, he had Pfeiffer’s jacket with him.
Next to him was Luis Alvarez, a decorated NYPD detective and Marine veteran who responded on 9/11. He gave powerful testimony blasting Congress on their continued delays in taking care of 9/11 first responders and shamed them about the need for him to address them once again for coverage the day before his 69th chemo treatment.
Alvarez died a week later.
“That’s the kind of sacrifice that you were seeing from those folks who were choosing to spend their last time on Earth fighting for these other people who weren’t going to get the benefits they needed without it,” Stewart said. “How can you not be like, ‘Whatever wall you need me to run through—I will?’”
On July 12, 2019, the House approved the bill, and when it came to the Senate floor, it passed through 2092, virtually funding health care for 9/11 victims and first responders for life.
While first responders were battling Congress for permanent 9/11 health care and compensation for 20 years, veterans were getting sicker and sicker. It wasn’t anything new, however, as veterans had been suffering from ailments related to service going back to the Vietnam War and still fighting for coverage from the VA decades later.
But the GWOT veterans entered the arena.
From 2007 through 2020, the VA denied 78% of veterans’ claims of toxic exposure to burn pits while serving in combat. Stewart debuted his Apple+ show with a discussion on the impacts of burn pits on veterans in 2021 after meeting with Leroy and Rosie Tores, founders of Burn Pits 360.
“The VSOs had been so burned by the Washington system that when we all got into a room to start writing the bill, they almost started negotiating against themselves by pointing out the things they’d never be able to get on the bill,” Stewart shared. “Our attitude, maybe born of some hubris, was: F—k that. Let’s write the bill that fixes this.”
They went to work and wrote the bill together. Though initially passed by the House in March 2022 and the Senate in June, it was reintroduced by the Senate for changes and stalled largely due to Republican opposition.
“Imagine that the payoff for your sacrifice and your selflessness is to have to go to war with the very government that you signed up to protect in the first place,” Stewart said. “Why in God’s name would the VA be an adversarial organization to the health and safety of its veterans? Why would you set up a system where you’re removed from your unit, wounded or you’re hurt, sick or you’re struggling and now you have to be your own advocate, doctor, lawyer and caregiver?”
Once again, Stewart dove back into the fight, this time holding a week-long sit-in outside the U.S. Capitol and blasting Congress on Twitter (now X) as well as every news media outlet. His address on the Hill went viral. Below is part of the powerful testimony that pushed lawmakers into action.
“I’m used to the lies, I’m used to the hypocrisy. The Senate is where accountability goes to die. I’m used to all of it. But I am not used to cruelty.”
Two weeks later, the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022, known as the Honoring our PACT Act of 2022, passed. Stewart was instrumental in not only advocating for the bill but uniting all veteran service organizations in a way that hadn’t been done before. (Editor’s note: Sgt. First Class Heath Robinson’s surviving spouse, Danielle Robinson, was part of the 2022 MIGHTY 25 for her incredible advocacy. Read more about Danielle here.)
The PACT Act is perhaps the largest health care and benefit expansion for veterans in history.
When asked what kept him going even in the face of what felt like continuous barriers, he had a one-word answer: Them.
“I had made a promise to Rosie and Leroy on the phone in 2019 when he was going through a hard time. I said, ‘Brother, I’ve got you and we won’t stop.’ I wanted to keep him going so we didn’t lose him,” Stewart recalled. “They’re all in the trenches for years and years. I’m basically just air support. I always consider that one of my main jobs is to rally them [first responders and veterans] and always create an atmosphere where they don’t feel hopeless or helpless.”