They're probably referring to the Crossfire interview (which is widely credited with getting the latter show cancelled). He basically complained about the lack of depth on Crossfire, and when questioned about his own show's lack of depth he basically just said "It's a comedy show".

It's sort of a nuanced issue, since a lot of people took The Daily Show seriously in that era anyway. The difference is, of course, that Crossfire and its ilk were/are unserious in subtle ways, and seemed meant to be taken seriously. I'll leave it up to you, the reader, to decide which space Joe Rogan's show lives in (I actually couldn't tell you, never having seen it).

An ancillary point Stewart made was "the Daily Show is on Comedy Central" (per memory, this was before peak Daily Show popularity, so it was well-known but not famous) as opposed to "Crossfire is on CNN."

Presumably people watch CNN for different reasons and with different expectations than they watch Comedy Central.

Tucker Carlson's rebuttal was that Jon Stewart could book political guests that wouldn't come on Crossfire, so he had a journalistic duty to ask hard questions.

Which... felt kind of weak to me. For profit media is for profit, and both Crossfire and Daily Show were beholden to the bottom line, and had to calibrate their behavior against that. Edward Roscoe Murrow, they were not.

PS: My favorite Stewart line from that interview remains (paraphrasing) "Crossfire isn't theater? Tucker, you're 35 year old man wearing a bowtie. This is theater."

Pretty sure the GP is referring to the famous Crossfire takedown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE

There's a play by play of it on Crossfire's Wikipedia page also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_(American_TV_program...

Why is he invited to give testimonies to congress, do you think? This is not something I have the opportunity to do. It's, presumably, on the basis of his comedy show? He doesn't want his comedy show to be taken seriously, but he wants himself to be taken seriously on the basis of that comedy show? What's the difference?

Congress routinely invites individuals to "testify" for propaganda purposes. It's all for show. Remember when they invited Tipper Gore to testify based on zero actual qualifications?

https://www.npr.org/2005/01/11/4279560/tipper-gore-and-famil...