PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: Jon Stewart hosted Carole Cadwalladr on The Daily Show, where she fearmongered about a “techno-authoritarian surveillance state” while promoting her Substack and nonprofit, while glossing over her history of discredited, Russiagate-style anti-Brexit conspiracy theories.
👥 Who’s Involved: Jon Stewart, Carole Cadwalladr, and Brexit campaign organizer and donor Arron Banks.
📍 Where & When: The Daily Show, with the interview airing on June 3, 2025.
💬 Key Quote: “There should be no reward for knowingly lying in journalism. In fact, quite the opposite. There should be harsh and punitive measures to discourage activists masquerading as reporters and leading the public astray, especially at their financial cost.” — The National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam, after Cadwalladr lost a defamation case over her Brexit allegations in 2023.
⚠️ Impact: Stewart’s uncritical platforming of Cadwalladr amplifies her discredited narrative, undermining tech reforms while glossing over her established history of peddling anti-Brexit misinformation.
IN FULL:
On June 3, 2025, Jon Stewart hosted British journalist Carole Cadwalladr on The Daily Show, giving her a platform to warn of a “techno-authoritarian surveillance state” driven by tech firms. Stewart helped Cadwalladr promote her Substack, “How to Survive the Broligarchy,” and her nonprofit, The Citizens—but failed to address Cadwalladr’s history of discredited anti-Brexit conspiracy theories.
Stewart briefly referenced a defamation lawsuit brought against Cadwalladr by Arron Banks, an ally of Nigel Farage and key organizer and donor for the Leave.EU campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum, over a 2019 TED Talk, and a social media post implying ties to Russia.
“They really tried to destroy you,” Stewart said of the case—failing to mention the courts ruled comprehensively in Banks’s favor. Cadwalladr had falsely alleged Kremlin involvement in and even illicit Russian funding of Banks’s Leave.EU campaign, swaying the Brexit vote through dark money. As with similar Russia-based conspiracies levelled against President Donald J. Trump, Cadwalladr earned journalistic accolades such as the Specialist Journalist of the Year 2017 award and an Orwell Prize for Political Journalism, lending credence to her outlandish reporting, only for it to crumble under legal scrutiny.
Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) found no evidence of Russian money or collusion. In 2022, the High Court ruled her false statements caused “serious harm” to Banks’s reputation, ordering her to pay £1.24 million (~$1.7m) in costs and £35,000 (~$47,500) in damages.
“There should be no reward for knowingly lying in journalism. In fact, quite the opposite. There should be harsh and punitive measures to discourage activists masquerading as reporters and leading the public astray, especially at their financial cost,” commented Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, following the ruling.
During the Stewart interview, Cadwalladr shifted focus to modern data practices, criticizing the lack of artificial intelligence (AI) regulation in the U.S., noting a proposed ten-year ban on state-level regulation of the technology in the “one big beautiful bill.” However, the purpose of this provision is not to prevent AI regulation, but to prevent far-left California, where many tech firms are based, from having de facto control over AI regulation nationwide and even worldwide.
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