Jon Stewart has absolutely obliterated Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge on state legislative restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.
In the premiere episode for the second season of his Apple TV+ show The Problem With Jon Stewart, the American TV host was calm, cool, and precise while issuing a takedown steeped in facts and figures.
Sitting down with AG Rutledge, Stewart quizzed her on her state's decision to ban gender-affirming care for minors.
He said: "Why would the state of Arkansas step in to override parents, physicians, psychiatrists, and endocrinologists who have developed guidelines. Why would you override those guidelines?"
She replied: "All of those physicians, for all of those experts, for every single one of them there's an expert that says we don't need to allow children to be able to take those medications."
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Stewart calmly said: "But you know that's not true."
Rutledge went on to tell the TV host that she did not know that that fact was not true, so Stewart rounded on her again.
Calmly, he asked: "Why would you pass a law then if you don't know that's true?"
But it didn't end there.
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Rutledge claimed: "We have 98 per cent of the young people who have gender dysphoria are able to move past that and once they have the help that they need no longer suffer from gender dysphoria. [That's] 98 per cent without medical treatment."
Stewart was having precisely zero of this claim, and said: "Wow. That's an incredibly made-up figure."
The chat show host then queried if she could name any of the medical organisations or experts that she is referring to that had made up the 'experts' consulted while forming the legislation.
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Rutledge could not name a single one.
The Attorney General said she wasn't prepared to have a 'Supreme Court grilling' and would give Stewart the facts later on.
People on social media praised Stewart for the way he handled the interview and how he broke down the AG's arguments.
During the episode entitled The War Over Gender, Stewart revealed the staggering number of policies and laws created in recent years that target transgender people.
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"Anti-trans legislation increased over 800 per cent since 2018...what is the threat?" Stewart said.
He also revealed that there have been 77 anti-trans sports bills introduced in 2022 alone, which led the host to point out that there 'have been more anti-trans bills introduced this year than trans people dominating sports in the history of women’s sports'.
Stewart revealed the process he and his team followed in order to produce the episode.
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"The problem with gender and sex. It turns out none of this is simple," he said.
"We didn’t just ask a geneticist. We asked endocrinologists and a few psychiatrists and gynaecologists. And they all said the same thing. Intersex, trans, non-binary and all the other gradations of normal human variation.
He added: "And whatever discomfort we may feel in the changing norms of reality, myself included, it is no match for the discomfort and fear felt by those seeking acceptance."
New episodes of season two of The Problem With Jon Stewart air weekly on AppleTV+.
Rachel Lang