Jon Stewart was in Cairo and took the opportunity to sit down with the man who has often been called his Egyptian counterpart. Bassem Youssef interviewed Stewart on his show Al-Bernameg or The Program Friday night. Stewart was brought into the set wearing a black hood as Youssef said he had caught a foreign spy.
“Please sit down, I am a simple man who does not like to be fussed over,” Stewart said in Arabic, according to CBS News. The Egyptian comedian had previously appeared on the Daily Show and Stewart strongly defended Youssef when he was arrested for insulting the president. But this marked the first time Stewart appeared on the Egyptian show.
“If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you don’t have a regime,” Stewart said during the show in which he repeatedly praised Youssef for his work. “Your president has bestowed upon me an appointment — I am now the mayor of Luxor,” Stewart said, in what seemed to be a way of mocking Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s recent decision to appoint a member of a group the United States has designated as a terrorist organization as governor of the tourist city, explains USA Today.
Stewart is in the Middle East directing and producing a movie based on a memoir by Maziar Bahari, an Iranian journalist who was imprisoned in 2009 while covering Iran’s presidential elections.
