New Red Eye Host Tom Shillue Calls Jon Stewart the Jay Leno of the Left

Tom Shillue hasn’t started his new gig as permanent host of Fox News’ popular late night show “Red Eye” yet, but he’s already making some waves.

Last Friday as a guest on SiriusXM’s Bennington show with his friend Jeffrey Gurian, he compared Daily Show host Jon Stewart to Jay Leno, calling him the “Jay Leno of the left,” implying that Stewart tries to curry favor with a broad audience.  “Jon Stewart, he’s like a Jay Leno of the left,” Shillue said. “He’s funny, the show is always good. I’m not saying that the show is watered down. But the thing is, his perspective is like salon.com. His perspective generally is like the New York Times editorial page. It’s standard american left.”

Shillue added that prefers former Daily Show personality John Oliver. “He took the Daily Show and made it much funnier,” he said. “I feel like it’s a concentrated political viewpoint, you know? And I feel like that’s what I have. I’m not that far right, but I feel like whatever comes out of my mouth, its like, I hope its like 100% Shillue. I’m not trying to play to this widest possible audience.”

Shillue starts as Red Eye’s new host on June 22nd. He talked about what viewers can expect from the new show.

“What I want to do, is keep everything that’s great which is 90% of the show, just works. And try to put whatever spin, my kind of take on it, and kind of retrofit it.” The staff of Red Eye is essentially remaining the same, minus former host Greg Gutfeld of course. Even some of the guests will remain the same. “We have a roster of guests so the first week, we’re going to be seeing a lot of regular faces and then i want to expand the roster and get a lot of the comics in who haven’t been in before.” tom said that there is a prejudice in the comedy world against FOX News, one that he hopes to change. “i want to get people in there and show them that they can talk, they can say what they want, they can give their views. I want lefties on the show.”

Shillue is also planning to change up the language a bit, the way he reads stories, for example, but he admits, even he doesn’t know what that new language will be. “I’ve been copying Greg,” he said, referring to the shows he has guest hosted. “When you take over a show, you imitate the guy, that’s what you do. So now the trick is to show the Shillue side. Make it my own.”

While he’s not completely sure what that Shillue side will sound like, he’s made it clear that he’s not afraid of “punching down” in comedy. Shillue disagrees with the popular notion that to be funny, you have to punch up. “Comedy comes from all stripes,” he said. “I don’t think its always about taking down the powerful cause that gets boring as well.” He disagrees with those who villainize large corporations, and called Walmart “the greatest thing in the world” adding “I feel like I’m victimized by the politically correct crowd. Because I try to do my act and then they attack me online, and they say you stink you’re a Nazi. Alright, but that’s funny to me.”

You can hear Shillue’s interview in its entirety on Bennington on Demand on SiriusXM. Bennington airs daily on SiriusXM’s Raw Dog from noon to 3pm et.

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