You might have forgotten, but John Stewart wasn't always hosted the Daily Show.

Welcome! Welcome to The Daily Show.

Craig Kilbourn is on assignment in Kuala Lumpur, I'm John Stewart.

25 years ago this month, Stuart, who was then known as a stand-up comedian,

took over Comedy Central's satirical news program, replacing host Craig Kilborg.

You're out of order, he's out of order, this whole trial is sexy.

In those early episodes, Stuart looks so young and kind of smug, right?

Like the comedian who totally gets the joke,

but is gonna let you in on it, too.

And he was about to crash into the intersection

of politics and comedy in a way that would change the

landscape of late night comedy TV. I remember early on a meeting in the

executive producers office and this was months after he had started as the

host and he was clearly grappling with what he wanted the show to be and he explained that he wanted the show to have more of a point of view.

That's Milraca. He is a correspondent for CBS Sunday morning and creator and host of the Mobituaries podcast, he started working on the

Daily Show in 1998 and was there until 2003.

I can tell you I remember distinctly meeting the eyes of one of the producers and I think other people

were looking at each other this way and thinking, uh-oh, is this going to make the show unfunny? And being worried that a comedy show was incompatible

with a show that had a point of view

and obviously we were proven wrong.

The show became much more successful. and obviously we were proven wrong.

The show became much more successful.

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