



After all the jokes, it was Stephen Colbert’s job to make things serious and deliver an unscripted, moving tribute to Jon Stewart, who gave him his first big break as a correspondent on The Daily Show back in 1999.

“You can’t stop anyone because they don’t work for you anymore,” Colbert said as Stewart squirmed in his chair. “It will be quick if you just hold still.”

“Here’s the thing, Jon,” he continued, as Stewart struggled not to cry. “You said to me and many other people to never thank you because we owe you nothing. It is one of the few times I’ve known you to be dead wrong. We owe you — and not just what you did for our careers by employing us to come on this tremendous show that you made — we owe you because we learned from you. We learned from you by example how to do a show with intention, how to work with clarity, how to treat people with with respect. You were infuriatingly good at your job.”

“On behalf of so many people whose lives you changed over the past 16 years, thank you,” Colbert concluded.

Watch video below, via Comedy Central:

[Photo via screengrab]

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