Business

Jim Cramer's Still Bitter About His 2009 Spat with Jon Stewart

The CNBC host goes to the Nazi-vocabulary well to describe the ordeal

By Alex Eichler
This article is from the archive of our partner .

This Sunday, The New York Times Magazine will run a story about Jim Cramer, author and host of CNBC's Mad Money. The article, by Zev Chafets, is about 3,700 words long, and more than 1,100 of them concern a high-profile feud between Cramer and The Daily Show's Jon Stewart that took place a couple years ago.

It all started on March 4, 2009, when Stewart called out a number of CNBC hosts for cheerleading bad financial companies. Cramer was among those named in the segment; he hit back at Stewart, and it escalated into a war of words. On March 12, Cramer appeared on The Daily Show, where, just about everyone later agreed, Jon Stewart completely flattened him.

In the Times Magazine, Chafets asks Cramer about his dust-up with Stewart. Cramer's response doesn't exactly suggest that he's moved on: "The old me would have hit Stewart with a chair. I'm proud I didn't do that. I controlled myself. But maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I should have taken the gloves off."

Actually, that's just a bit of what Cramer says. "After the interview, people like that, total strangers, would come up to me and say, 'Jim, I’m sorry,'" he tells Chafets. "That made me feel horrible, people feeling sorry for me. For six months it was on my mind all the time. I hurt so bad."

Cramer's conversation with Chafets takes place in a diner, and when he's talking about the Stewart feud, he raises his voice so loud that people start leaning in to listen. Eventually Cramer says he's over it: "I don't really think about it now." Then he goes on to compare it to a Kesselschlact, a German term that Nazis would use to describe "battles of total annihilation." It sure sounds like he's made his peace.

For those who want to remember what the whole kerfuffle was over. Here is the Daily Show bit that blamed CNBC and Cramer for cheerleading investors straight into a financial collapse.

And here is what happened when Cramer appeared on the show.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.