Jon Stewart on Who Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Really Helps — and Hurts | Journalist Steve Kroft

43m
Jon Stewart covers the passage of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill: Republicans bashing then endorsing the megabill, trading tax cuts to sway senators, giving a $40 billion infusion to ICE, boosting billionaires at the expense of Medicaid and SNAP, and more.
Former CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent and Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist Steve Kroft joins Jon to discuss a $16 million settlement in President Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount Global, CBS and Comedy Central’s parent company. They discuss how an incoming corporate merger and pressure from Trump’s FCC may have influenced the settlement, why journalists and legal experts consider it a “shakedown,” its impact on freedom of the press, and the one thing Trump didn’t get: an apology.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen and follow along

Transcript

You're listening to Comedy Central.

From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news.

This is the Daily Journal with your host, John Stewart.

Welcome to the Nale Show.

My name is John Stewart, and we have started to staple my scripts so that it doesn't fly away.

We have

an unbelievable show for you tonight.

We're back.

We've been off for a week now.

We're ready to go.

By the way, our guest tonight, former 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Croft, will be joining me later.

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why you ask?

To discuss our parent company, Paramount's shameful settlement.

That's why it's so wrong!

Did they

son of a bitch?

Let's get right into the big news of the weekend.

We celebrated our nation's independence with fireworks and drugs.

Hidden in peanut butter

to get our dogs through the fireworks.

Trazodone.

It's like a thundershirt you wear on the inside.

But most notably, this weekend

marked the passage of the legislative coup that was Trump's big tax and spending bill.

Now, I'm going to let you know there were some cuts.

The Medicaid cuts alone could total roughly $930 billion,

with at least 11.8 million people at risk of losing their health coverage.

It also cuts another $285 billion in food assistance.

An end to clean energy credits from the Biden era.

New caps on the amount that students can borrow in federal loans.

3 million poor people and kids will lose school lunch help.

I think that last one is supposed to read: 3 million poor people and kids will lose school lunch.

Help!

Just an intonation.

It's a lot of painful cuts on a lot of vulnerable populations.

But to be fair, at least America will finally make a dent on the deficit.

This mega bill will increase the deficit by $3.4 trillion.

What the f ⁇ ?

Holy shit!

You, what?

You somehow managed to severely cut the safety net

and expand the deficit.

That's impressive.

That's one of those, hey man, how did you gain all that weight?

Ozempic.

That's something it's hard to do.

I'm on Ozempic and now I'm really bad.

So even though some of our nation's most vulnerable are taking a pay cut, fear not,

other people are getting a raise.

There's $157 billion in new spending for the military and another $150 billion for immigration and border enforcement.

$150 billion

for immigration and border enforcement?

Are you telling me all this crazy shit that has been happening is broke ICE?

Is that what you're saying?

What is ICE going to do when they have real money?

Oh, oh, that's nice.

They're going to do the Kanye diamond masks.

Classy.

But America's military and paramilitary weren't the only winners in this bill.

Changes to the tax code could benefit corporate America and manufacturers.

The bill features roughly $4 trillion in tax cuts, mostly for the wealthiest Americans.

The estate tax becomes permanent and more generous.

The holy grail of this tax plan, the best part of it for businesses, is bonus depreciation.

And all the private debt makers have been salivating over this possibility.

I'm not sure that liquid is saliva.

But okay, the winners continue to be the winners.

Either way, this bill was a big victory for MEGA,

and Republicans were turnt up.

I'm sorry.

That was the party they had for the Epstein list not being released.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

That's not what that was.

There was no list.

There never was a list.

The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients.

Will that really happen?

It's sitting on my desk right now to review.

Is it really?

The list is on my desk, but then I looked at the list and said, no list!

Now, there's a lot of ways.

that we can walk through this tax and spending bill and how this bill encapsulates a ton of General Washington bullshittery.

For instance, political hypocrisy.

This bill was 970 pages.

They jammed it through with barely any time to read it.

How did Republicans feel about that when Democrats did it?

This thing is moving too fast.

People aren't even going to be able to read this bill.

They hope that nobody's going to take the time to read the bill overnight between right now and 8 o'clock in the morning when we're supposed to vote on it.

The determination of the White House and the Democratic majority to shove this down the throat of the American people.

When it happens to them, it's shoving it down their throat.

It's an outrage.

But when it's for Republicans, it's just, come on, America.

Relax the glottis, breathe through your nose.

It'll all be over soon.

And then we'll get brunch.

Is it the glottis?

I don't know.

It was the funniest throat organ I could think of.

Another way we can talk about this bill is Democratic fecklessness.

They were utterly powerless to stop this turd of a bill, which makes them look terrible.

The only thing that could make Democrats look even worse was bragging about the nothing they could do.

Schumer tweeted this, news!

I just got the name struck off this bill with a move on the Senate floor.

Oh shit, no you didn't!

Seriously, tell me you didn't just brag about changing nothing about the bill but its name.

This is not a big, beautiful bill at all.

That is why I moved on the floor to strike the title.

It is now called the Act.

Are you trying to suck?

Is that what this is?

That's your move.

We worked hard and took out the dumb name of the bill

and named the bill after a prestige drama on Hulu.

But at least Democrats still have Hakeem Jeffries over in the House.

He's a younger leader.

And he decided not to answer with words, but with imagery.

Hakeem Jeffries on Instagram.

He's got a baseball bat, and he says House Democrats will keep the pressure on Trump's one big ugly bill.

Hakeem Jeffries answered with imagery, imagery that sends a clear message to Republicans that Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats

are waiting for their moms to pick them up from T-ball.

The Democrats may not have made the team, but they're ready to step in if a body is needed.

Does anybody understand that intimidating, menacing photos are generally taken from below?

To make the subject appear larger, not from above,

to make the subject appear, I don't know, eight years old.

The photo has to be intimidating.

Make sure you get the upholstery in my leather love seat.

They got to know I have furniture.

Or we could talk about the media's narrative dramatizing the fragility of Trump's ruling coalition and what that fragility could mean.

President Trump's agenda is in trouble.

Big trouble for Trump's beautiful bill.

President Trump's signature legislation on a knife's edge hangs in the balance, getting a major roadblock.

The margins are so tight here that anything could throw it into jeopardy.

It will be a nail biter.

There's no question about that.

The dramatic moment of Vice President Vance breaking a tie vote.

Oh,

it surprisingly got through.

Like every other fing thing Trump has wanted.

From Qatari jet bribes to upstream file secrecy to extorted media conglomerate protection money.

I can't believe ABC paid that.

That was so f ⁇ ed up.

I'll let myself out.

Sure, I wouldn't want to be ABC.

But every time a new Trump's never getting that, comes up, the media is blown away when he actually does get it.

Without ever acknowledging that the no votes from Republicans are scripted to allow certain senators plausible deniability without putting any part of that agenda actually at risk.

It reminds me of the way every professional wrestling match gets the announcer slackjawed with shock.

at the stunning turn of events.

If Jon Stewart showed up here tonight, I would force him to retire immediately because it is quite difficult to do a phony news show with your jaw wired shut.

Uh-oh, no way.

Yes, John Stewart!

He did show!

Look at old Tubbs.

What a surprise.

I can't believe he showed up there like we rehearsed.

It should have been clear that this bill, like everything else, was going to pass on the day they said it was going to pass, that the no's for the bill were for show,

like Senator Josh Hawley's deep concerns.

This is real Medicaid benefit cuts.

I can't support that.

No Republicans should support that.

We're the party of the working class, Mono.

We need to act like it.

You need to act like it.

Did you act like it, Josh?

Did you?

Hawley ended up voting for the bill.

He put in a statement, quote, I will continue to do everything in my power to reverse future cuts to Medicaid.

Oh, yes, future cuts.

Everything in my power for future cuts, except voting no in the present.

Or how about Senator Ron Johnson?

You've got deficit concerns for the children.

I'm concerned about my children and my grandchildren and the fact that we are stealing from them.

We are stealing from our children and grandchildren $37 trillion in debt and we're going to add to it as Republicans.

That is unacceptable.

You'll never guess who accepted it.

Senator Ron Johnson flipped from a no to a yes.

Sorry,

children and grandchildren.

Maybe next future.

Any other Republican who initially said, this is terrible, I'm not voting for this, and had an even dumber reason for flipping a yes?

Tim Burchett from Tennessee.

I'm looking at your dumbass.

President was

wonderful, as always,

informative, funny.

Told me he liked seeing me on TV, which is kind of cool.

Yeah, he signed a bunch of stuff.

It's cool.

Wasn't it cool?

He signed a bunch of stuff for you.

It was cool.

Was that your class's first trip to Washington?

He gave his MMs.

I'll vote whatever he wants me to vote for.

He signed my tits.

Whatever you want.

I'll do it.

By the way, nothing makes me distrust Donald Donald Trump more than saying that guy is good on TV.

It's all pro-wrestling.

The only difference between that vote and wrestling is that wrestling is fun and takes actual courage.

And they didn't even get concessions to flip their vote.

Only one senator apparently got meaningful concessions, and that's Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

And those concessions really wouldn't work anywhere else but Alaska.

Senator Paul said that this was,

that your vote was a bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country.

Oh my God.

That's what Senator Paul said.

This is easy.

Senator, we've got the...

I didn't say it, ma'am.

I'm just asking for your response.

That's my favorite clip ever.

She stares him down, and the reporter goes, I didn't say it.

I didn't, I don't know, I'm just, look, I don't even like this.

I wanted to work in the control room, but I'm handsome.

So they put me out here because they didn't want this moneymaker to go to waste.

But excluding all the fake narrative shenanigans and hypocrisies and fecklessness is the central truth of this bill.

Once again, it's the bullshit gospel of austerity.

The gospel they preach anytime the country's finances are in shambles and out of control.

Our problem isn't excess at the top, it's the sloth at the bottom.

We don't pay people in this country to be lazy.

If somebody's able-bodied and they can go get a job and they're living in their mom's basement playing video games, I'm sorry, you got to go get a job.

Get off the couch, stop eating the Cheetos,

stop buying the medical marijuana and watching television.

First of all,

nobody talks about my audience like that.

Nobody.

Yeah.

You hear those fing Cheetos, man?

Second of all, it is such a fing lazy and wrong trope.

I don't know if you've noticed, but those people smoking dope, sitting around playing video games, they're all fing Twitch millionaires now.

And it's this lazy, bullshit narrative that our finances are screwed because of how comfortable we have made it for the poor.

A mindset perhaps perfectly encapsulated by this human editorial cartoon, Congressman Troy Nels.

Can I ask you though about the CBO score and the idea that 11 million, 12 million Americans make up the money?

I don't have any faith and confidence in the CBO.

They're scoring, they're wrong half the damn time.

I don't give any now.

A congressman who just voted to force people off of Medicaid and food assistance, just smoking a fatty

with both hands bandaged

from what I can only assume is a friction burn

from too much celebratory masturbation.

There's no other way around it.

Oh,

Medicaid and food stamps.

I got blisters on me fingers.

The problem in our country isn't the sliver of able-bodied people that are somehow coasting on the unearned medical coverage they may or may not use, but the millions and millions of people in this country who work f ⁇ ing full-time jobs and still need food and medical assistance.

That's the system that's broken.

Fix that system.

What are we talking about?

And yet, oh,

we're always gaslit into the framework of the deserving poor.

And I got to tell you, the deserving poor, they have very much disappointed the deserving rich.

OpenAI founder Sam Altman said he was politically homeless in the July 4th message he posted to X.

Excuse me, not to be that guy.

I believe the term is politically unhoused.

But go on.

How have the Democrats let you down?

I'd rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they are going to eliminate billionaires.

That's the pitch.

Everyone should be.

Wouldn't we all just run out of foam?

Wouldn't that.

I wasn't invited.

But that's the pitch.

Somehow it is fiscally irresponsible to build a stronger floor for everyone to stand on if it may in any way lower the already astronomical ceiling height experienced by the rare few.

This bill is the most f ⁇ ed up performance review our country could ever deliver.

It's the government sitting us all down and telling us where we've been irresponsible with the spending.

We start with the wealthy.

Thank you for coming in.

I know it's hard when you only work one day a week, but thank you for making the time.

It's been a tough year, but as always, wealthy, you're killing it.

In the words of a place you probably never eat at, we're loving it.

And so once again, for the, I'm going to say 80th year in a row, you're getting a raise.

Now if you excuse me, I have a busy day, another review to deliver.

You freeloading motherfuckers.

It has come to my attention that some of you are having breakfast

and lunch.

Maybe you haven't heard our deficit is out of control.

We need that lunch money for more important things, which reminds me.

What if I gave you a tax deduction for taking a private jet to your private jet?

If time permits, perhaps we could take it to that non-existent island I've heard so much about.

Excuse Excuse me!

Who ate the porridge that was here?

Who ate the porridge?

You boy!

What day is it, boy?

Christmas Day!

Take this doubloon!

Buy the biggest Christmas goose you can find, and take it to the airport.

I have a pilot.

Look.

Blaming migrants and the able-bodied poor is why Trump won won this election.

But a system where working people struggle so much is why Mom Dani won his election.

And for all,

and for all the people who are worried about Mom Dani's socialist tendencies, guess what?

He's the best case scenario because this system is not sustainable.

And if this doesn't change, there's going to be more drastic action.

Really?

Yeah!

We're going to need a bigger pet.

When we come back, Steve Croft will be joining us.

Don't go away.

What about McDell, my guest tonight?

He is an Emmy and a a Peabody Award-winning journalist, spent 30 years as a CBS correspondent for 60 Minutes.

Please welcome to the program, Steve Croft.

Sir!

How are you?

I'm good.

I can't believe I'm here.

I'm delighted that you're here.

60 Minutes is in the news.

It is.

What if 60 Minutes is?

Yeah, that is.

Okay, good, good, good.

Last person I asked that.

This is an audience not from here?

How long has 60 Minutes been on the air?

And before you answer, let me make you more comfortable.

Go ahead.

I remember.

No, it's been on the air.

How long has 60 minutes?

I don't know, 50 some years.

And it's been like a top 10, top 20 show, not on cable, on thing, on network.

No, in fact, in the 30 years I've been on the show, and I had nothing specifically to do with this, but we were the number one show in all of television.

In all of television.

Yes.

And

now...

So...

You are not particular you're not over there anymore, and I'm not going to ask you to speak specifically for the official line of 60 Minutes, but I'm assuming you still have some kind of text chain

with folks over there.

Yes.

Now, you may or may not know, as they

may or may not know what 60 Minutes is.

Paramount, which is the parent company for CBS.

at 60 Minutes, and also for Comedy Central, recently made the unusual arrangement of settling a lawsuit that President Trump brought for, and I don't even really know what it was for, and they paid him.

He was making one edit.

They made an edit.

Yes.

You bastards.

They paid him $16 million.

What is, I would assume internally, that is devastating.

to the people who work in a place that pride themselves on

contextual good journalism.

No, it

devastating is a good word.

I think there's a lot of fear over there.

Fear of losing their job, fear of what's happening to the country, fear of

losing the First Amendment.

Right.

All of those things.

Why do you think they paid the $16 million?

Well, you know, a couple of congressmen think that it was bribery.

They think it was a bribe from Paramount.

Yes, I should explain a little bit about what happened.

Please.

I hope I wasn't catastrophizing.

No.

60 Minutes did an interview with Kamala Harris.

Yes.

And during the interview...

She was the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

That's right.

And

she was asked a question about Netanyahu.

Great Great guy.

Why Netanyahu,

why Netanyahu wasn't saying and doing what we wanted him to do.

That's what was going on at the time.

Yes.

And she gave, fairly, she gave a minute answer.

Right.

And CBS took the

first half of that answer and gave it to the morning show on Sunday, Face the Nation, to use as sort of a teaser to get people to watch it at night.

And the second half of that sound bite went into the story.

Now, news organizations use every part of the candidate.

They take the sound bites and they spread it over the network so that none of it goes to waste.

There are hungry children

in countries right now with no sound bites.

That's right.

And so they use those.

So they aired the first part of her answer on the morning news.

That was the teaser, yes.

And then what did they do on the 60 Minutes?

They put that sound bite, the second half, in the 60 Minutes piece.

They were different.

And somebody noticed that in the Republican Party and decided.

Somebody?

Somebody, I don't know who.

Donald Trump?

No, I know, not personally.

All he does is

TV.

I know.

But I think he watches Fox.

Nothing to get mad about there.

Yeah.

So anyway, I should point out that the

sound bite in the exchange,

neither the front half or the second half answered the question.

But Trump thought the second half was better than the first half.

And 60 Minutes was deliberately trying to make him lose the election by manipulating the news.

Sure.

No, I have seen elections lost

by that margin.

It's just, it was a devastating half of a sound bite.

Is that standard operating proceed?

Absolutely.

Was anything done that you thought in retrospect that murkied her, like decontextualized her answer, tried to make her look better?

Was it all fair game?

They did air the first part that he thought made her look bad in the morning, and then they aired the second part in the evening, and then they made the whole thing available.

Yeah, most people couldn't tell the difference.

I'm going to show you something.

Okay, go right ahead.

You're going to be shocked by this.

Okay.

This is from, it's an organization called Fox News.

Okay.

Also, within.

I'm familiar with it, but rarely watch it.

Right.

I have it on in my house all the time

because I want to get it.

You at the local bar.

Right.

Exactly.

So this is an interview that

It aired on Fox and Friends, which is a show that they do in the morning on a couch, but then they have a weekend show also named Fox and Friends where the people who don't make it on the A-team Fox and Friends get experience so that they can become cabinet members.

This is

a question

that one of their hosts asked a gentleman by the name of Donald Trump.

I want you to watch.

This is how it aired on their morning show.

Please take a look.

Would you declassify the 9-11 files?

Yeah.

Would you declassify JFK files?

Yeah.

I did a lot of it.

Would you declassify the Epstein files?

Yeah,

I would.

Attorney General.

What are you...

I mean, we talked about...

So that's how it aired.

Yeah, simple question.

Would you cause by 9-11?

Yes.

Kennedy, yes.

Epstein?

Yes.

And then the Secretary of Defense jumped in.

Well, he did, actually.

Sir, please get me off this couch.

I want to show you

the larger context of that interview that aired later.

Take a look.

Would you declassify the Epstein files?

Yeah, yeah, I would.

I guess I would.

I think that less so because, you know, you don't know.

You don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there, because there's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.

But I think I would, or at least I...

Do you think that would restore trust?

Now,

that

seems

up.

Yes.

That would never happen on 60 Minutes.

No.

But I would like to know why the 60 Minutes edit was worthy of a $16 million acquiescence of what is considered

the Tiffany News Gold Standard Network for Paramount of News, where very clearly, Fox just did what seems to me to be a more egregious edit.

Yes.

So explain to me what was going through the mind of Paramount when they said, oh yeah,

we screwed up.

Here's your money.

Why not?

Why didn't they fight it?

They never said we screwed up.

What did they say?

They just paid the money.

So just flat out protection money.

Yeah, it was a shakedown.

That's what I call it.

I mean, some people call it extortion.

That's a legal term.

I'm not, you know, but so.

Shakedown is like.

Obviously, this is opinion.

Is this purely paramount buying their way?

They are being sold right now

to a gentleman who is friends with the president, Larry Ellison and his son, David Ellison.

Yes.

Skydance.

Was this settlement

just a payment so that this merger can go through and not be challenged by Trump's FCC?

Yes, I think that Trump, when I was trying to explain this at the beginning, I said it was like a little complicated.

There's Sherry Redstone who is the head of Paramount.

She's the owner of Paramount.

Right.

She wants to.

Controlling share.

Right.

She wants to sell it.

Yes.

She has a couple of billion dollars.

They've got like an $8 billion deal on the table.

Yes, and $2 billion she's going to get.

So she wanted the sale to go through.

But Donald Trump

thought,

I'm going to settle a score here.

He said that very often about I'm going to go after my enemies.

And

he was upset with 60 minutes and he decided that

he was going to sue for $16 million.

No, he decided to sue for $20 billion.

Well, 60, I think it was, I think it was millions at first.

Then it went to billions.

Oh, I see.

And then it came back down to millions.

He changes his mind a lot.

As you pointed out

in the tape intro.

But anyway, he also, and which we haven't talked about, is that the Federal Communications Commission,

which approves licenses and things like that, is controlled by the president.

And he has obviously somebody there who really likes him and will do whatever he says and is for his agenda.

And all of a sudden he's decided that he's not going to approve this deal.

The FCC chairman said that.

Yes.

That he wasn't going to approve it.

Well, he didn't say, no, I'm not going to approve it now.

I think we ought to have some public hearings on it.

I think we ought to like take a good look at the media and how it's performing and maybe doing something wrong.

So the implication is, you don't get your $8 billion merger, you don't get your $2 billion payout unless you give me a tremendous amount of money.

Now that strikes me as, and I'm obviously not a lawyer, but I did watch Goodfellas,

as

that sounds illegal.

Yes, it does.

It's

illegal.

I think it's a shakedown here.

I think it's a shakedown.

It's a shakedown.

Now, not only the one, I want to make just one point.

Yes, please.

It's not just

me or 60 Minutes or you that think that this was a shakedown.

It's pretty much every reporter that's looked at this case and said, this is ridiculous.

It's going to be thrown out of any court that it goes before, except maybe one.

In Texas.

Yeah.

In Amarillo.

And that is where they brought the suit.

And that's where they brought the suit.

And the suit.

And that's why I'm afraid they'll send.

This show if we get sued.

Because you said some really nasty things about him, much worse than Kamala Harris.

Can I tell you something?

And I'm going to say this.

Okay.

And I mean this.

I don't know.

Personally,

I can't read.

So

this is all done phonetically.

You may be saying to me, I said some nasty things.

Here's what it sounded like to me.

What is it about this moment that

makes his attacks on the press

more dangerous than what has always been standard fair, hey man, don't print that, don't do that.

What is it about this moment?

I think he likes to get even with his political enemies.

He likes to do things that he feels will intimidate them to stop

reporting bad things about him.

And I think it's as simple as that.

And that he'll go further than other people would.

Yeah, I guess so.

Further, really, that it's not clear the Constitution allows.

I don't even know if that's in play anymore,

because they'll find a judge in Texas who says it isn't.

But so what does the news media do in this moment to

is this the last gasp of a dying industry or is this the turning point for something that has become let's face it it's it's in many ways this moment is

is able to happen because the news media has had its trust eroded with the American people yes so how does the news media respond then well I think that it's interesting the the you know this lawsuit the one thing that they didn't get Trump didn't get he didn't get an apology and he had been pushing really hard that's one of the reasons why it went from like a million or you know 10 million to 10 billion because he was demanding an apology and wanted CBS to admit it that it had made a mistake so he could use that against and erode the credibility of the program and the network.

But he did not get it.

And that was, that's important.

I mean, it cost,

you know, we haven't touched on this, but the executive producer of CBS News

was forced to quit.

And the head of CBS News in general quit.

Yes.

Because they wouldn't apologize.

Because they wouldn't apologize and because they thought they had lost control of the, you know, they had lost their independence.

And

it was a very honorable thing to do.

How does the media look?

For Trump, this is great because now he's got himself a news network.

He already announced that Ellison is going to do a great job

at CBS, and Ellison is going to give him $16 more more million dollars in public airwaves commercials.

I have no proof of that, if that actually happened.

That doesn't mean it's true.

But I think for news media is this sort of the new

world that we live in that they will, listen, the news media isn't perfect.

I don't think anybody disputes that.

I think there's been mistakes.

CNN accused that kid years ago in a MAGA hat of like harassing a Native American, and that was wrong, and they had to pay authentic.

Like, they should be responsible and held.

But this seems like a different thing where

corporate pressure and political pressure have never been stronger.

to

it's it doesn't feel like scrutiny on news networks it feels like fealty that

they are being held to a standard that

will never be satisfactory to Donald Trump.

No one can ever kiss his ass enough.

I mean, he goes after Fox sometimes, which is crazy.

The $16 million was tribute.

That's how he looks at it.

And that will continue.

Tribute to the king.

Thank God I'm on basic cable, which I don't think he has.

I think he only cares about network.

Well, I appreciate it.

I appreciate you coming on to discuss it in this interview.

I hope you didn't confuse the audience.

Can I tell you something?

The audience is from Harvard.

Like,

I've been talking to people all day.

They don't.

I'm talking to these people.

I'm going to be completely honest.

We didn't confuse them.

We bored them.

Former 60 Minutes correspondent, Steve Croft.

Quick break.

We'll be right back.

But before we go, let's check in with Euros for the rest of the week.

Ronnie Jay, Ronnie!

Ronnie!

How was your fourth?

Well, as you can see, John, it was great.

I get you making a little comment on Congressman Troy Nell's with the cigar and the bandage, and I get it.

It's very funny, very nice.

No, who's that?

No, no, it's my first fourth July as an American citizen.

citizen, so.

Thank you.

So I celebrated like a real American.

So you...

Would you injure yourself with fireworks?

No, I'm not stupid.

Okay?

I got in a grill touching contest.

And I won.

Whoa!

That's right.

Who's stupid now, Jeremy?

Now I got 10 bucks to spend on skin grass.

Just out of curiosity in the grill touching contest that you entered.

Who went first?

I did.

That's how you win, John.

So Jeremy didn't even take a turn.

I had already won by that point, okay?

Now, John, now help me put this in my pocket.

Absolutely.

Ronnie Chang, always.

It's never going to go On there.

Ronnie Chang.

Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts.

Watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus.

This has been a Comedy Central podcast.