Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Daily Show. My name is Jon Stewart and man,

Speaker 2 we worked almost all day on tonight's show. We've got a great recording tonight.
David Remnick will be joining me later. He is the editor of the New Yorker Magazine.
They're celebrating.

Speaker 2 What an erudite crowd.

Speaker 2 Celebrating their 100th year of the New Yorker, and he and I will be discussing the difference between umlauts and diuresis.

Speaker 2 Emphasis on the, I'll just go now. Let's just.

Speaker 2 But first, the Super Bowl was last night, and man,

Speaker 2 it was

Speaker 2 television.

Speaker 2 It began with the teams being introduced from heaven.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's just f ⁇ ing weird. And it ended with the Kansas City Chiefs and who!

Speaker 2 So, congratulations to the people of Philadelphia who immediately

Speaker 2 who immediately I disagree by the way

Speaker 2 who immediately celebrated their victory by attacking their own city!

Speaker 2 Killing their own city!

Speaker 2 Die, Philadelphia!

Speaker 2 They were

Speaker 2 mashing their own city, doing tens of dollars worth of damage.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's right. I'm implying it's a shithole.

Speaker 2 Give Saquon back!

Speaker 2 But of course, my favorite moment was the inexplicable post-victory horse race where the winner stands triumphant atop the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Speaker 2 That's not, that's not Photoshop. That's

Speaker 2 the horse ran up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum,

Speaker 2 reared up on its hind legs, and went, Adrian!

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 here's the, here's, and I'm going to drop some knowledge here. No one really cared about the game because of the earth-shattering announcement that had been made moments prior.

Speaker 3 You know, we're flying over right now, we're flying over a thing called the Gulf of America. And I'm signing a proclamation, and perhaps you could define that.

Speaker 2 First of all, why do you fly around in a Hyatt hotel room?

Speaker 2 Second of all, define proclamation?

Speaker 2 You don't know what a proclamation...

Speaker 2 Or do you just want her to say what the actual proclamation? I'm sorry, I interrupted. Go ahead.
This is a proclamation declaring today, February 9th, 2025, as the first ever Gulf of America Day.

Speaker 5 And we're flying right over it right now.

Speaker 3 So we thought this would be appropriate.

Speaker 3 Even bigger than the Super Bowl.

Speaker 2 It's true. Bigger than the Super Bowl.
In fact, my favorite thing about Gulf of America Day are the commercials.

Speaker 2 It's very historic. I'm sure we'll look back on this day fondly when America is swallowed up by the rising waters of the Gulf of America.

Speaker 2 You know, it turns out,

Speaker 2 It's kind of a weird thing. Airplanes might not be the best place to make bigger than the Super Bowl announcements.

Speaker 3 Even bigger than the Super Bowl. This is a big thing,

Speaker 3 and uh, almost everybody now has assented to that.

Speaker 2 Engine on board, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 2 If you could please direct your attention out to the right side of the aircraft, Air Force One is currently in international waters for the first time in history flying over the recently renamed Hope of America.

Speaker 2 First of all, oh my god,

Speaker 2 it shut him up even for just a second.

Speaker 2 I think airplane pilots must be the most powerful force in the universe.

Speaker 2 I feel like the Democrats have to get themselves an airplane pilot.

Speaker 2 Sorry for the interruption, but you can't do that.

Speaker 2 Maybe they'll let Schumer. Schumer will be the pilot.

Speaker 2 Buck, forgive me. I've seen it forgotten.
What does calling a Gulf of America do? Do we get all its fish now?

Speaker 3 Make America great again, right? That's what we care about.

Speaker 2 Making America great again!

Speaker 2 Yeah!

Speaker 2 Everything Trump does is all part of Making America Great Again. Order one!

Speaker 2 Roll back everything from the previous not great administration. Regulations on the environment, regulations on the Second Amendment, the Title IX guidance, and not just the big shit.

Speaker 2 You want to make America great again, you can't skimp on the details.

Speaker 6 President Trump says he's going to reverse Joe Biden's mandate to phase out plastic straws, saying, Enjoy your next drink without a straw that disgustingly dissolves in your mouth.

Speaker 2 You.

Speaker 2 Okay, he's right on this one.

Speaker 2 He is right on this one.

Speaker 2 Those straws are f ⁇ ing terrible.

Speaker 2 Objectively terrible. I'm supposed to have some weird tissue paper dissolve in my mouth just because turtles can't figure out straws aren't food.
No.

Speaker 2 Don't eat the tubes, you stupid turtles.

Speaker 2 So Trump is making America great again by taking us back to 2016.

Speaker 2 But obviously if we're going to make America great again, we can't stop in 2016. We got got to keep pushing to that place when America was truly great.

Speaker 2 How much further back do we need to go?

Speaker 2 So it looks like it's the 70s.

Speaker 2 Oh, like you don't know who Burt Reynolds is.

Speaker 2 If you're going to make us great, you're going to have to roll further back than the 70s. What do you got?

Speaker 3 We're going to stop the destructive and divisive

Speaker 3 diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the 70s won't fly. 70s was all about women's lib and stonewall.
Now, my friends, we got to go back further to make America great. And ladies, when we do go back, don't worry.

Speaker 2 It's all going to work out for you.

Speaker 7 You will no longer be thinking about abortion. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free.

Speaker 3 Like everything else, it's a little bit different today. You're not allowed to say that because if you call a woman or a girl beautiful, that's the end of your career.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 you can't even say, hey, sugar tits.

Speaker 2 But, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to go back to the old days

Speaker 2 with regular tits,

Speaker 2 not the ones that disgustingly dissolve in your mouth.

Speaker 2 But let's not stop in the 70s there, folks. Not even in the 50s.
Let's keep going. Because that sounds like the 50s and the 50s are still too inclusive.

Speaker 2 I mean, by then, Italians and Irish were considered white. No, that's too far.

Speaker 2 Keep going back. America's greatness awaits.

Speaker 8 We were the richest country in the world. We were at our riches from 1870 to 1913.
That's when we had, we were a tariff country.

Speaker 2 1870s.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 There we go.

Speaker 2 1870s. Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.

Speaker 2 And of course, while America presently is still pretty f ⁇ ing rich, apologies, Luxembourg.

Speaker 2 Point taken. Who wouldn't trade our current environment for America's 1870s tariff-driven, becandled, tuberculosis-laden pre-industrial heyday.

Speaker 3 We were so wealthy, we had commissions set up. What to do with all the money that we were taking in?

Speaker 2 Quick point of order, though. To the extent that we were at our richest from 1870 to 1913, it wasn't so much we as like four guys.

Speaker 2 And we called them robber barons

Speaker 2 as a sign of affection.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, the rest of America, the leading cause of death, was falling into a vat at work.

Speaker 2 And it got to the point where even the robber barons realized that the only way this glorious era in American history was going to end was either full-scale

Speaker 2 revolution or reasonable compromise, which is how we ended up with stuff like income tax and labor laws and workplace safety guarantees.

Speaker 2 So let's really tread carefully in the greatness way back machine.

Speaker 9 Arizona House Republican Eddie Biggs introduced a bill this week that would abolish OSHA, a Department of Labor agency tasked with overseeing workplace safety. To the vats

Speaker 2 and fill mine with boiling tallow boy

Speaker 2 not just bring back child labor while you're at it.

Speaker 5 When you talk about school lunches, hey, I worked my way through high school.

Speaker 5 I know about you, but I worked since I was, before I was even 13 years old, I was picking berries in the field before we had child labor laws that precluded that.

Speaker 2 You were picking berries in a field

Speaker 2 before you're bombitza. I mean,

Speaker 2 by the way, how old are you if you were picking berries before there were child labor laws? Because you look great.

Speaker 2 Is the key to good skin working the fields as a child?

Speaker 2 Now I hate to bring this up, but if we are going back to the 1870s

Speaker 2 and before,

Speaker 2 does that include every diversity initiative?

Speaker 8 Birthright citizenship was, if you look back when this was passed and made, that was meant for the children of slaves.

Speaker 8 This was not meant for the whole world to come in, everybody coming in, and totally unqualified people with perhaps unqualified children.

Speaker 2 Don't bring us your tired and poor huddled masses. Do you have any mathletes?

Speaker 2 Any doogies, Hauser? We will take all of your Sheldons, young and old.

Speaker 2 For those of you at home who might fear that the president's desire to take us back to our nation's historic greatness may tread into unconstitutional action, fear not, because the brilliant design of our nation allows for the co-equal branch of the judiciary to stand as a bulwark against tyranny, as judged in the landmark decision of 1803 Marbury versus Madison, which, as you know, is when James Madison lost the historic Supreme Court case to Stéphane Marbury.

Speaker 2 Marbury ran him out of the building and established our foundational separation of powers.

Speaker 10 Vice President J.D.

Speaker 9 Vance, he had some interesting words about the separation of power and government.

Speaker 2 He's for it?

Speaker 1 If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.

Speaker 1 If a judge tried to command the Attorney General and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.

Speaker 2 Of course they're allowed to adjudicate the boundaries of that power. That's the whole f ⁇ ing point of the judiciary, to interpret whether those powers are legitimate.

Speaker 2 You went to law school, mother f ⁇ er!

Speaker 2 The alternative is that

Speaker 2 acting!

Speaker 2 The only alternative is that the executive determines for himself what is constitutional. at which point there would be no guardrails against.
Ooh.

Speaker 2 Hey, Congress.

Speaker 2 Hey, buddy.

Speaker 2 You got a little separation of powers problem. I was wondering, any chance you might be reasserting your authority?

Speaker 2 Opposition party.

Speaker 2 Democrats, you ready to do some oppositioning?

Speaker 10 There are some things we can do, but the Republicans are in the majority in the Senate and the House.

Speaker 10 We're going to need some Republicans, frankly, who are willing to lose, who are willing to be a Liz Cheney and say, I will lose my seat to do the right thing by this country, not the right thing by Donald Trump.

Speaker 10 I haven't seen it yet. Let's hope.

Speaker 4 Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman of New York.

Speaker 2 That's the sales pitch.

Speaker 2 We just need someone on their side willing to lose everything to progress, like a Russian dog being shot into space.

Speaker 2 You can see the Democrats' backbone on our new show, America Backslide, starring Dan Goldman as hopeful loser.

Speaker 2 But fine.

Speaker 2 We have to rely on Republicans in Congress to be a check on Trump. How's that going?

Speaker 6 Republican Senator Tom Tillis says that while he believes Trump's actions run afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense, he believes nobody should bellyache about that.

Speaker 4 You're comfortable if he shuts those down without getting Congressional.

Speaker 10 No, Congress will be involved at some point, but

Speaker 10 I think the country's comfortable. They're using that authority right now in a way it hasn't been used in a long time.

Speaker 2 So it looks radical.

Speaker 4 It's not

Speaker 2 violated the law.

Speaker 9 Well, technically, yeah.

Speaker 10 I'm not losing a whole lot of sleep.

Speaker 10 Well,

Speaker 2 it's been a good run, America. It's looked like we're becoming less like the Constitutional Republic it's been for 250 years and more like the monarchy that we all fought to escape from.

Speaker 2 But I think the important thing to

Speaker 2 be on

Speaker 2 The prodigal son appears to have returned. What?

Speaker 2 Is that...

Speaker 2 Wait, is that... Hold on.
Do my eyes deceive me?

Speaker 2 Is that young John Oliver? Are you here to offer America your wisdom and counsel? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, John. I'm here to gloat.

Speaker 2 America had its little fun, didn't you? Experimenting with democracy. You fought so hard to get away from us, acting up, throwing all that tea into the harbour.

Speaker 2 You still owe us for that, by the way.

Speaker 2 I mean, how much it was just tea, John. It was...
It was just tea?

Speaker 2 You take that back! You take that back. I'm lying out.
I know. I know.
But the point is, it's a sensitive beverage. The point is.
You told everybody that you were going to be different.

Speaker 2 You weren't going to turn out like your mean old dad who was so horrible to you when you were growing up. So we sat back.

Speaker 2 We let you spend your wild teen years experimenting with your ridiculous ideas of checks and balances because

Speaker 2 deep down we knew that once you got that nonsense out of your system, you'd be backed. In fact, if I may sing from Hamilton.

Speaker 2 I'd really,

Speaker 2 I'd appreciate not.

Speaker 2 That's fair. What I'm saying is let me be the first to welcome America to its monarchy era.

Speaker 2 Congratulations everyone. You can now take your place in the pantheon of great empires alongside the British, the Roman, the Klingon, Wakanga, whatever one Babal the Elephant was the ruler of.

Speaker 2 I forget. Hold on a second, Mr.
Oliver. Yes.
If I may, Ambassador Oliver,

Speaker 2 for a moment, please. America, yes.
We are having a bit of trouble with democratic governance, but I don't think we want to abandon our republic and go full empire. Yeah, but why not, John?

Speaker 2 You really prefer the system that you have right now? Oh, only 51 votes for a bill to pass. Is the vice president in town to break a tie?

Speaker 2 Wait, is this one of the bills that needs 60 votes for no clear reason? Well, I'm sorry, little Timmy. No health care for you.
All right.

Speaker 2 It does not sound great when you put it like that. Oh, you mean when I put it entirely accurately, John? It doesn't sound great.

Speaker 2 What I'm saying is don't fight being a monarchy, John. Embrace it.
Kings get shit done. Now, is it stuff that you want done? Not necessarily, but they do move quick.

Speaker 2 They taste Kumin at lunch and they've taken over an entire continent by dinner time. That is how the British rolls, John.
F everyone else. They're not like us.
In fact, if I may say a line from Mr.

Speaker 2 Kendrick Lamar. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I really,

Speaker 2 I really don't think you should do that. I appreciate you for stopping me on that one, Helen.

Speaker 2 Not to be short-sighted, but spoiler alert,

Speaker 2 John,

Speaker 2 things didn't end up so great for the British Empire.

Speaker 2 First of all, how dare you?

Speaker 2 We are technically between empires at the moment, but we're keeping our castles warm and our crowns bejeweled for the day that we get back onto our feet. Look, no offense.

Speaker 2 But I'm not sure the imperial model is for us. Oh, really?

Speaker 2 The imperial model isn't for you, John. Have you seen anything America's done over the last 50 years?

Speaker 2 Because for a country that doesn't want to be an empire, you're doing a pretty f ⁇ ing good impression of one right now.

Speaker 2 Invasions, economic exploitations are now suggesting turning Gaza into a beachfront casino. Even King George would have been like, I don't know, guys.

Speaker 2 Feels like the situation's a bit more complicated than that, and I'm literally dying of medieval brain disease. You know know what?

Speaker 2 He was. He was doing that.

Speaker 2 He was dying of medieval brain disease. It drove me crazy but he could see that it was an unreasonable request.

Speaker 2 We really...

Speaker 2 We really have become our father. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And you know what, John? Don't be sad about it. We couldn't be more proud.
This shouldn't be a sad time. The arc of history is so long, it eventually becomes a circle,

Speaker 2 and you end up right where you started. You might even call it the circle of life.
In fact, if I may see the great Imperial subject, Sir Elton John's opening Zulu chance from the Lion King.

Speaker 2 Please stop me, John. Please.

Speaker 2 Please stop me from doing that. I do not want to do it.
John, please stop me. Please stop me.
I don't want to go out like this. Stop me, John.
Stop it.

Speaker 2 John Oliver, everybody. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 joining us. We'll go away.
What?

Speaker 2 Hey everyone, Mr. Rossio, my guest tonight,

Speaker 2 a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, and longtime editor of The New Yorker, which is celebrating 100 years with a special anniversary issue out today. Please welcome David Remnick, sir.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you for being here.

Speaker 2 Very exciting. 100 years of the New Yorker.
And this, a special treat, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know if you can see this.
It is their swimsuit edition. It is.

Speaker 2 Is this the original cover from

Speaker 4 1925?

Speaker 2 This is the first cover that was on the New Yorker.

Speaker 4 That's right.

Speaker 4 Ray Irvin was the artist, and they put it out, and it went on the newsstands. Harold Ross was the editor.
Raoul Fleischmann, a yeast fortune behind the magazine. Sure.
And it sold nothing.

Speaker 2 It sold nothing. It didn't do videos.
Even with all that yeast money behind it. Didn't arise.

Speaker 2 You should enter that in the caption contest, David. John Oliver

Speaker 2 warmed it up. Maybe he warmed it up pretty good out there.
And this is...

Speaker 4 They almost closed the whole thing down after three months. Really? They almost gave up on the whole thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah. What was it that turned it?

Speaker 2 Why in three months? Did something happen with this one?

Speaker 4 It was meant to be just a purely comic, jazz age, 1920s, pre-depression thing.

Speaker 4 And they were going to close it down after three months, and then they had a good piece about the Scopes monkey trial.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 2 I watched it on court TV. It's fantastic.

Speaker 2 And Harry Potter. Winnie Paltrow.

Speaker 4 And then I swear to God, what took off on the newsstand was a piece, you're not going to believe this, about cabarets and nightclubs and things like this.

Speaker 4 And people were fascinated and it flew off the newsstand. And the next thing you know, we were a big success.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 2 At that time, were the illustrations the majority of it or were the articles the majority of it?

Speaker 4 Oh, it was purely little bits and pieces. And the first profile that ever ran, and we're famous for longer pieces.

Speaker 2 Did you know?

Speaker 4 The first piece that ever ran as a profile was a one-page profile of the head of the Metropolitan Opera showbiz.

Speaker 2 Showbiz.

Speaker 2 One page. And you know, the writer was like, 500 words, I'll never make it.
And it was awful. It was dreadful.
Really? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And now, 100 years later, then, when you're carrying the mantle of something that has been here for so long, though, it does present

Speaker 2 an extra burden and challenge. You don't want to be the guy that's the last guy.

Speaker 2 You don't want to be the last guy out the building, and it's changed so much. So, in this more challenging

Speaker 2 media environment,

Speaker 2 to do long-form gloss,

Speaker 2 you buy this and you, I don't remember what that's called, but you look at it. And read.
Read. Read.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And read more. What?

Speaker 4 Yeah, there aren't little dots and one-sentence summaries of world events.

Speaker 2 Son of a bitch. No,

Speaker 4 it is in defiance of every trend that we think is happening. But look, I think that people actually want to know.
They want to know what's going on in the world.

Speaker 4 They want to know what's going on in Washington. They want to know what's going on with other people's lives and have some empathy for it.
They want to laugh. And that's what we're trying to do.

Speaker 4 It's a... pretty inclusive formula.

Speaker 2 I will say, for me,

Speaker 2 because the circadian rhythm of the news has become the circadian rhythm of Twitter, I almost think it's leading that sort of

Speaker 2 incentivized outrage and hate and things that I find great solace in long-form journalism.

Speaker 2 It really is a comfort food, but also

Speaker 2 There's not a lot of people out there who are taking the time to contextualize things.

Speaker 4 Well, I think there are more people than you think. I mean,

Speaker 4 a million two, a million three people subscribe to the magazine. I hope it'll be more, especially after this night.
I think all.

Speaker 2 There's nothing shameful.

Speaker 2 They're mostly sports fans. They're not interested.

Speaker 4 My first job, sports writer for the Washington Post.

Speaker 2 Really? Yeah. I didn't even know they had athletic teams.

Speaker 4 They had what's now called the Commodores.

Speaker 2 Oh, very nice. I thought it was a singing group.

Speaker 4 It's exciting.

Speaker 4 I think people want to find out more than just ridiculous tweets, and they want to know what's going on, and they want fairness and fact-checking and a sense of decency, and they also want some media outlets that aren't knuckling under.

Speaker 2 Not intimidated by the moment.

Speaker 4 And that's our promise to you. And

Speaker 4 I think that we're looking for another 100 years, but I'd like to get past the next four, quite frankly.

Speaker 2 Is this, have you, you've been in this a long time.

Speaker 2 Is this a media moment that is reminiscent to you of any other analogous?

Speaker 4 It's not even reminiscent of the first Trump term.

Speaker 2 This is

Speaker 2 immensely,

Speaker 4 in a weird way, more competent.

Speaker 4 I know that sounds very strange, but they seem to have come to the game very determined to do a ton of things fast and overwhelm you and overwhelm me and everybody here and to see what they're doing.

Speaker 2 As though they have a project in mind that they were going to...

Speaker 2 I don't know what year it was named for, but damn it.

Speaker 4 But there's a shrewdness to it. And part of the shrewdness is contingent on the weakness of the Democrats and the confusion of the Democrats at the moment.

Speaker 4 And the sport of the election, quite frankly, there are a lot of people behind them.

Speaker 4 And our job is to get it right and to get it fair and to get it factual and to not just be yelling and screaming screaming and wagging our fingers with polemics, but to really describe these things with some sense of seriousness.

Speaker 4 And I think people want that.

Speaker 2 Is there a break glass moment for you in this? You know, we talked about it earlier with the audience about not overreacting to each individual outrage and moment. And is that frustrating?

Speaker 2 Do we keep ourselves on DEF CON?

Speaker 2 And I don't know which one is the worst.

Speaker 4 Nine, ten.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I notice sometimes when I go out to dinner with this person or that person and meet friends, whatever, every once in a while, in fact quite a lot, somebody will say to me, you know what?

Speaker 4 I've signed off on the news. I'm not watching it.
I can't take it. I have to, you know, protect myself.
It's too much.

Speaker 2 I understand that instinct.

Speaker 4 I understand it, but while you're doing that,

Speaker 4 Trump keeps going. Politics keeps going.
The world keeps happening. And you may choose to protect yourself, but then you're part of the problem, I'm afraid.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no. We were talking again.

Speaker 2 Action is the antidote for that anxiety. The question is,

Speaker 2 what have you learned from deterring this kind of executive action?

Speaker 2 Because the real moment to me will be that sort of Marbury versus Madison moment where, you know, they'll say, well, we'll enforce it. Well, who enforces it? I guess the U.S.
Marshals. And if the U.S.

Speaker 2 Marshals work for the DOJ and the DOJ is run by somebody who tells them, no, don't enforce it. That's happening right now.

Speaker 4 Right now, the president is overstepping executive power, not once, not twice, but in multiple ways.

Speaker 4 And courts are going to have to stand up to do what courts need to do. The press needs to describe it

Speaker 4 in all its fullness and accuracy. Citizens need to do what citizens are capable of doing.

Speaker 4 And it requires everybody. And the Democratic Party,

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 Congressman Goldman did not exactly present the face of a warrior.

Speaker 2 It might have been my favorite moment that I've seen where we go, like, what are the Democrats Democrats going to do? And he's like,

Speaker 2 hopefully one of the Republicans will be like, this is crazy.

Speaker 2 We shouldn't,

Speaker 2 I want to lose.

Speaker 4 Chapter 12 in Profiles and Courage.

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Do you, as you've, and you've spent time talking to people that are obviously very

Speaker 2 informed within Democratic Party, it's their beat.

Speaker 2 Do they sense there is anything, I look at this as, this is a 50-year project that the Republicans have run to

Speaker 2 reset the country to its not just pre-great society, not just pre-New Deal, but as even Trump is saying, like robber-barren ethos.

Speaker 4 But that's a political battle. Some of that is a political battle that's natural over

Speaker 4 over federal spending, for example, over culture wars. It's not a mystery that we have such

Speaker 4 no, this this is about breaking the norms of the Constitution and the law, and what are you going to do about it? Right. That's different.

Speaker 2 So what are, if you were going to say, you know, the people, there's going to be protests, there's going to be those things. But at this moment, it is broadly popular.

Speaker 2 The agenda that has been enacted is

Speaker 2 if we had a revote today, he would probably do better. than how he did once I think CBS said 52, 53 percent.

Speaker 2 Which for him is a lance. I mean, that's for any president really in this day and age to have that kind of popularity is really unusual.

Speaker 4 Yep. So I think we're headed toward a big crisis.
I really do. And I think we're in the midst of it.

Speaker 2 Right. I really do.

Speaker 2 Okay. Well, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 It's incredible to me how there really is a rudderlessness amongst the opposition party. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, the opposition party is the Democratic Party that's licking its wounds. It's beating itself up for what happened, and rightly so,

Speaker 4 in terms of the Biden decision to run a second time or the decision to kind of have a

Speaker 4 willing suspension of disbelief on where Biden was in terms of popularity or his age. Well,

Speaker 4 there's a kind of

Speaker 4 sense of injury, embarrassment, and withdrawal. But enough already.

Speaker 4 Enough already.

Speaker 2 Sack up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Did you hear hear that? I'm going to say this right now.

Speaker 2 The editor of one of the most esteemed magazines in American history just told the Democrats,

Speaker 2 sack up.

Speaker 2 Shocking. You heard it here first in the house.

Speaker 2 Shocking.

Speaker 2 But look,

Speaker 4 what you described,

Speaker 4 which is that you have a historical trend and then there's a reaction to it, and this has happened any number of times. I fully expect and hope that that will happen again in some form or another.

Speaker 4 Again, it is not the job of the press, and this may disappoint some of you,

Speaker 4 to be at the head of the barricades shaking the fist and leading the charge. It is to describe so that you're fully in possession of the facts

Speaker 4 and points of view are expressed, and then you do with it what you will in a democracy. That is a really important function.

Speaker 2 Do you really think the Democrats problem is a messaging problem? I think it's, I don't know what they stand for. I don't know what they're saying.

Speaker 4 It's three weeks old. What is it? Three weeks old.
Four weeks old?

Speaker 2 This is not a problem. People did not believe.

Speaker 4 I think people did not fully take on board that what Donald Trump was saying that he was going to do in all those speeches that we

Speaker 4 either laughed about or disbelieved or

Speaker 4 kind of let fly by or were foolish enough to believe that he would lose.

Speaker 4 They did not quite take on board the full reality, the fullness of what he was going to do, how fast it was going to come, and with what sense of diabolical organization.

Speaker 4 Because you have to say, it is just coming so fast at people

Speaker 4 in terms of the press, in terms of public opinion, in terms of the Democratic Party, that people are on their heels.

Speaker 4 And I, you know, hope that doesn't last for,

Speaker 4 because there's no time,

Speaker 4 if you keep ceding that

Speaker 4 to Trump, a lot of damage is going to be done very, very quickly.

Speaker 2 I almost wonder, you almost want to say to them, you have to exist outside of him. It's as though they define themselves almost entirely by reactions to his movements, you know.

Speaker 4 But the problem is that he's president and he's maximizing executive power as quickly and as fully as he possibly can.

Speaker 4 And unless you have a coherent reaction to that,

Speaker 4 whether it's in Congress or the press or the greater world or on the street, you're going to lose a lot. Ultimately, he might get pushed back.

Speaker 4 Ultimately, in two years, there might be a midterm election that weakens him. Ultimately, he may overplay his hand in this court case or that court case, and he loses.

Speaker 4 But a lot of damage is going to be done to a lot of human beings. And also, the one thing that we haven't mentioned is

Speaker 4 the quality of cruelty to all this. Not just illegality.

Speaker 2 It seems like that's the point of it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 just the cruelty about the description of trans people

Speaker 4 and our fellow brothers and sisters who are immigrants or have birthright citizenship. There is

Speaker 4 a tone of

Speaker 4 insult and the desire to damage.

Speaker 2 If you were to come to me and say, I want to make government more efficient, I want to make it more effective, there's a lot of things in the way that we do it and it doesn't work, I'd be highly on board with that.

Speaker 2 It's something that

Speaker 2 I've discreet about it for years.

Speaker 4 I can fully believe it, and any government agency, whether it's USAID or whatever it might be. Yes.

Speaker 4 But the notion of putting somebody in charge of the

Speaker 4 health, the public health of this country, who's a conspiracy theorist

Speaker 4 and a liar.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 4 that's strange.

Speaker 2 They don't view it in that way, though. So I think that's part of the disconnect is they're not viewing it through that lens.

Speaker 2 What they're viewing it as a fighter who's done their own research and awoken to the corruption of the government.

Speaker 2 And my point is, if the government is the only power strong enough to stand up to international corporatist interest, there is no other anything.

Speaker 2 And if you think rapacious greed is going to make your health care better, and if you think rapacious greed is going to make pharmaceutical companies come to heal or oil companies come to heal, I don't know what you're looking at.

Speaker 2 Without government effectively managing those instincts,

Speaker 2 what are we handing this all over to?

Speaker 4 This is what's new between the first Trump term and the second term.

Speaker 4 I lived for four years in the Soviet Union, in the last years of the Soviet Union, and then kept coming back and now I can't go anymore for obvious reasons. But

Speaker 2 what did you do in the Soviet Union?

Speaker 2 It's running a little bit. I can't go anywhere around 100 years of reasons.
And I'm like, did you kill a dude in the Soviet Union?

Speaker 2 Just a few, but you don't need to know about that.

Speaker 2 What? I was your reporter. Oh, you were a reporter to reporter for 40 years.
Oh, I was a reporter for a while.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 4 I was coming to a place that for 70 odd years had lived...

Speaker 4 lives not only of censorship, but of self-censorship and a kind of relationship to the government where you were not a citizen, you were a subject.

Speaker 4 And I had the thrilling experience as a witness to see this seemingly come to an end, to liberalize, to have the promise of democracy, to see miraculously that Mikhail Gorbachev had come along and open the door.

Speaker 4 History can move in that direction, and God willing it will.

Speaker 2 I've heard that the arc of it is long and bends towards justice. It's long but aggravating.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 4 But now it's, you know, it went in the other direction, and the oligarchs took over this country in concert with Vladimir Putin and before him Yeltsin. And to see at an inauguration

Speaker 4 a few weeks ago of the tech titans of this world

Speaker 4 sitting in the best seats in the House right behind the President of the United States is was the most ominous thing. It was even more ominous than the speech itself.

Speaker 4 Because those guys are seemingly willing to to say and do anything to protect their gigantic business interests. And that

Speaker 4 is a further recipe for disaster. We've seen it before in this country, but we've never seen it energized by and supercharged by social media and the tools that they have at hand.

Speaker 2 I don't know why.

Speaker 4 I'm bumming you out.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 I remain

Speaker 2 optimistic

Speaker 2 because the history of this country is such resilience through peaks and valleys that we were sure were

Speaker 2 fatal blows.

Speaker 2 It's different than these other, you know,

Speaker 2 we are, for the adolescents of America being 250 years old, we are a more mature democracy than I think a lot of those countries.

Speaker 2 We have a history and a pattern of civic engagement at local and state levels that I think will prove even if the body politic at that level begins to erode. But people have to wake up.

Speaker 4 We have our job at the door if we don't have your job. I think everybody here can't sit back either.

Speaker 2 I think we need a game plan. Honestly, I don't think it's that people aren't awake.

Speaker 2 I think they feel rudderless and thirsty for inspiring leadership that feels principled and has a plan of action that can turn this

Speaker 2 into something.

Speaker 2 I don't think the American people want this corrosive day-to-day. I truly don't believe that.
That doesn't mean they don't want a secure border.

Speaker 2 It doesn't mean they don't want law and order in their cities. It doesn't mean that they don't want some other common sense things that have been done.
They don't want the other part.

Speaker 4 I agree with you. And I,

Speaker 2 for once.

Speaker 2 So by agreeing with me, I have now officially been published in the New Yorker. You got it.

Speaker 4 By the way, not for the first time. You've been published in the New Yorker, and we're still waiting for pieces from you.
What do you got? A job or something?

Speaker 2 I was in the New Yorker. Yeah.

Speaker 4 You wrote pieces for Shouts and Murmurs.

Speaker 2 Did I really? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I can't imagine how happy my mother was.

Speaker 2 The door is always open. David.
As always, a pleasure. The New Yorker.
Rose Remnant.

Speaker 2 Anniversary issues out there. David Remniff.
We're going to take a quick break and be right back.

Speaker 2 That's our job for tonight, everybody. Before we go, we're going to check in with your host for the rest of the week, Mr.
Jordan Clapper Jordan.

Speaker 2 Boom!

Speaker 2 What's up? What's up?

Speaker 13 Well, John, we'll continue our coverage of America's Descent into Fascism, report on the president's onslaught on the Constitution, and give 10 blowjob tips that'll make your man say bazinga.

Speaker 13 What?

Speaker 13 Well, well, Friday is Valentine's Day and just because our country's in trouble doesn't mean our love lives have to be.

Speaker 13 Want to hear one of the tips now?

Speaker 11 It involves a grapefruit.

Speaker 2 Okay, just

Speaker 2 before everybody, welcome in. And also, by the way, before you go, join myself and a bunch of other fine, fine comics at Comic Relief Stand Up for LA.
It's on March 3rd in this New York City.

Speaker 2 For more info and to buy tickets or donate, please go to the link below

Speaker 2 and get your free blow job tips. It's right all.

Speaker 2 Let's see, go.

Speaker 2 Here it is. Your moment is in.

Speaker 2 Sky high signing and President Trump ushers in Gulf of America Day.

Speaker 12 Try that on. Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America.
Everyone listen to this. Gulf of America Day.

Speaker 2 Gulf of America Day.

Speaker 1 Gulf of America Day.

Speaker 14 It's the Gulf of America. Things are changing.
The world is anew.

Speaker 11 Explore more shows from the Daily Show Podcast Universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts.

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

Speaker 4 Paramount Podcasts.

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