The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Bad Luck Trump Ruins Knicks' Winning Streak & Spencer Pratt Loses L.A.'s Mayor Race | Laverne Cox

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

The Knicks took an L in Game 3 of the NBA Finals while Trump took a nap, and the president turns a blind eye to another loss: Spencer Pratt in the L.A. mayoral race. Upset at the drawn-out ballot count and falling rank of his fellow reality TV star Republican, Trump pulls the "rigged election" card, but Troy Iwata insists that this is just the way things are done in L.A., so chill. Much like his apps, Mark Zuckerberg has gotten a lot of updates over the years. From boy genius-ish to king of the Metaverse to one of Trump's besties, the Zuck has worn many hats and generated tons of controversy along the way. Follow his shape-shifting journey from dorm-room entrepreneur to science fiction overlord in The Daily Showography of Mark Zuckerberg: Human Status Update. Award-winning actress and LGBTQ+ advocate Laverne Cox joins Desi to talk about her new memoir “Transcendent.” They discuss some of the traumatic events of her childhood that she recounts in the book, how dance and creativity were a saving grace in her life, and how she has worked to find healing, purpose, and self-love in her adulthood. Cox also brings awareness to the Right’s coordinated campaign against trans people, especially in the courts where rights are being stripped away from trans people in real time, and explains how these attacks weaken the rights of every citizen. -- The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central. Stream full episodes on Paramount+ Follow TDS: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to include instant withdrawals. Download the BetMGM app and enjoy the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs like never before. Betmgm.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-260 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant

to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. BetMGM, an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League, has everything you need for 26 Stanley Cup playoff action. Hockey fans in Canada can place live bets every game during the quest for the Cup. Create same game parlays, take player props, and place futures on the 26 Stanley Cup champion. Check out BetMGM original bets, hockey markets you can't find anywhere else.

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Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-260 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. 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 Show with your host, Desi Linen. Grace has a plot twist. Mark Zuckerberg tries to delete his history, and Trump grabs a nap during game three. When you're a star, they let you do it. So let's get into the headlines.

Tonight was Game 3. of the NBA finals. And I know, I know the Knicks' loss was hard on New Yorkers. But let's take the high road, okay? And acknowledge the MVP who won it for the Spurs.

Game 3 referee Mark Davis. Dude. What the hell was that? I mean, don't get me wrong, I think it's great that the NBA let someone watch their first game ever right from the court. But you do realize

the B and B ball doesn't stand for a blindball bitch, right? Nice, okay. In fact, we all chipped in together to get you a gift card to lens crafters, you blind ball bitch. This was the first finals game in New York in 27 years. The celebrities came out. You had Timothy Shalameh, Derek Jeter, DJ Khalid looking at his phone, Ben Stiller, Spike Lee, DJ Khalid still looking at it. Larry David. Inside, at the finals, unless you were Googling how to go down on your white paper, Pay attention.

Go in attendance last night was the only New Yorker who spends more time in court than the Nix, President Donald Jumpshot. The city gave him a very New York welcome. Rights and rise. ... for the commander in chief. That's president pussy to you. Who would it means to have every single person in New York booing you? Even a guy taking a shit on the subway will have one New Yorker cheering him on.

What can I say? I love to see a man comfortable in his own skin. Ten years later, we're still married. But yeah, all that incessant booing, he must have been devastated. It was certainly amazing. It was, I think, mostly cheers. I guess the DOJ redacted all the booze before they hit his ears. I like that Trump was there or not. He is a lifelong Knicks fan, so he wasn't going to let some haters stop him from enjoying every second of the game. of the game. During the game, President Trump appeared to fall asleep.

Burry, Mark Davis. Every time you microwave something, it's just a little bit cold in the middle. From New York to the only other city in the world, Los Angeles. Because Trump was also having a bad night there. A major shake-up in the race to be mayor of Los Angeles. Reality TV stars Spencer Pratt, the Republican who was endorsed by President Trump, was running second for a very long time, but he fell to third place as the rest of the primary votes started coming in. President Trump now raising unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, posting on true social, not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,

rigged elections. They're cheating on the election. Do you have evidence to support that? All I have to do is look. All I have to do is look. All you have to do is look, people. It's right there in front of you. I know it sounds easy, but for Donald Trump, it's getting harder and harder these days.

Idle curiosity. Do Republicans have any actual evidence for this rigging? What evidence is there to prove that there was a ring? Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that is impossible to prove. Diabolical. The fact that there is no evidence is the evidence. See?

See? Voter fraud isn't about what you can prove up here. It's about what you feel in here. and what you can pull out of here. They have taken some time to get where they are, but that doesn't mean it's rigged. Also, I'm sure they're going to finish the vote counting any minute now. California has a lot of rules that make this very, very slow.

They have a complicated system where if somebody does a mail-in vote that is mailed before actual election day, it can be counted over the next seven days. Nearly a week after election day, the state's most populated county says it still has about 355, thousand mail-in ballots to process. Holy shit. Why is it taking so long, California? Are you counting the ballots? Are you having tantric sex with them? Look, California, I know you want to make sure everyone gets a chance to vote, but the longer you take with the ballots, the more you open up the door to mistrust in the process.

That being said, Republicans, you guys can't just go around screaming something is rigged every time you lose. It's embarrassing. Take the L with dignity and pride and all. and honor, which is something that game three referee, Mark David, knows no. The mayor's race in Los Angeles, we turn to our very own, Troy Iwada. Give us some insight into why this count is taking so long. Whoa, Desi, slow down. Okay, I just woke up.

You're talking so fast. Okay, well, wake up. You're at work. Get it together. Okay, sorry. All right, what's up? What's up is we need to know why this ballot count is taking, so long. It's raising suspicions about voter fraud.

Relax. There's no fraud, no corruption. L.A. just, they just do things differently. It's more laid back. We'll get it done, dude. We need some details into why the accountant has dragged on. Oh my God, you're being so loud. Okay. Um, look, in L.A. we get mostly mail-in votes, okay? Like this one. Let's see. Troy, that's a headshot. Yeah, yeah. In L.A., people send a headshot with every piece of mail, okay? But there's a lot of information to confirm.

For example, can this person really do a Bulgarian accent? You know, until we can verify that, this vote cannot be counted. Oh, look, look. She was a co-star on Nurse Jackie, fucking Merrill Streep over here. None of that has to do with voting eligibility. Oh, okay, but age verification does. You have to be 18 to vote. But this lady claims she's 26 but can play 16 to 22.

So, technically that's valid, but if you ask me, that's what's really fraudulent. Not everyone can play 16. I mean, not everyone can. Some can, some can, some can, but not everyone. Yeah. Right? Some people can, right? They verify the voters age, then they can count the ballots. Oh, not yet. No. First, LA requires that they start with an acknowledgement that this election is taking place on stolen land.

Right, right. In honor of Native Americans. No, no, Katie Perry. Katie Perry. Because this polling place, it used to be her home until a bunch of greedy nuns forced her to sell it. That history is so dark. This doesn't validate the criticism that election officials don't have the focus and the professionalism to get through this process smoothly.

Troy. Troy, where'd you go? Hmm? Sorry, I had to get an ice coffee. I have like a three-hour drive after this. Where are you going? It's like a mile down the street. Voters trust that their election officials are guaranteeing the process.

Well, L.A. does have very strict ID requirements to vote. Okay, you need to have an ID or say you have an ID. Or you have to be at least a six. Isn't that voter suppression? No, no, no, no, because you can have the face of a four but the body of an eight and it, like, averages out. It's just math. If you're a 12, you can vote twice. So you're saying I could vote twice?

It's like maybe the process is complicated, but those ballot counters are really working hard. Oh, definitely. They're working around the clock from like 11 to 3. Thanks, Troy. Keep us updated throughout the process. Okay, you know, I'd love to, Desi, but I just realized this is whole milk. It's not soy. So I'm about to, as they say in L.A., shit myself. Troy Ywater, everyone. Picture this. It's late at night and you're scrolling through your feeds when all of a sudden you see it. that one product that you've been looking for.

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash daily show. Go to Shopify.com slash daily show. Shopify.com slash daily show. A few weeks from met a CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He had to lay off thousands of employees while everyone was making fun of his super yacht. But what keeps him going through these hardships? Let's find out in a brand new daily showography. From the moment we're born, we're all trying to define ourselves.

Who our friends are, what we believe in, which side is our good side? But what if you have no beliefs, no friends, and no good side? This is the Daily Showography of Mark Zuckerberg, Human Status Update. Even before he was out of beta, Mark Zuckerberg had amassed numerous adorable photos that would make his profile seem less like a sociopaths. By the age of 12, he displayed a gift for computer programming, the skill that took him to Harvard University, that revered bastion of high-achieving lonely boys,

and he could not have been happier. Yay. What? I got accepted. Are you serious? Yeah. It was at Harvard in 2004 that Mark would create the Facebook. This was in your dorm room?

Yeah. You launched Facebook in your dorm room. Yeah. The website was an instant. smash. For reasons even Mark, sometimes didn't seem to understand. There's this feature called poking where you just go to someone's profile and you could poke the person. Like, what does that do? Nothing. I mean, it's like I thought about it when I was drunk. While his DMs calling his fellow students dumb fuchs for trusting him with their data wouldn't come out until years later, Facebook's

rise wasn't without controversy, a drama immortalized in the social network. And rather than recap this period, let's just watch it real quick. Done. Wow. Those army hammers are going to be working forever. Like all Hollywood stories, some details were exaggerated. Mark wasn't as cool as the movie made him seem. Did I adequately answer your condescending question? But he also wasn't as lame either. That stupid movie, the whole narrative arc around my motivations,

I'm somehow motivated by trying to find a girlfriend. It's like, I was dating Priscilla before I started Facebook. Yes, the media spotlight forced Zuckerberg to bravely confess the truth that he totally boned in college. But after the movie, Zuckerberg realized that he needed a more adult update to his public profile. Something manly. The 27-year-old founder of Facebook now says he is only going to eat meat from animals that he personally kills. Revealed, of course, in a posting on Facebook that said, I just killed a pig and a goat.

Zuckerberg was upgrading everything. He learned Chinese. He tried his hand at comedy. Come on, I invented poking. He got new friends and a new wardrobe. My name is Barack Obama, and I'm the guy who got Mark to wear a jacket and tie. And he updated his relationship status, marrying the girl he was totally hooking up with in college, no matter what that stupid movie said.

You're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. That wouldn't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole. Who's the asshole now? Girl that doesn't exist. But Zuckerberg's biggest update. was changing from a guy who builds companies to a guy who buys them. Because you can't put a price on success until you can't.

No longer the college kid who just wanted to take personal data from dumb f***ks, Zuckerberg assured the public that the new mature Facebook would be a force for good in the world. I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as others. For blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, it takes courage to choose hope over. fear. This mark would be a man of conscience, not afraid to exile Donald Trump for spreading lies. Reborn as a liberal hero, his new friend group would be everyone on earth. No one would ever be mad at him ever again. This is CNN breaking news. International outrage about a data analytics firm that harvested information from Facebook. And that's over. Time for a new update. A new mission

is to bring the world closer together. Instead of everybody's pal, he would now be their science, fiction overlord. For Zuckerberg had become so powerful, the bounds of the physical world could no longer contain him. I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta. From now on, we're going to be Metaverse first, not Facebook First. There was no doubt in Zuckerberg's mind that the Metaverse would have legs. Legs. Truly, the future had arrived. Three years later, Mehta is announcing the shutdown of Metaverse after pouring $80 billion into the project. And that's over. Time for a new update.

We have been working on glasses for more than 10 years at Meta. This is Meta Rayban display. So I think our call will be coming in any moment now. Boss, what's have video call? There we go. Uh-oh. Try it again. I keep on messing this up.

I don't know what to tell you guys. You don't have to tell us anything. These AI glasses sell themselves. And once again, Zuckerberg's corporate update came with the physical one. When you walked in here today, you look thicker. You look like a different guy. You do. You look like a jiu-jitsu guy now.

I saw your neck. I'm like, his neck's bigger. Your neck is bigger. I mean, I drink a very large amount of protein. Yeah. A gold chain. Crushing breed dogs while wake surfing and jamming with his good and probably well-compensated friend T-pane. Oh, skit-skine motherfucker.

Oh, skeep, skiske-skid goddamn. It's not technically a midlife crisis if you're going to live forever in the cloud. And naturally, this status update came with a political reawakening too. Masculine energy, I think, is good. Having a culture that, like, celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits.

That's right. Welcome back. Donald Trump. I think President Trump just wants America to win. Seeing Donald Trump get up after going shot in the face and pump it. This fist in the air is one of the most badass things I've ever seen in my life. But an innovator like Mark Zuckerberg will never truly settle down. And we can only look forward to more delicious status updates to come.

If I'm ever done with meta, I'm going to run Mark's meats. Imagine some smoked meats. Yeah, if there's one thing about Mark that never changes, it's believing that no matter what dumb idea he has next, people will swallow it. Eat up, dumb fuchs. BetMGM, an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League, has everything you need for 2026 Stanley Cup playoff action. Hockey fans in Canada can place live bets every game during the quest for the Cup.

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Betmgmgm.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-260 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. BetMGM, an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League,

has everything you need for 2026 Stanley Cup playoff action. Hockey fans in Canada can place live bets every game during the quest for the cup. Create same game parlays, take player props, and place futures on the 26 Stanley Cup champion. Check out BetMGM original bets, hockey markets you can't find anywhere else. And it's not just about what you can do on game day. The BetMGM app has improved its first. line this season to include instant withdrawals.

Download the BetMGM app and enjoy the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs like never before. Betmgm.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-260 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario.

It's called Transcendant. Please welcome Laverne Cox. I should take them everywhere with me. Yes. Thank you. Nice. They're a good audience. They're hot.

Hi. Does this go lower? No, it doesn't. Okay. I'm 54. It's hard to get down to me. Actually, I can still get down and so getting back up. But you're here.

It's so good to see you. It's so good to see you. You do too. My God. We, the two of us, got to meet at a New York City event supporting the arts. We were, miraculously, I got to sit next to you after I changed the name cards.

And here we are. It's amazing. And you, I adore you. And you're like, you're so good at what you do. I love amazing, smart women. The DJ Kellett joke is everything. Right back at you. And I, you know, he, no shade, he should be.

really get on that. Anyway. Anyway, moving on. This, congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations on this memoir. It's beautifully written and so deeply honest. You talked about being asked many times before earlier in your career to write a book and you didn't quite feel ready yet. What made this moment perfect for you? Well, I thought I was ready to write about all the sort of childhood trauma and abuse and not be sort of re-traummed. and triggered, and I thought we had, like, a writing technique in place to help with that. But I was wrong. I was wrong, and I didn't, but I didn't want to.

When I had a book deal before, I just wasn't ready to, like, spill. It was the beginning of Orange's New Black had just come out, and I just wasn't ready to, like, spill all my guts. And a lot of it, too, was out of respect for my mother. But I didn't, and I didn't want to write a book in BS. I wanted to write a book that was honest, vulnerable. and said what really happened in my life. And that I don't have, but I'm not there anymore. That there was abuse, that there was trauma, that there was shame,

that there was like gender dysphoria and, you know, working single mom, working for jobs and not ever having enough money and all those things. But I'm not defined by those things that happened to me. I'm not defined by what people said to me. and how they treated me. Because as an adult, I'm responsible for my actions now, and I'm responsible for my mental health. So I'm good.

And without a test, there's no testimony. So this book is my testimony. And if anyone is going through something out there, and we all are, and particularly if you are, people are telling you that you can't do this because you were born in a certain place, or you were born with a certain skin color, a certain gender, or,

ethnicity or religion. This book is about transcending what other people think about us, the limitations they put on us, limitations society puts on us, and transcending the limitations we put on ourselves to ascend, to transcend into our anointed selves, a person that we were meant to be. Yes.

Yes. You want to talk details. Yes. What was that process like to write through that? Did you find it healing? Did you find any sense of closure? Did you find yourself getting rep pissed off? Rep pissed off, re-traumatized, triggered.

There were a few chapters where in the rewrite, like the second rewrite, I had a, like, I felt empowered after some of the later chapters. The childhood stuff was just got wrenching. And I think I actually had the aha I had today as I talked about this, is that I think, because I so rarely have talked about this stuff, there's stuff that my best friends,

friends don't know, that my therapist doesn't know. So yeah, girl, we go ahead. It is open. So I need to, I need to, I think some of this just not fully processed yet. It's not like fully out of my body, or I probably wouldn't have been so retramatized by it. So I have some work to do.

But like, sometimes I just, who wants to like go back to the worst times in your life where you felt like worthless? And like, shame is a huge part of my childhood and trauma. and abuse and I felt like just completely unlovable, unwanted. One detail, one specific thing is that I never knew my father and my mother did not intend to get pregnant with my brother and me.

And the one time I met my father slash sperm donor, I was in third grade, met him for the first time, and long story short, spent one night at his house with the woman he was living with, and the next day that woman dropped my brother and me off at a police station, and we ended up in an orphanage. Read the rest in the book.

It's not funny at all. It's probably, yeah, it's probably the most traumatizing thing from my childhood. Of course. Because of the abandonment, because if anyone knows anything about attachment theory, I didn't know if I'd ever see my mother again. Yeah.

And I love my mother. And she, you know, I was, we were, how, it was third grade, so it was eight, nine years old. So it was, and my mother always said that like, if you don't act right, I'm gonna put you out on the street. And so after the orphanage, I was like, okay, she's not lying. I can't, I mean, the amount of trauma and fear that a young child like that would go through, it is almost unfathomable.

I'm smiling through it now just to kind of, you know, not, you know. But yeah, it was awful. was awful and there was just a deep sense of like being unwanted, unlovable. And but God, like what's so powerful about becoming adult, like, and reading a lot, Bell Hooks, my feminist icon feminist mother, the late Great Bell Hooks, wrote in her iconic book All About Love, there's a difference between care and love. And Bell talks about her own family, that she understands that her family deeply care for her. They provided, you know, roof over her head, food on the table,

but they didn't love her because love isn't supposed to hurt. And when I read that the first time, it just hit me in my gut. And I was like, oh, that's, that was me. Yeah. That was me. And that's okay because the care helped give me to where I am now. And I'm pretty cool, I think. Yes, you are.

Yes, you are. And the other two things is never too late to have a happy. childhood. There's an inner child inside of me that still needs to play, still needs to be nurtured and cared for, and I can do that now. And I freaking love myself now, not just here, but in here, I know deeply in my core, in my, like, my core's caught up, my body's caught up, that I am lovable, and I'm worthy of love because I'm a child of God, but I'm adorable. Yes, too. Yes, you are. You are damn adorable. Ask you about, um, you. You and you have a twin brother,

and both of you found that the arts acted as kind of an escape from what was going on at home. Talk about your connection to dance and what that meant to you growing up and how it saved your life. Dancing was everything. So when I started walking, I started dancing. And then every time I saw a dance on TV,

I would learn the choreography. And I always had music in my head, and I danced around everywhere. when I'm 54, so back in the day, we still have physical education in schools. Do they still? I don't. They do.

Oh, work. Okay, work. I don't have kids. Hey, who knew? So we would have free play, at least in Alabama at the time. And during the free play, the kids would be doing their sports, whatever. I would be off to the side by myself dancing. I had music in my head and I had these characters

that I would express through movement. And it was my imagination and it took me out of Alabama. I was never in Alabama. I was like the second, I knew that there was a New York and that there was like a Broadway and a TV and a movie that I can perform in. That's where I was. And so I just always went someplace out.

So I would use dance and music in my head to do that and begged my mother for dance classes and finally in third grade. She found a program called Culture in Black and White where I got to go once a week and study dance. And it was, I can't tell you how life-saving it was. was because it was an outlet, it was a creative outlet. It gave me something to dream about and to have goals around so that I was never, like, the bullies, I mean, they obviously affected me.

I acted at the time like they didn't, but I was like, I can't be concerned about this because I have to get to New York, I have to be a star. I don't have time for this like silly kids. And for creative expression, whether you want to be an artist, or not. I'm like a huge advocate for arts in school and just arts for kids anyway. We know that kids who study music do better in math and science. And Brene Brown in her book Gives of Imperfection says that she has 10 guideposts for Wholehearted Living. Yes.

I've read him. They are... Not that I abide by them, but... I try. I try. But one of them is cultivating rest and play. And so playing and And another one, so there's rest and play. And then there's another one is about being creative. That being creative and just finding something to like activate that part of your brain

is something kind of everyone needs. And when we, I think in the artist's way, who's the chick who wrote the artist way? Whoever she is. Cameron. Cameron, yeah. The Cameron chick. Yeah.

The Cameron chick who wrote the artist's way says, Then when we move closer to our creativity, we move closer to our divinity. So creativity being artistic is actually something that we all have inside of us in different capacities. And it really, because I think like a lot of what, there is a spiritual deficit, I think, going on in our country right now on a lot of different levels.

And I'm not, I grew up very religious, I'm not an organized religion person. As a child, I went to church. Every Sunday you'll read about it in the book and believed, I read that Bible and I believed, honey. I was quoting Bible verses. I was summarizing a Sunday school lesson in church every week. They would ask a young person every week, you know, because I would go to Sunday school and then we'd go to the main service. What did you discuss in Sunday school? Who would like,

what young person would like to summarize the Sunday school lesson? I was like, me, me, me, me. So I read that Bible, you know? And that was going to be my question for you growing up in the South and attending church and having to reconcile Christianity with what you were feeling inside and who was. who you were attracted to, who you identified as. What is your relationship to faith now? How has that evolved over the years? I like to say, I left the church, but I never left God.

As I became... The truth. As I became more educated about religion, the history of religion, in high school and college, I was just like, this is a corrupt institution. If people, you know, I don't poo-poo anyone's religion, if you, I think it's a beautiful thing. You know, if people want to practice and go to church,

it was a lovely thing for me as a child. It also created a lot of shame. A lot of self-hatred, it led to a suicide attempt. But, you know, but the personal relationship with a power greater than myself, my personal relationship with my God, my source, I've never questioned that. I've never questioned the presence of a God in my life

because they have too much evidence. to suggest that they're, to suggest otherwise. So I am very grateful for God's presence in my life and I, and the clear purpose that I, that my higher power has put me here for. And I hope, imperfectly, I will continue to be able to be of service and to live in that purpose. Hopefully this book will help.

And my other work as an artist and an activist will help that. I just, that's what I think is so admirable about, your work is you everything you do is purposeful and it is to be in service of others and you can feel that and you feel that reading this book the way that this is going to help so many people out there I want to talk about your big break on Orange is the New Black you were yeah you absolutely popped off the screen on that show you stood out it and the show did give you a huge it was a huge launching pad for you, but it wasn't just about you accepting the success of that show.

You took that and you went out and you started doing speaking engagements. You turned that into a bigger opportunity for yourself. Where does that kind of drive and perseverance come from? So yes, I was very, well, when I booked Orange, I was 40 years old. And I had, yeah, I moved to New York in 1993, Orange and New Black came out in 2013. So 20 years after I moved here, thinking I'd be a star in two, three years tops,

it was 20 years later that like the big break came. So I've been in the business, I've been studying the business, I'd done a little TV here and there. So I studied the business part and I've been working on my craft, and I knew that you didn't have a lot of time maybe. I didn't know how long,

I didn't know it would be seven seasons, I didn't know if people would like it or watch it. So I was like, anytime I had an opportunity, I was like, I'm gonna hustle. Like, I'm a New Yorker. And yes, J-Lo, I love you, girl. I was not born here, but I've lived here for 33 years. And before I moved here, I was a New Yorker.

I'm sorry. And New York is all about coming here to live your dreams. It's about, like, city of immigrants. It's a city of transplants and people who come here with a dream. Anyway, you know I love you girl. I know, but girl, I'm a New Yorker, honey. Trust.

Go Nix. Go Nix. But I was really clear that I may not have enough time, so I needed to capitalize for, and my goal was to create a brand for myself that went beyond the show. And I was also keenly aware as a person deeply invested in the humanity of the community. trans people and the representation of trans people that I might be the first trans person that someone would encounter on their television. And at the time, the conversation with and about trans people in the media was not the most humanizing, not the most enlightening to allow people to see us as human beings.

And so with whatever time I had and with whatever platform I had, I wanted to try to be a part of changing that conversation. And we did for a while. And then... And then... Then here we are. And then here we are. And with a very coordinated, well-funded campaign by the right wing, that was focused grouped and tested.

And it is a lesson to be studied in how you systematically dehumanize an entire community and create a permission structure to take away their rights. I was on another television show a few days. show a few days ago and talking about like how trans rights have been taken away. And on my Instagram, some conservative gay man, a white gay man, with saying, what rights have been taken away? And he actually cut the clip where I talked about the rights they've been taken away. I told you.

Conveniently. Yeah, like overnight, over a thousand trans people in Kansas got their driver's license revoked because their trans people. And there's a new law that your driver's license has to reflect the gender you were signed at birth. So over now, no notice, no notice, like in 30 days, you're going to, this is going to, overnight, like, your licenses are no longer valid. You need to get a new license. How are you going to drive to the DMV in Kansas?

You need to Uber there, do you get a friend, but if you don't have money. Right. We've heard about passports, and it's not just about your passport reflecting your gender identity should make you feel good. But like, if I go to a foreign country, that might have some questionable human rights. And I, they look at me and they see an M on my passport, what's going on?

Right. You know? And it's a safety issue. Yeah. It's a safety issue. And also people who want to discriminate, like when you go for a job and your ID documents don't match, I, this is the history of this. Like, before we were able to change our ID documents, I know older trans people who would like,

they would go, I didn't get a job, and then they would have to present their documents, and they wouldn't match who they would look like, and they would lose the job. Voting, I mean, voting. We need ID documents that reflect who we are. That's right. ID documents are about identity.

They're not about, like, chromosomes, or, like, what you were assigned at birth. It's about... Disgusting and dehumanizing and cruel. The way that this administration is obsessed with, trans issues when it's pretty obvious that Americans care about kitchen table issues. They care about putting food on the table. They care about the price of gas.

They care about health care. They care about us staying out of endless wars. Why do you think the Republican Party is so obsessed with trans issues? Oh, girl. I miss time do you have. I think first, I mean, first of all, I think they're quite ambidextrous. So they're taking, no, I mean, look around. I gag over how they come into office

because they aren't just taking trans people's rights away. If you are a black person in the South, no more voting rights act. If you, you know, like Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has returned billions of dollars to Americans, like what an amazing agency that, like, looked into corporate fraud and scams and, like, call that out

and returned billions of dollars. to the people. Right. Who gives money to actual Americans anymore? And that agency was gutted by Doge. We could go on about the damage that Doge did. So they're very ambidectrists.

They're doing all these things at once. But one thing, I think, is that, like, they understand that if part of... They understand that trans people are the solution, really, that if a trans person can exist and be assigned to certain gender and be born a certain way, but choose themselves and choose to live authentically

beyond other people's gender expectations. If I can do it, you can do it. Everybody here can do it, whether you're trans or not. And that threatens the patriarchal structure, right? So getting trans people in line gets everybody else in line. And then, like on a legal level, it actually undermines all gender protection rights, right? When we, this is a little in the weeds,

But the Bo Stod case. Take us there. Take us there. The Boastod case in 2020 that declared six to three, by the way, in 2020 that said it is illegal to fire a trans or a gay person from their job for being trans or gay, which is a violation of Title VII. This is indeed discrimination because of sex on the basis of sex. When that was a miracle that we got that ruling in 2020, that same court is now. saying that there is no discrimination on the basis of sex when it comes to transgender kids. Their logic is, well, we're discriminating

against both trans girls and trans boys. When the issue is that the medication that a non-trans kid can get like puberty blockers, if they have precocious puberty, which puberty blockers have been around since the late 70s, early 80s, if they need hormones for whatever reason, a non-transgender kid can get those.

But if you're trans and you're getting hormones or pre-bloggers to treat gender dysphoria, you can't. But the Supreme Court said that's not discrimination. But what happens there is that ultimately, like so many, much of the president that has allowed, that allowed us to win in 2020 was about sex stereotypes. There's a case called Pricewaterhouse versus somebody. I'm an actress. I was going to say, I knew the artist's way answer. help you with that one.

Pricewaterhouse. So a woman was denied a promotion, I think in the late 80s, early 90s. She was denied a promotion because she was too masculine, didn't dress feminine enough, and was too aggressive. And they told her this. She sued. It went all the way to the Supreme Court, and they said, this is a violation of Title 7 because it's discriminating against her based on sex stereotypes.

There had been a precedent over the years, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for best work. saying that sex stereotypes, basically meaning like if you're a person assigned female at birth, you're supposed to act this way and look this way. If she were a man with the same, dressing the same way, and acting the same way, she wouldn't have been fired. So that is discrimination because of sex. And so, so then if you, and so in the Bostock case, they, and Amy Stevens, who was the trans woman in that case, she was fired because she was trans. She wrote a letter saying, I'm transitioning, and they fired her.

cut and dry, the logic there is, well, if you are assigned male at birth, you need to come to work, dress as a male, presenting as a male, and that's a sex stereotype. So that's actually discrimination because of sex. But the sports case that's going to come down in probably in a few weeks in the Supreme Court is probably going to ban trans girls from sports. Gender affirming care basically has been banned, at least in they didn't make it sweeping. The Good thing about the scrimidi cases, it wasn't sweeping across the country. It was just in that particular state, I think it was Tennessee. But I say all of that to say these court decisions and so much of what they're doing to attack trans people, mainly trans women,

negatively affects all women. That's right. All women. It erodes the protections that we've gone through the courts in Title VII, in those precedents, and even with bathrooms, with the bathroom vans, all the viral videos we see of people being accosted in bathrooms because there's literally bounties on people's heads

in like states, like, again, Kansas. If you see somebody who is in the wrong bathroom, you can report them and get a reward or something. And every time you see a viral video, it's actually not a trans person. It's actually a cis woman, a non-trans woman, who's kind of butch, or doesn't fit someone's idea of what it means to be a woman.

There was one video, it's a black woman, and she was like in the stall doing her business, and they were not banging on the door with the phone. And you need to get out of here, and she comes out of the stall, and she pulls up her shirt to show her breast. She had a bra on, but she shows her, I'm a woman, I'm a woman, and like,

these people were, so this is, this is bad for all women. Yes. And that is the point. That is the point. fascist society, we need the patriarch. Fascism needs the patriarch, needs that dear leader. And so it needs to reinstate a sort of kind of patriarchal frame to sustain itself.

And, you know, Jason Stanley, how fascism works. I don't use the term fascism loosely. He, like, outlines, do your homework, he outlines, you know, 10 things that need to be, all things need to be present for a fascist state to exist. If you read his book, you'll discover that all 10 things are here. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. I wanted to get to the end and be surprised.

I know, right? But I think we can talk forever, but I think the biggest thing around this political piece is that, like, more than anything right now, and I feel emboldened, and simultaneously scared and emboldened, because we have a punitive regime right now, but we need the truth.

now more than ever. That, like, untruth is one of the tools of factors. We need to be able to call a thing a thing, be able to say objectively, empirically that this is happening and this is what it is. And all of the obfuscation,

I mean, God, I'm going to be sitting on the Supreme Court and racism in this country. But we need to be able to call a thing a thing. And so having, we're in a really precarious moment right now, But we, I believe that we're all waking up and that citizens of this country are seeing very clearly what is happening, how their lives are not being made better

by this regime. And I hope that we'll, like, registered a vote and turn out on record numbers to beat their rigging that they're trying to do. And I hope that we can get representatives in and into Congress who will fight and who understand the state. the stakes, a lot of them don't, but I hope we can get people in who people will fight and understand the stakes, that our democracy is at stake, that our basic freedoms are at stake.

Farm, bankruptcies for family farms went up 46% last year. God. 46%. Anyway. We are in the, we're in the middle, we're right smack dab in the middle of pride. Yes. There are a lot. These are true.

There are, there are a lot of young folks out there who may have experienced. experienced some of the pain that you went through as a young person. Yeah. What would you tell them right now in this moment in time? I would tell them, do not be afraid. There is love in the world. Because different people, some parents are supportive, some aren't. If you don't have a supportive parent, maybe be careful online, but maybe there's a support

group. You don't have to meet people in person. Maybe there's a support group or an LGBT. a local LGBTQ center where you can get support and find help. You don't have to, you're not alone. You, there's nothing wrong with you. You are made exactly the way you're supposed to be and you're transness, your gayness, your lesbianism,

your bisexuality, these are all divine, beautiful things that should be celebrated and you should be celebrated. you should be celebrated. That doesn't mean you don't just work hard, make good grades, and do what you gotta do to like, you know, nothing, you know, work hard. But you deserve to be here, and you're beautiful and worthy because you were a child of God.

So hold on and have a vision that is bigger than these circumstances. Remember, like, this too shall pass, but having, for me, having something to work towards, setting concrete goals around getting the FI to Alabama to New York, wanting to be a star, and then like in the arts, and having something that I could work on and work towards

and get good at. It kept, it kept, in so many ways, it kept, like, the things affected me, but I was so focused on being the very best I could, making all A's. And it was, you know, there's issues with that. I'm in therapy. though, I'm working on it. Because my identity was defined by what I did,

not by who I was. But the good thing about that is that I found a love. I found a love of learning. I found a love of study that I have to this day. And I understand because I know my history as a black person, as black American, as a trans person, that I've come from anointed stock. My ancestors and transestors died.

for me to have this moment that I get to live in right now, which is remarkable. And even as this regime is, like, you know, literally stripping us of rights, these things are being challenged in the courts. By the grace of God, I'm still here. I watched the Tonys the other night, and there were trans folks all over the place.

Yes, yes. There are trans folks on runways, and the genie's out of the bottle. Yep. Like, if you are a young trans person and you know that you exist and that you have a right to be here and that actualizing your full self as possible, you can't put that genie back in the bottle. That's right. That's right. Oh, I just adore it for all of the work you do.

This world is a better place because you are living authentically in it. Thank you for what you do. And congratulations on everything. Thank you. BetMGM, an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League, has everything you need for 2026 Stanley Cup playoff action. Hockey fans in Canada can place live bets every game during the quest for the cup. Create same game parlays, take player props,

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I'm going Nixon 5. I feel like it's a resilient strong team. He knew every play. They're going to come out for game four and they are going to deliver. I don't know. We're busy with a lot of

important stuff right now at EPA. Like a war. 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 Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.