The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Bondi Spins Out Over Epstein Questions & Olympian Confesses Affair on Live TV  | Andrew Jarecki

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Attorney General Pam Bondi goes off the rails in front of Congress over Epstein questions, an Olympic biathlete confesses to an affair after winning a bronze medal, and Grace Kuhlenschmidt gives Jordan Klepper the easy-to-solve riddle of Trump's sudden opposition to opening a new U.S.-Canada bridge. The U.S. might have a lot of problems, but Troy Iwata reminds us that other countries aren't perfect, either! He dives into an impersonal Chinese app for checking that your loved ones are alive without having to talk to them, french fries in England trying to drown themselves in the ocean, and militarized roaches in Germany, in a new segment called "So Not Our Problem!" Award-winning filmmaker Andrew Jarecki sits down with Jordan to discuss the impact of his Oscar-nominated documentary “The Alabama Solution.” They talk about the multi-year investigation into the Alabama prison system through contraband cell phone footage, how inhumane treatment and suspicious deaths inspired a group of incarcerated men to become freedom fighters on the inside, the harsh punishments they’ve received for activism and work strikes, and how Alex Pretti’s death serves as a reminder of the power of truth-telling through cell phone footage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Ninja Lux Cafe, the three-and-one machine that makes espresso, drip coffee, and cold brew. No barista skills required. You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only sorts for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Jordan Clever. What you talk about tonight, Trump tells Canada, you shall not pass. China will let you know when you're dead. And if down-plane international sex rings were an Olympic sport,

Pam Bondi would take home the gold. So, let's get into that, let's. Let's kick things off with something uplifting. The Winter Olympics are underway. And if there's one thing I love, it's those post-victory interviews where medal winners from around the world just radiate pure joy.

I can't get enough of it. Congratulations so much on Olympic bronze. How are you? It's been the worst week of my life. Okay, a little less joy than I expected. That was Norway's Stirlahom Lagarde, who won bronze in the biathlon. But you got a bronze.

I mean, I know it's not gold, but it's still bronze. So why is he so upset? Half a year ago, I met the love of my life, the world's most beautiful, finest person. And three months ago, I made my biggest mistake, which was cheating on her. Okay, not how I would have celebrated in a post-game interview. I would have gone with a thank you mom and dad or a thank you God,

but, you know, instead you went with, guess what, world, I can't keep it in my pants. Buddy, buddy, there are other ways of dealing with your guilt. How about, I don't know, flowers, an edible arrangement, or burying the shame deep inside you and letting it fester until it explodes in a public meltdown in the freezer section of Trader Jen. I need a pizza for one because I ruined the best thing that ever happened to me. And by the way, if I was listening closely, did I hear that right that you met her six months ago?

I mean, you guys weren't even dating long enough to fart in front of each other. You were still in that honeymoon phase where you pretend you need something in the other room and go fart there. You know what? You know what? If repairing your six-month situation ship is that important, I guess it's fine to hijack the news cycle to talk about it. I'm sure your teammate, who won the gold,

had nothing more important to draw attention to. And it was an emotional win for Norway's Johann Olobotton and men's 20-kilometer individual biathlon. Thorni June dedicated it to his late teammates, who died unexpectedly in December. Oh, right. Our dead teammates! I was between honoring him or talking about how much pussy I was getting.

I was just... Come on! You hijacked that to try to win back your fling? This is basically like if instead of interrupting Taylor Swift, Kanye had interrupted the in-memorium segment. You know what? You know what? Love is a rocky road sometimes. And if this big display helped our boy get his girl back,

it was all worth it. Well, speaking to a Norwegian tabloid, the former girlfriend says it's hard to forgive what he did and that she did not appreciate him making their private issue so public. shit. Well, you know what? Look at the bright side. You didn't get your girlfriend back, but every woman you date from now on knows you can't go three months without cheating. I mean, no things aren't going well for you when even Lindsey Vaughn is like,

this guy's having a bad week. I mean, what a mess. This is why I'm always saying we need to keep men out of men's sports. You don't see the women's teams having this much drama. In the woman's 15K individual biathlon, the gold goes to Julius Simone of France. Last fall, she was found guilty by a French court of theft and credit card fraud and given a three-month suspended prison sentence after stealing the credit card numbers of a teammate. What is it about this sport where you voluntarily freeze your generals off in spandex and shoot guns that attracts so many lunatics? And, you know, to be fair to her, it's not right to steal.

but what do you think skiing with a gun even pays these days? Nobody's hiring. She probably gets one or two contracts a year to kill James Bond, but that barely covers rent, you know? Moving on to something else going downhill, America. Today, Congress heard testimony from Pam Bondi, attorney general and woman who stresses everyone out at Book Club, but it's not worth uninviting her,

because that'll become a whole thing. Congress had a lot of serious questions for her about everything from ICE to Epstein, and I'm sure she handled them with the grace and maturity we have come to expect from the Trump administration. Are you kidding? I'm going to answer the question the way I want to answer the question. I'm not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics. But I finish, please. I'm not being rude. She doesn't say how much money she took from Reid Hoffman, did you? You don't tell me anything.

Yeah, I did tell you because we saw what you did in the Senate. Not even a lawyer. You're a failed politician. Hippocrat. Shame on you. You don't get to reclaim your time. Your time is up. This is so ridiculous. Wow. I mean, you can do something like that in Congress,

but when I do it in a Chili's, I get banned for life. To be fair, though, you'd be in a bad mood, too, if you'd spent the last month redacting images of old man generals from the Epstein files, allegedly. Keep in mind, this is not how these hearings traditionally go. The Attorney General used to carry some level of seriousness and gravitas.

It's only recently that they'd spend a congressional hearing acting like a brady senior who got called into the principal's office. Suck my d-de-principal Gilbert, I already got to ASU. You can eat it. Now look, look, her performance upset a lot of people because they were hoping

for justice for Jeffrey Epstein's victims. But for Pam Bondi, there's only one victim in all of this. Have you apologized to President Trump? Have you apologized to President Trump, all of you, I find it interesting that she keeps going after President Trump, the greatest president in American history. You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it.

He is the most transparent president in the nation's history. Donald Trump, the Dow, the Dow right now is over—the Dow is over $50,000. I don't know why you're laughing. Hold on. Oh, okay. Hold on. Come, you know, if you're going to embarrass yourself on national television like that, at least win a bronze medal first.

No dignity. You know, there is some good news for Donald Trump, and it comes right out of my own home state of Michigan, where the state motto is, welcome to Michigan, we're sorry about Kid Rock. For decades now, the only bridge between Canada and Detroit has been the Ambassador Bridge. But in Trump's first term, Canada started construction on the Gordy Howe Bridge, and Trump was so excited about it,

that he even got a little poetic. America is deeply fortunate to have a neighbor like Canada. We have before us the opportunity to build even more bridges and bridges of cooperation and bridges of commerce. Wow. Wow. Remember when he used to pretend to try? At the time, we were like, look at him phoning in diplomacy. Now we're like, dear God, please phone in some diplomacy.

Anyway, the point. The point is the bridge is almost complete, which will soon open up a public crossing that will enrich both our nations. Trump must be so excited for this new era of U.S.-Canadian friendship. This morning, President Trump, threatening to block the opening of a brand new bridge

between Canada and the U.S. I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them. Or... Fri-Frenship! After all, what has friendship ever done for Trump other than associate him with the

world's largest sex trafficking ring. Still, still, Mr. President, this bridge is a win-win. Canada is paying for all of it, and they're going to share ownership with Michigan. We get a public bridge instead of having to pay tolls to the billionaire owner of the Ambassador Bridge. Why would the president oppose that? The owner of the older Ambassador Bridge, Matthew Maroon, lobbied the Trump administration. On the same day, the president unleashed his tirade about the Gordy House ban.

Oh, I see. You were for it. Then one of your donors called you, and you immediately turned against it. I mean, say what you want about Trump. He is always transparent with his corruption. You never have to follow the money with him, you know? The money is like, I'm going to Donald Trump. I'll drop you a pin. Well done, Mr. Jordan.

Looks like he solved me riddle. I, I, wait. Who said that? Tis I, the bridge dispute, and you'll have your root. Yeah, it wasn't that hard. The answer with Trump is probably always a bribe. Master you be, riddle three. I'm sorry, I actually have a show to do.

Riddle one. Okay. Profits to searcher, to merge. If two companies want to merge, I'm guessing you try to give Trump a bribe. Aren't you clever? No, I'm not. The answer is just always going to... Bridal number two!

No, shin for drilling. Only this will make Trump willing. Again, I'm going to guess a bribe. What? Where are you getting these answers from? Did you hack? Bridge trolls have laptops? Yeah. Is the password bribe?

Trafficking sentence, ye face. With this, your punishment may be erased. Oh, wow, yeah. You know, this is a tough one. Oh, got you now, mister. Is it a bribe? Troll. Troll.

Trump is just not that complicated. It always comes down to a bribe. Why are you even guarding a bridge anyway? Because I tried to bribe Trump by buying his crypto, but then it crashed and I lost every... I live here now. Oh, I'm sorry. That's very sad.

I know. I just like, honestly, I can really use a place to stay until I, like, get back up on my feet. Well, good luck to you. I guess we're done here. Not just yet. I mean, we're not even rhyming now. You know, these... Slater rhymes count.

Okay. Gordy Howl bridge troll, everyone. They teach in Texas schools. America is not the only country in the world. For more, we go to our senior international correspondent Troy Iwada in his new segment, so not our problem. The world is always ragging on America these days. Like, your president sucks, your economy is just AI, you're all dying of measles. Like, we get it, we get it, we're not perfect.

We know we have problems, but guess what? The rest of the world has got issues too. K? All right. For instance, China, with your fancy solar panels and your fast trains and your sneezing pandas falling down, you know China. You've got problems. Check this out.

Condoms and birth control pills just got more expensive in China. The change is part of a push from China's government to reverse the country's falling birth rate and encourage more couples to have children. Okay, first of all, why would you pay for condoms? Just go outside. They're on the ground. But like, ha ha, China, you've got falling birth rates. And I know, I know you're going to say, hey, Americans, don't you also have falling birth rates?

Yeah, but we find ways to embrace them. Like, like, becoming disdainting. becoming Disney adults, okay? We don't need kids. We are kids. Also, who does this condom tax target exactly? Someone's like, I want to have sex, but I'm a cheapskate, so I guess I'll just have a baby?

Like, if China really wants to put condoms out of reach, they should put them on the top shelf. Actually, yeah, no, no. Really, though, their overall health has improved, so they are getting taller. But, you know, you know what else they're getting, lonelier. There's a new app in China that's making headlines, are you dead? Skyrocketing to the number one paid app spot.

It's a, quote, safety tool crafted for solo dwellers, aka people living alone to let their loved ones know that they're alive. Users have to hit a big green button once a day, and if you fail to do it two days in a row, it reaches out to your emergency contact. Okay, wait, so first of all, this is a paid app. So after the free trial, I have to, like, watch an ad for draft kings before finding out if my grandma's dead. Okay, so, like, doing it through an app is so impersonal.

Like, just do what I do. I text my mom, are you dead? And she always says no, and then I respond, how about now? Like, it's this cute little thing that we do, and although she hasn't texted me back in two days, so miss you, old gal. But, see, this is like the Uber Eats of Wellness checks.

It's like, hey, do I smell rotting flesh? I could get up from the couch, or I can check the old dead neighbor app. Sorry about that, China, but that is so not our problem. Do you think we forgot about you, England? Yeah, maybe we don't have health care like you do, and we did end up with the king after all, but at least this didn't happen to,

us? An English beach has been covered in French fries after a cargo ship spill. Thousands of spuds and other veggies have washed up tumbling off a container ship in a storm. And it could take years to clean it up. What? French fries go in your mouth, not the sea. Also, it's going to take years to clean this up. Just get a group of girlfriends together who will be like, hold on, should we be bad and eat all these ocean fries? But they'll have the beach cleaned up in an hour.

This is what British people get for not seasoning their food, okay? Food deserves better. Frankly, I'm not convinced those French fries didn't just kill themselves. So, sorry, Brits, maybe we're clogging our arteries with French fries, but you're clogging the chunnel with them. And that is... So na-da-brama. Gooden-tag, Germany.

You think you're better than us? Because you have, what, accordions and giant pretzels? It's not like you don't have your own weird shit going on. Cyborg cockroaches, ready for the battlefield. Sci-fi, fantasy, absolutely not. Swarm biotactics in Central Germany is working with the Bundeswehr to develop technology that can steer the creepy critters autonomously

and send them on reconnaissance missions. Jesus Christ. Cockroaches in the military? Can you imagine? Wait, so now instead of screaming, screaming when I see a cockroach, I have to say thank you for your service. Let me guess. Let me guess. They get to board the plane before everyone else, too. You know, if they get 10% off at Carvel, I'm going to f*** and lose it. But, hey, as long as this isn't part of a larger trend in Germany.

Germany's new chancellor has vowed to build the strongest army in Europe. Germany wants to recruit an estimated 80,000 more active soldiers in the upcoming years. The world hasn't heard. Germany assert itself like this since World War II. Germany is rebuilding its military for the first time since World War II. And that's okay because it's... Actually, maybe that is everyone's problem. Cafe quality brews without a barista.

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with code Stewart exclusively on sharkinja.com while supplies last. Filmmaker whose latest documentary, The Alabama Solution, is currently nominated for an Oscar. Please welcome Andrew Jurecki. Congratulations on the Academy Award nomination. Thank you.

Do you think you would have gotten that if Melania was in the category? I considered doing that, but I was actually just too busy with the Alabama thing, but I'm going to try to go back for it for part two. For part two, yes, yes. I'm sure Melania would take all of the attention she should get. So, yeah, yeah, think about it.

This movie is, it is harrowing. But this isn't the movie you started out thinking you were going to make. Is that right? I mean, I knew that there were problems in the Alabama state prison system. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get in there because it's such a secretive system. lot of prisons are in the U.S.

And then we sort of miraculously got access to one of the prisons to go in and film a revival meeting. And we saw this kind of beautiful meeting. But the understory was that there were really terrible things happening in the prison. And the men inside said to us, the stuff they're showing you here is not real. This is curated. You need to know what's going on in that building over there. You need to know what's going on in that bunker over there.

And then when we sort of got kicked out, which you see in the beginning of the film. because we got too nosy. We discovered that there were these men inside who had contraband cell phones and were incredible leaders and had been running sort of a non-violent protest effort to try to get the word out. And so we began a collaboration with them in a way, and it really ended up being this like seven-year journey.

So you're essentially, as you're making this film, you're communicating with them when we're watching a lot of this FaceTime with what's going on. Essentially, they're almost citizen journalists reported on what's happening inside the... the prison as you're communicating with them. Was there, like, how are you navigating that as a filmmaker knowing that these are people on the inside

who could be in a lot of trouble if they're found to be recording what's going on? Well, they've been doing this kind of activism and this kind of sort of outspoken truth-telling for a long time. And we were an opportunity, I think, for them to get the story to have a bigger platform. And they really are, they are struggling to try to survive.

And so the idea of getting the word out was important. Also, they really believe in the power of journalism. They really believe in the power of the fourth estate. And so, you know, the audience is, for them, the only way out is to how people understand what's happening to them. It's remarkable the images you see. You see people addicted to drugs in the way in which they're treated there. There's a murder that takes place, that they're essentially tracking the entire time. Yeah.

But specifically, the role of the phone is so important as a witness. What did you notice what the phone brought to it? Well, the phones were sort of introduced into the Alabama State Prison System around 2013, and the men instantly realized that if they wanted to get the story out, they were going to have to use these phones to do it. And they were also going to be able to use the phones to communicate with their children.

Are they supposed to have phones in there? Oh, no, they are not supposed to have phones in there. So how are they getting these phones? The guards are selling them the phones. I mean, clearly, you know, I've spoken to guards who said, Well, you know, I make like $36,000 a year without the phones, but I make like $70,000 a year with the phones, so the phones aren't going anywhere. That's even part of the argument inside as well, right? A lot of the drugs, there are people trying to kick the drug habit and guards are selling drugs because they're getting more money there.

You know, the Alabama Department of Corrections is the biggest law enforcement agency in the state, and it's also the biggest drug dealing operation in the state. It's bonkers. So you do this film. And it is remarkable and harrowing. But so much of this, you're rooting for accountability, exposing this. And I was telling you backstage a little bit as well,

what resonated so much with me in seeing this, a lot of these things I'd never imagined. And you can imagine pretty horrific things happening inside a prison that you never hear or see, but it goes beyond that. And you're rooting for accountability. And it echoes so many things we see today in the news that we watch today,

where you're rooting for accountability, and you're just not seeing that kind of accountability. Yeah. But then you're putting it out, and it's been out for since August. Is that correct? Well, it was at Sundance last year, and then it just came out on HBO in October, so it's been out in sort of in front of the public.

But now you can see it on airplanes and things, so it's just getting more into people's consciousness. But many of these people are still in prison. Yeah. And what has happened since then, now that what they have been doing, what they've been filming has now sort of been outed. What has happened?

You know, the men who are in prison and the people who are depicted in our film are so extraordinary. And, you know, one of the things that is so difficult about people being in prison and us not being able to see in is that you can't see the brutality, you can't see the terrible things that are happening. But you also can't see the beauty in these men. And these are guys who have been locked up for decades. For crimes, they probably never should have been locked up for. before to start with.

And so we have this opportunity to see inside in a way that is completely unique. And a lot of people are just saying to me when they see the film or to Charlotte, my co-director, they'll say, this is kind of the first time I ever feel like I was in a conversation with an incarcerated person. Like just being able to talk to those people

and there's so much propaganda. And of course there are people in prison who are Jeffrey Dahmer and maybe not redeemable or, mentally ill. But there's so many people in prison who've just been there for decades when they committed a crime when they were 18. And now they're an ordained minister and they're, you know, have a college degree from being in prison. You know, so it's a loss of humanity. It's a really frightening thing. But you're seeing it now in our daily lives. You know, what was happening in Minneapolis and the way that Alex Pretty was really murdered for having a cell phone, for using a

cell phone and that Chrissy Nome had to come out and say that he was brandishing a weapon. And this is exactly what these men are doing. And it's exactly what any authoritarian organization, the U.S. government, the Alabama state prison system, thinks is that if somebody brings the light of journalism, it's going to be a problem. And it needs to be eliminated because it's a weapon and it prevents them from doing what they would otherwise do. So these men are kind of really freedom fighters. We just don't get to see him. We don't get to know them. We don't get to know And there's a lot of propaganda to say, don't even talk to those guys. When we first went into that very first prison you see, the warden said to us,

look, you can talk to that guy and that guy. You can't go over there and you can't go over there. And, you know, I said, why can't we talk to anybody? And he said, oh, they're very dangerous. You don't want to talk to these men. And when we went in, I always felt so much more comfortable talking to the men who were incarcerated than the guards. I was much more comfortable with the men, right?

And they're just trying to tell you their story. Have any of these men been punished for appearing in the film? I wouldn't say for appearing in the film, but for their activism throughout time, you'll see in the film they're regularly retaliated against. And most recently, you know, the film was out for like a year. And then they hadn't been retaliated against. And then they announced or their supporters announced a work strike. And that's very, very problematic for Alabama. They get $450 million a year in unpaid labor.

$450 million. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. And it's really forced labor, right? Because you can say, well, I don't feel like working today. And they can put you in solitary confinement. They regularly do that.

They will regularly essentially extend your sentence by giving you disciplinaries. So you, you know, they'll put you in an institution where you can be beaten to death, as Stephen Davis was in our film. And so it's not very different than what we saw in the earlier days in America. You know, there's not a lot of difference between this and convict leasing or anything like that. I mean, I think that's also what's haunting there is you're rooting for people to find a path on a way out, this idea of rehabilitation, and you see images of people working outside of the prison system for no pay with an idea that perhaps this is a path towards reentering society, although your film alludes to that not being the case for a lot of these people.

Well, it's a scam, and I think the men inside want to be hopeful. We learned that there were statistics that Alabama does not track for reasons that are obvious when you see the film. But for example, people who are deemed safe enough to be given the opportunity to go work in the community. And Alabama, you know, essentially leases people out, not just to be the guys that are managing the prison and helping with the food and stuff like that, which maybe people could understand. They also send them out to work on road crews, construction crews, to work at the governor's mansion and clean up and do landscaping. And they also send them to work at McDonald's and at Burger King and at the Hyundai Parts Company and they also work at the Budweiser distributorship. So all of these, this is a very, very ingrained system and it's worth so much money. And when they announced,

or their supporters announced this work strike, the three main people in our film, Robert Earl Counsel, Melvin Ray and Raoul Poole were all whisked off to solitary confinement. And they were put in of like a Hannibal Lecter type environment where where they couldn't talk to each other. There were no windows in the cells. Two of them are there right now. The good news is that so many people now have been watching the film that we could go on social media and say, hey, these guys are locked up. And there was a huge outcry. And people went to the website and they got the phone number for Bib County Correctional and hundreds of people called Bibb and said, we care about these guys. Like, we're watching. Don't do anything bad to them. And they released

the first of them, Melvin Ray, just a couple days ago. So we feel like the public is, you know, madder. Have you heard from the governor at all? Such a great question. You know, the governor is called me maw by the people who love her. Sure. And, you know, she's quite old and she's quite confident that they're doing the right thing in the prison system. And she didn't. basic beliefs of a meemaw. Yeah, exactly. Perhaps that meme, ma'all.

This is meme-maw-like behavior. Yeah. But essentially, she said nothing, and her office said nothing. Like, I think GMA reached out to them and said, what do you think about this film? And they said, well, we're aware of the film, but we cannot comment on the authenticity of the material in it because it was contraband cell phones. Like anybody was asking them, if this is authentic, you know, right? And then a year later, you know, we got nominated for the Oscar, and they immediately came out with a statement basically saying, like,

the Oscars are for suckers, you know. It was a very Trumpy kind of amazing statement. Oh, and they also said they said the Oscars have a low, we always knew the Oscars had a low bar. And by the way, Mima is the best governor ever. Like nobody is done prisoning as good as Mee Ma Ma'am. And it really is quite a statement. I don't know if you heard the news.

She won the FIFA Governor's Award recently as well. I didn't realize that. It's remarkable. It's well-deserved. I want to take note of that. You allude to this here, but people watch this and they get mad and they get frustrated, as I think they should. Where should they take that frustration?

You know, the website for the film is not like a promotional website. It's really, it's kind of a deep dive into the investigation we did on 1,500 deaths. which have happened in the Alabama prison system since we started making the film. And it's pretty remarkable. And secondly, there's a take action button, and that will tell you some things you can do without taking too much time. But there are places that you can engage, and it's not like give money. It's really, you know, like you've got to try to make phone calls.

You've got to let people know that we're paying attention, because this goes way beyond Alabama. You know, Alabama is sort of famously bad, but we just, you know, We just saw in upstate New York, Robert Brooks got murdered by corrections officers. The only reason we know is because of the remote cameras. So these cameras and your ability to expose what these authoritarian type people are doing, like they did in Minneapolis, you got to keep doing that. You got to keep taking your camera out, and you got to keep taking pictures.

They are, they're afraid of the witnesses, right? Yeah, it's truly an incredible film. I hope everybody sees it. The Alabama Solution is available to stream now on HBO Max. Andrew Jurecki. We're going to take a quick break. I've seen some of the protesters. I know some of them are deeply weird.

Some of them give off this, I don't know, I've got a freezer full of body parts in my basement vibe, but that's not against the law. You can be deeply weird than America. 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.