The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Capitol Chaos, Turkey Conspiracies, and Brittany Howard’s Soundtrack for Life

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Desi Lydic breaks down the latest in Washington drama: Matt Gaetz pulls out of the Attorney General race, and Nancy Mace stirs controversy with a transphobic bathroom ban targeting Sarah McBride. Michael Kosta investigates the alleged mind-controlling power of Thanksgiving turkeys. Grammy-winning artist Brittany Howard joins to discuss her transformative new album, What Now, and the emotional and creative journey behind her genre-defying music.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Stewart here. Unbelievably exciting news. My new podcast, The Weekly Show. We're going to be talking about the election economics ingredient to bread ratio on sandwiches. Listen to The Weekly Show with John Stewart, wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalist at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news.

This is The Daily Show with your host, Desi Lydic. Welcome to The Daily Show. I'm Desi Lydic. We've got so much to talk about tonight. The Capitol bathrooms become a war zone. Thanksgiving turkey is a lie and Matt Gaetz finishes too soon. Let's get into the headlines. Let's kick things off with some breaking news. If you've ever dreamed of being an attorney general, update your resume because they have an opening. Major breaking news. President-elect Donald

Trump's pick for attorney general is out. Matt Gaetz says he is withdrawing his name from consideration. Ultram himself has put out a statement. Matt has a wonderful future. I look forward to watching all of the great things that he will do. Oh. You want to watch all the great things Matt Gaetz will do?

Might I suggest downloading the Citizens app? But yes, this was a shocking announcement from the Trump team, and as you can say, no one was more surprised than Matt Gaetz. What a week Gaetz has had. He resigned from Congress, everyone talked nonstop about how he's a sex criminal and a pedophile, and now he doesn't even get to be attorney general. This guy is f***ing so hard that he had to Venmo himself 10 grand. So pour out a Capri Sun for one of the goats,

but let's move on. We've all heard the official story of the 2024 election. According to the pundits, the Democrats were obsessed with woke they-them politics that didn't connect with voters, while Republicans were talking about real issues that affect people day to day. So now Republicans are in charge of both houses of Congress. So, let's hear about the economy.

On Capitol Hill, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson took aim at Democrat Sarah McBride, the first trans member of Congress. He barred transgender people from using the Capitol complex bathrooms that do not align with the sex assigned at birth. Hmm. Okay, forget about the economy. I guess the national mandate was making it harder with the sex assigned at birth. Hmm.

Okay, forget about the economy. I guess the national mandate was making it harder for this one woman to poop at work. And by the way, who appointed Mike Johnson as the king of bathrooms? Under House rules, the Speaker has general control of facilities in the Chamber. Oh! I guess he's the king of bathrooms.

Pardon me, your majesty. Government is weird sometimes. This guy is second in line for the presidency and he also has to refill the soap dispensers? So now Sarah McBride, the first trans congresswoman, hasn't even started work yet and she already has to run around the corner to Starbucks to pee. And she is handling this situation more calmly than I would when I have to get to the bathroom. Sarah McBride actually did respond in a statement. She said, I am not here to fight about bathrooms. I'm here to fight for Delawareans

and to bring down cost-facing families. I've remained hard at work preparing to represent the greatest state in the union come January. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Although, did you just say that Delaware is the greatest state? Have you tried any other state? You won. You don't need to keep saying that. But the point is Sarah McBride is not the one pushing this issue. The whole thing started because of one congresswoman, Nancy Mace, the Republican from South Carolina, where things must be running so smoothly that she can devote all her energy to this.

I'm gonna fight like hell for women and girls to keep men out of women's private spaces to include bathrooms restrooms locker rooms Changing rooms you name it. You are not welcome. If being a feminist makes me an extremist or a bigot or a monster I am totally here for it. I've said it before and I'll say it again Come at me, bro, or bros in this case. I Come at me, bro. Or bros, in this case. I don't love her bigotry there, but I do respect her dedication to getting her steps in. I listen to podcasts, but bullying your co-workers is also a choice. Honestly, transphobic Cruella DeVille's logic might backfire here because all of her drama, ironically, is affirming Sarah McBride's gender.

There is nothing that defines the female experience more than starting a new job and a woman at work just decides she hates you. And Nancy Mace really seems to hate Sarah McBride. It's like it's her full-time job. In just 72 hours on X, Representative Nancy Mace has posted about trans women in bathrooms more than 325 times. What the f***? 325 tweets?

How can anyone else even use the bathroom when Mesa's on the toilet tweeting all day? Oh my god. Jesus. I have never hated anything so much that I had to buy a new data plan. That is way too much tweeting. Even Elon Musk is like, have you considered joining Blue Sky? She's not just posting on the internet,

she's posting on the fucking halls. South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace hanging signs for biological women on restrooms. Ta-da! Your tax dollars paid for this! But hey, she's getting a lot of attention for her bullshit politics. And even if it's pissing off a lot of people, you know who would not be happy with Nancy Mace right now? 2021 Nancy Mace. Back in 2021 she said I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality, no one should be discriminated

against, I have friends and family that identify as LGBTQ having been around gay, lesbian and transgender people has informed my opinion over my lifetime. Hmm. Wonder what changed. I guess the biggest transition was Nancy Mace wanting to identify as the center of attention. Here's how you know that this is all performative. Well first, the performance. Ta-da! And also, here's what she claims the problem is. I'm not going to stand for a man. You know, someone with a penis is in the woman's locker room.

That's not okay. I know how vulnerable women and girls are in private spaces. Yes, of course. You just want to protect women from hypothetical predators. That would play a lot better if you weren't trying to get actual predators into the highest levels of government. Pete Hegseth, RFK, Matt Gaetz. If Donald Trump nominated Bill Cosby, Nancy Mace would be walking in circles

in an ugly 80s sweater, eating a pudding cup. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! It's a full stop end of story. Would land a lot harder if you weren't rolling with the guy whose attitude about women's spaces is this. I'll go backstage before a show. And everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. And I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it. Yeah. Ta-da!

When we come back, we find out the truth about Thanksgiving, so don't go away. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, everybody. Jon Stewart here. I am here to tell you about my new podcast, The Weekly Show, coming out every Thursday. We're going to be talking about the election earnings calls.

What are they talking about on these earnings calls? We're going to be talking about ingredient to bread ratio on sandwiches. I know you have a lot of options as far as podcasts go, but how many of them come out on Thursday listen to the weekly show John Stewart, whatever you get your pocket. Everything is become a conspiracy theory vaccines have microchips in them. Elections are stolen. Jay Leno is in debt to the mob. But those are just the obvious ones.

Now there's a new show where they reveal the conspiracies we never even knew about. Check it out. Conspiracies, they're everywhere. Or are they nowhere? Or is that exactly what they want you to think? So that's where my wallet is. Well, for every they, there's a me.

I'm Kevin Matthew Kelp. Follow me as I pull back the curtain to find the truth behind the curtain. This is Project Conspiracy. Thanksgiving. It's a time to gather with friends and family and celebrate the birth of autumnal vegetables from a great horned vagina. But what if I told you this innocent fall festival that has no dark side whatsoever has a dark side?

Like most sheeple, I used to believe in the myth of Thanksgiving as a time of peace and harmony. But then I started to notice a curious pattern. God damn it, Kevin. If I hear one more friggin' conspiracy theory... It's not a conspiracy, Dad. The Earth is actually a triangle. Every year at Thanksgiving, I would try to inform my family about new and brilliant ideas. Right arms do not make you bisexual, Kevin. Look, here, or there. What's wrong with you?

Do some research. And every year, without fail, my entire family would act like I was the crazy one. The Chinese are not spreading propaganda in Maroon 5 songs. Maroon is the shade of red. And there's five stars in the Chinese flag. Do I have to spell it out for you? So what is it about this holiday that warps my family's minds and turns them against rational thought? It's time to give thanks for the truth. Gobble gobble.

Thanksgiving is in every nook and cranny of our culture, but I had to start somewhere. is in every nook and cranny of our culture, but I had to start somewhere. As we all know, Thanksgiving was started by the Pilgrims, a shadowy cabal so devoted to suppressing good ideas, they literally force people to put locks on their brains. In 1863, Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln, the king of making Americans fight each other.

Honest Abe? More like dis-honest Abe. Of course, the main event of Thanksgiving, the turkey. We don't eat turkey as a main course any other day of the year. It's dry, it's bland, and frankly, it's just plain fugly. Why is the government pushing turkey on us for this one day every year? Time to go to the source. Look at all this.

They push this stuff hard. Huh. Buy one, get one. That is a good deal, though. -♪ Wow. That's a lot of turkey you got there. Eat all that, you're gonna O.D. on tryptophan. On what?

Tryptophan. You know, the weird chemical in turkey? You fool. You've given the whole game away. Hey, you gotta pay for that! Money isn't real. Stupid bitch. Um, turkey, it's got the tryptophan. That knocks everybody out at some point. So what does tryptophan do to our bodies?

Side effects of too much tryptophan may cause agitation and confusion. The tryptophan. Oh, damn, tryptophan. Hey, you gotta pay for that! Pay for that! confusion. It made perfect sense. Drowsiness, agitation, and confusion. Turkeys turn our families against us with their mind-altering chemicals. against us with their mind-altering chemicals. Of course it was the turkey.

And they're rewarded for their work with a presidential pardon. And granted unlimited access to the highest corridors of American power. This has gone on long enough. If I'm going to end this foul play, I'll have to execute a plan with all the trimmings. This might look like a regular turkey, but don't let your eyes fool you. It's completely fake. And now we'll see if removing the mind control turkey and serving them my untainted meat sets my family's minds free. Perfect. Let's eat.

Testing. Here we go. Operation Gobbler begins now. Hey! Glad you made it. Listen, don't be weird this year, okay? What? Of course not.

I even brought a normal turkey. Yeah, what do you mean, normal? You're hilarious. Excuse me, Aunt Lisa. Got a normal turkey here everybody. Who's loving this turkey? Huh? Come on everybody, dig in. Speaking of digging, you know dinosaurs aren't real.

All those bones are a hoax to market the Jurassic Park franchise. God damn it Kevin. You promised you wouldn't do this. This is just like when you said ancient aliens built Mount Rushmore. You don't believe me? Oh, have some turkey. What would you do to it? It smells like spray paint.

What? No it doesn't. Look. This is the best turkey I ever had. I am food. Mmm. Are you okay? Me?

I've never felt better in my life. Mmm. Oh. Oh. Are you okay? Me? I've never felt better in my life. Rest in peace, Kevin. When we come back, Brittany Howard will be joining me on the show, so don't go away. And we'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Hey everybody, John Stewart here. I am here to tell you about my new podcast, The Weekly Show, coming out every Thursday. We're going to be talking about the election earnings calls. What are they talking about on these earnings calls?

We're going to be talking about ingredients to bread ratio on sandwiches. I know you have a lot of options as far as podcast go, but how many of them come out on Thursday listen to the weekly show John Stewart, whatever you get your podcast. Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest tonight is a Grammy award winning artist whose latest album is called What Now. Please welcome, Brittany Howard. You're so cool. What's it like to be this cool?

No one ever asked me that. Oh my God. Yo. Am I cool? Uh, no one ever asked me that. Oh, my God! Am I cool? I mean, come on. Is she cool? CHEERING The epitome of cool. Thank you so much. Wow.

Congratulations on your Grammy nomination. Thank you so much! Yeah! Thank you. This is on your new album, What Now? Are you a fortune teller? How did you know we'd all be asking ourselves that question? Thank you. Listen, it was crazy when I wrote the album.

And there's no stopping it. Yeah. You wrote the album out of not being able to tour, right, during lockdown? That's right. It was during the pandemic. And I had finished watching Tiger King. out of not being able to tour, right, during lockdown? That's right, it was during the pandemic and I had finished watching Tiger King

and it wasn't like the good part of the pandemic where you're like, oh, I might not have to go to work for like a month, you know? It was like, I got into the dredges of it, we all know about it, you know? And started just having kind of like an existential crisis, not a crisis, but more just like, well, I got nothing better to do with my time,

let me just like figure out who I am real quick. And that's really where the album started. It was just some crazy times. We didn't know what was gonna happen next. It's so inspiring because you take that lockdown and you're like, let me figure out who I am and write a Grammy nominated album. And I was like, how many Housewives are there? That I can't tell you.

I mean, that's what most people did. It's really remarkable. I'm not gonna judge you for your use of time. Thank you, I appreciate that. We all found ways to get through it. I really appreciate that. I think one of the things that sets you apart from so many artists is that you really are

genre-defying. You talk about not really wanting to be boxed in by any particular type of music, and you have all these different influences, funk and R&B and soul and dance music, and exploring with all of these different vocal techniques, particularly in this new album, what was behind the creative inspiration for that? I think the creative inspiration was really just, who am I now and who do I wanna be next? And really taking responsibility of who I become.

And creatively, it was just like, what if I made something and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks about it, and it doesn't matter what genre it lies in, and it doesn't have to be necessarily like anything I've done before. And I just pray, I just like play homage to all of these artists that have come before me

and really connecting my emotions to music. And every emotion's different, and I think they all deserve their own soundtrack. I heard that... Thank you. You've mentioned being influenced by a lot of different artists, and you mentioned being very influenced by Prince

and studying Prince and his techniques. Do you feel like musical ability is something that you can study and perfect? Or is it something that you're just sort of born with? You can absolutely perfect it. When I started, I was terrible. I doubt that. No, it's out there somewhere.

And I had a computer with all the songs on it from when I was like 13, 14, and it's gone now. Just took it out back, never to be seen again. And I had to practice. I had to practice. I feel like the curiosity was there. I think that's the most important element of creativity is just being curious about,

well, what if I did this and what if I did that? And having that spark, and that's what keeps me going. You just never know what you can make and what it can mean to you in the moment or later. And especially, it's amazing what it means to other people and how it can connect to each other. And I think that's why I just keep doing it. I think it's so interesting that you say that. I think that transcends all types of not just art,

but just experiences, curiosity, just the idea of being curious kind of keeps everything alive, right? Right. You have an interesting Prince story. You actually got to play with Prince. I did. I did. It was just a call out of the blue.

So what had happened was, we played Minneapolis, and some of Prince's band was there, and they went back and they were like, yo, this band's great. So Prince calls my management, not him personally, you know, but... Somebody, Prince adjacent...

Sure. ...calls my manager. And was like, hey, can they show up tomorrow to play Paisley Park? And I remember my manager's face when they came in and they were like, ugh. They were like, you know, do you think you could do a little detour on your tour

and go to Paisley Park and play with Prince? I was like, uh, duh. And so... Yeah. So, yeah, we show up and Prince is there do you think you could do a little detour on your tour and go to Paisley Park and play with Prince? I was like, duh. And so, yeah. So yeah, we show up and Prince is there and he's welcoming us into the studio. He's like super funny, super cool. He really does have a very low voice.

And he was like, I like this song, you got what key is it in? I wanna hop up there and play with you. And I'm like, what? I'm like, I forgot the key. I was like, I don't know. We're playing the song, right? And everybody always has a story about how Prince can levitate or Prince can disappear.

Prince can, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff. Like he's a ghost, an apparition. And I found it to be true. Did he disappear? What happened was I'm up there playing the solo, and I'm like, this is about time where Prince is going to come out, right? And so we're just, he's not showing up,

and we're just like playing the same things over and over again, and I'm hoping he's going to show up. And then out of nowhere, he just pops on stage. And I'm like, okay, maybe I didn't see him get up here, you know, he shreds this solo, it was so sick. We start double soloing. In my mind, I'm just like, I can't believe it, you know? This is the greatest story of my life.

Ugh. And we finish playing a song, and he kisses me on the cheek. And then he just jumps in the air and vanishes. Yeah. Gone. Yeah. And I'm not the only one with that story. That is, I mean, what an experience.

To have that, you will always be able to look back at the time that you played with Prince and he just vanished into thin air. Yeah. So, I can confirm it. I'm one of those people who saw him vanish. Yeah. Song, To Be Still, which is about a flower being taken care of in someone's garden.

Is this about someone in particular, or is this just about the idea of being taken care of? You know, I'm a Libra. I love love. It's my favorite thing on this planet. And it's just a very good thing. And I think love can grow if someone waters it. And so the song was just my imagining of, what if I could quit looking for love

and I could stay in one spot and I could blossom, and I could put down roots, and I could stay in one spot and I could blossom and I could put down roots and I could be the greatest thing that I was always meant to be. And this was support of something else, you know? And I just wanted to write a song like that and it just came to me and to me, it's just my peaceful place, this song. Aw.

Well, we're so grateful that you're sharing it with us. Thank you for being here. I could talk to you forever, but you have to perform. So What Now is available everywhere. We're so grateful for you. Thank you, Henry, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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