The Daily Show: Ears Edition - DOJ Protects Trump From Epstein Accountability as MAGA Attacks "Sanctuary Cities" | Heather Ann Thompson

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Trump declares himself "absolved" by the latest release of Epstein files, while Elon Musk’s Christmas wish for a trip to the sex island is put on blast, and Jon Stewart finds himself on Epstein’s ...list… for documentary voiceovers. Plus, as MAGA continues to shield the president from all accountability, Jon Stewart shines a light on the double standard of sanctuary given to Trump vs. immigrants. Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Heather Ann Thompson sits down with Jon Stewart to discuss her new book, “Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage.” They talk about how big a figure Bernie Goetz was in 1980s New York, hailed as a "vigilante" for shooting four young Black men on a subway train despite the attack being unprovoked, the story’s parallels to ICE shooting protesters in Minneapolis, the costs of violence, and how these types of injustices paved the way for Donald Trump. Go to https://quince.com/dailyshow for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:51 That's $60 off the Ninja Lux Cafe premiere series with Code Stewart, exclusively on SharkNinja.com while supplies last. 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, John. Got a great one for you tonight. Writer, Heather Ann Thompson is going to be out
Starting point is 00:01:50 to discuss her new book about Bernie Gets and the rebirth of white rage, which I didn't know had died. I thank you all for coming out tonight here in New York. It is, and I don't have to tell these people, they're kind enough to come out in this weather. It is the 10th day in a row that we have been below freezing temperatures.
Starting point is 00:02:14 And all I can say is, oh, sorry, folks, you get what you voted for. That's right. Oh, comrade, Mom Donnie. Been in for less than a month, and we're already Siberia. It is unusually cold, I will say. But the big news, of course.
Starting point is 00:02:43 We begin with the breaking news that the Justice Department has begun releasing millions more documents. related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Yep, it's Groundhog Day. We call it Groundhog Day because this is the day when Donald Trump sees Epstein's shadow
Starting point is 00:03:08 and we get six more weeks of not knowing who any of the co-conspirators are in this multinational sex trafficking case and also because Punks and Tony Phil is all over the files. Is that to scale by any chance? That may be the biggest... ground hog.
Starting point is 00:03:39 They literally look like, they actually look like they could be friends. Bill Clinton and Pucks a tawny felt. The point I'm trying to make is the Epstein Files thing. We've been through this before. Donald Trump, revelations about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The MAGA fault line seems to be widening from a fracture.
Starting point is 00:03:59 Breaking news. A big break. Republicans breaking with Trump on Epstein. The dam could potentially be breaking here with MAGA. beginning of the end of the Trump presidency. After a million more documents in the Epstein files were discovered last week, will this fracture become a lasting, irreversible break? I'm going to go with no.
Starting point is 00:04:22 You guys are adorn. The chances of this breaking MAGA are actually worse than Trump, just lowering the age of consent to be done with the whole fucking thing. Which is not, I didn't say we were doing it. Which is not to say there is an awful shit in this new Epstein dump. It was a veritable who's who of who you imagine wanted someone to touch their hoo-hoo. Allegedly, Lutnik, Bannon, Musk, Summers, Gates, Clinton, Tish, Malania, the guy who directed Melania,
Starting point is 00:05:15 Prince Andrew, and Sir Richard Branson. I think any of us will ever masturbate again. That is, of course, the star of our show, Donald Josephine Trump, whose thousands of mentions render Trump as kind of a necessary backdrop through the entirety of the Epstein files,
Starting point is 00:05:56 kind of like New York City in a Woody Allen movie, which, coincidentally, is apropos, because he's also in the files. And, of course, to get ahead of the story, I am also in the files. We all searched our names, right? You guys didn't search your name? All right, well, I, yeah, no, I know. Whatever.
Starting point is 00:06:25 I am in the files. All right. This is actually true. I take you to the scene. It is midnight. August 29th, 2015. Jeffrey Epstein lies wide awake, his mind turning with ideas.
Starting point is 00:06:46 He jots a quick note to a producer named Barry Josephson saying, I suggested to Woody. Y'all know which Woody, right? It's the Epstein files. It ain't Harrelson. All right. Or the cowboy from Toy Story.
Starting point is 00:07:01 You know which Woody would turn it. Quote, I suggested to Woody that he'd do an exclaim. new stand-up routine for either Apple TV or Amazon. Oh, Jeffrey Epstein always had his finger on the pulse of what America was clamoring for in 2015. But Barry Josephson, thinking like the out-of-the-box television professional that he was, pitched this idea. This is true, quote,
Starting point is 00:07:27 make a true biographical experience with his stand-up being the capper. Somebody like John Stewart could host slash narrate the biographical part. Excuse me? Somebody liked an audition. For extensive references were reserved for members of the billionaire class who traveled in Epstein's circles, including the billionaireist of them all. New emails from billionaire Elon Musk and Epstein coordinating a possible visit to the financier's infamous island. Elon says, do you have any parties planned? I really want to hit the party scene in St. Bart's or elsewhere and let loose.
Starting point is 00:08:36 I'm sorry, I hate to do this. Can I, can we zoom in on the email on that, please? Christmas Day? You're asking if Jeff Epstein's got any parties planned on the island? On Christmas Day? I mean, look, Christmas is tense time. We've all had that feeling trapped in the house with the in-laws and 14 to 16 of our children over the holidays. But generally, Elon, the wonder-law.
Starting point is 00:09:16 doesn't really hit till the 28th of the 29, but Christmas morning? You f***ing E-Embal-Empstine Christmas, dearest Jeffrey. I've just seen the joy in all my children's faces as they opened their gifts. Get me the f*** out of here. And ever since those revelations,
Starting point is 00:09:38 Elon has been, how do the kids say it, crashing out? He's posted about the Epstein files more than 85 times over the last two days. Oddly enough, mostly on Blue Sky. on blues guy. No, I'm just kidding. And if I may, Elon, slow down, brother. You've got to make some time for tweeting about
Starting point is 00:09:57 the white genocide, too. Life's a balance. But this is obviously important to Elon. So, all right, give us the best argument for your innocence. Musk denies any wrongdoing. Writing over the weekend, if I actually wanted to spend my time partying with young women, it would be trivial for me
Starting point is 00:10:13 to do so without the help of a creepy loser like Epstein. I could do what Epstein does on my own is not the moral clarity we were expecting here. But my favorite part of the Musk Epstein emails, you ever have a friend where you don't really share the same sense of humor, but you share the same interests? And they share the same interests.
Starting point is 00:10:42 Epstein writes him and says, any plans for New York, the opening of the General Assembly of the UN, has many interesting people coming to the house. Many interesting people, Elon. Wink, wink. Get it? Elon replies,
Starting point is 00:10:57 I run and lead product design engineering for two complicated companies. Flying to New York to see UN diplomats do nothing would be an unwise use of time. I'm sorry, Jeffrey, could you make it a little more obvious for your friend? To which Jeffrey Epstein replies, do you think I am retarded?
Starting point is 00:11:20 Just kidding, there is no one over 25 and all very cute. What the fuck? We've all had that friend. why would I go to the bathroom with you to go skiing? Keeing is an outdoor sport requiring a mountain and equipment and, oh, I see. Now, another big name in the files is Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, which in itself is not big news, because since Lutwick, Lutnik admitted that he met Epstein in 2005 and then said he immediately
Starting point is 00:12:00 cut off all contact. You know what? I won't. Let me let him tell the story. I say to him. massage table in the middle of your house? How often you have a massage? And he says, every day.
Starting point is 00:12:14 And then he like gets like weirdly close to me. And he says, and the right kind of massage. Shiazhu or, like a deep tissue or a loamy? His dick. I'm sorry. It's about, I apologize. It's okay. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:40 He's talking about a dick massage. Go to the bathroom to go skiing. Okay, dick massage. Understood. Carry on with the story. And in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house. Wait a second. You live six steps from Jeffrey Epstein?
Starting point is 00:13:05 Six steps. Jeffrey Epstein's house was six steps. That's how f*** up housing is in New York City. Even billionaires don't get to live more than six steps away from each. Imagine how the rest of us live in this habit trail hell hole. I'm sorry, anyway, carry on. And in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.
Starting point is 00:13:42 Oh, yeah, I'm sure. You and your wife decided. Yes, yes. No, no, no. Your wife and you were both outraged. Oh, you walked out of there like, honey, that guy, what a creepo. I mean, to think there's a guy with massage tables and a sex swing in a dildo room. Just six steps from our house.
Starting point is 00:14:06 I mean, believe me, honey, you'll never catch me commuting to Fripp Palace Avenue ever again. Right, honey? You trust me, right, honey. And so he never returned. Until. Files released today showed that Howard Lutnik tried to meet or call with Epstein several times after 2005. Yes, sir, Jeffrey. It's me, Howard Lutnik.
Starting point is 00:14:42 I'm on your stoop right now. I just want to remind you, sir, I am disgusted and appalled. And have a tremendous amount of tension in my trapezius muscle. My one-man show called Lutnik on the Stoop. By the way, it wasn't just Republicans in this email dump. Yet Bill Clinton pictures having his cake and ogling it too. Economist Larry Summers, seeing if someone was available to rub his Phillips curve.
Starting point is 00:15:32 Look it up. And Bill Gates, apparently getting gonorrhea from a Russian hooker. Allegedly. Yeah, fucking true. Images and videos. What do they amount to? Lots of additional pictures. and documents, but there is nothing in the Epstein files released today that shows anyone
Starting point is 00:16:18 new can be prosecuted. Well, of course, no, of course. Of course they can't be. It's completely believable that Epstein and Glein Maxwell are solely responsible for supposedly KGB and Mossad billion-dollar multinational sex trafficking ring. It's really a mom-and-pop operation. I think that's pretty clear. I mean, you've already seen the millions of documents that the FBI has worked on for
Starting point is 00:16:39 months to flag mentions of Donald Trump. I'm sure the 2.5 million remaining documents that we haven't seen will be no different, right? Trump, lawyer, and also guy in charge of files that might implicate Donald Trump. This review is over. Okay, well, I'm satisfied. That's fine. Look, man, we always knew that the people at DOJ releasing these documents weren't on a fact-finding mission.
Starting point is 00:17:07 They were running interference. And the guy they're running interference for seems very satisfied with these results. I didn't see it myself, but I was told by some very, very, important people that not only does it absolve me, it's the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical live. I'm totally innocent. I mean, look at me. Do I look like the kind of a guy who would fly around on a billionaire sex plane?
Starting point is 00:17:31 None of these dudes. They've been on the plane. They've been on the island. They've been to his house. They've given him creepy cards with pubicare. They've been accused by a multitude of women of a multitude of wrongdoings, and nothing has happened to any of them. Oh, Prince Andrew. Oh, Prince Andrew. Stripped of the title, Prince. Ooh, such a penalty. Now it's just Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor. Oh, one more time, buddy,
Starting point is 00:18:11 and you'll be busted down to Andy Mountbatten Windsor. You know, I got to be honest. I'm just not sure anybody is going to be held accountable for any of this. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epson. And in fact, if you look at the DOJ, they announced, you know, they released three million pages. It's like this is all they're supposed to be doing. And frankly, the DOJ, I think, should just say, we have other things to do. And boy, does the DOJ have other things to do. You know, looking into this decades-long sex trafficking network for the rich and powerful is stopping the DOJ from getting the people who really deserve to be punished. If you are here illegally, you got to go.
Starting point is 00:19:00 Why? Because you're breaking the law. No one is above the law. This creates a two-tiered system. There's no accountability. There's no enforcement. It breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come. I want sanctuary city policy to end. The two-tiered system of accountability. And to quote, Lindsay Graham, there,
Starting point is 00:19:42 city policies have to end. Well, after watching the politically well-connected, skirt any form of legal accountability for horrible fucking crimes, it seems pretty clear to me that there is a sanctuary city in this country. But guess what? This kid don't live in it. The real sanctuary city is where money and power protect you from the consequences of sex trafficking or influence peddling or taking half a billion dollars
Starting point is 00:20:13 and giving away America's AI infrastructure. Not the small Midwestern city. We're trying to help a lady get up after she gets maced, gets you shot in the back of the fucking head. That's the real sanctuary city. And these are the motherfuckers who live there. Give me the right picture. Yeah.
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Starting point is 00:21:57 That's the Ninja Lux Cafe. Yep, no skills needed. Rich espresso, balanced drip coffee, rapid cold brew. All made by you because barista assist technology handles the details. Grinding, weighing, brewing, so you don't have to. Finish with silky microphone made with dairy or plant-based milk. Hot or cold, hands-free, still no skills needed. From first timer to full-blown coffee fan, you can brew it all.
Starting point is 00:22:26 Brew it all with the Ninja Lux Cafe. No skills needed. Cafe quality coffee without the guesswork. Make espresso, drip coffee, cold brew, and more with the Ninja Lux Cafe. Listeners of this show get $60 off the Ninja Cafe premiere series with the Code Stewart, exclusive on SharkNinja.com while supplies last. That's $60 off the Ninja Lux Cafe premiere series with Code Stewart, exclusively. on shark ninja.com while supplies last.
Starting point is 00:22:54 It's a historian and a Pulitzer Prize winning author, which is the new book is called Fear and Fury, the Reagan 80s, the Bernadette's shootings, and the rebirth of white rage. Please welcome to the program, Heather Ann Thompson. By the way, fabulous. Read the book, fabulous. Reads gripping, suspenseful.
Starting point is 00:23:42 This is my wheelhouse. I'm in my 60s. This is when I moved to the city during the Bernice era. So I felt it like with a nostalgia, but explain, you know, I was in the office with kids and they were like, who's Bernie gets? And I was like, what? Yeah. I had to say to them, I'm like, 30 years from now, people would be saying to you like, who's Diddy?
Starting point is 00:24:06 And you're like, what? Yeah, no, I remember it as well. I remember it coming up to New York in the 80s. This event happens. And, you know, it kind of took us all back then. But I've been thinking about it again. I thought we need to know who this guy is. Explain Bernie Gets, this is 1984.
Starting point is 00:24:24 He shoots four young black males on a subway train. That's right. In Manhattan. Yeah, and it's close quarters, and he's on there for like five minutes. And within those five minutes, he's decided he doesn't like the gleam in one of their eyes. The kid asks him for $5, panhandling, as we remember, big thing in New York in the 80s. And he turns, pulls out a 38 Weston, and just Smith and Wesson. just takes them out.
Starting point is 00:24:52 One in the chest, his friend in the back was trying to get away. The next kid trying to get away in the arm, goes through his lungs. And then the fourth kid, he misses. But then he goes over to him and he, you know, quaking in fear, waiting, hoping the guy's going to go away.
Starting point is 00:25:10 And he says, you look all right. Here's another. And he shoots him point-blank range, severing his spinal cord and paralyzing him. But then he becomes a hero. to all New Yorkers, except for not quite all New Yorkers. The New Yorkers who thought, yeah, we need a Charles Bronson, we need a dirty, hairy in the city to take care of business.
Starting point is 00:25:33 And I kind of felt like that moment had a lot to tell us about the moment we're in, where violence is, again, unleashed, legally okay, where a guy in Minneapolis can literally be shot in the head. and we are told that up is down, down is up, we didn't see what we thought we saw. I think this is a beginning story today. And by the way, the description that you're making of what happened, that's not even your interpretation.
Starting point is 00:26:02 That's his interpretation. That's Bernie Gets gave interviews to the Concord Police and to other people saying, and I went up to the kid, the fourth kid, and went, you seem okay, and I shot it. Like, that's his description of it. Not, and this is in the time. So you have to set the scene.
Starting point is 00:26:21 There's no iPhones. That's right. There's no anything. It really is the unreliability of eyewitness accounts in a kind of frenetic moment. But the thing is, people had already decided he was a hero. And that's kind of what I wanted to get into, right? He goes on the lamb. He disappears into the subway tunnels.
Starting point is 00:26:41 People don't even know who he is. And he's already on the front page, right? He was known as a subway vigilante. when he turns himself in, he gives this two-hour detailed confession. Robbery had nothing to do with it. Previously being mugged had nothing to do with it.
Starting point is 00:26:59 And it's not going to matter. It's not going to matter when he goes to trial. It's not going to matter to so many New Yorkers. And I think we've got to look at that moment because today we're kind of there again, right? We see it. We see a videotape. But yet we're like, we're told.
Starting point is 00:27:15 It's how to happen. It actually felt it's hard. hard to underestimate how popular Bernie Gets was in that moment. And I remember, you know, we all remember the city back then was super fun. Like, I was young. It was completely lawless. I lived on the Canal Street stop. So one stop before, he shot him around Chambers Street, I guess. And it was, I used to come home from working my restaurant job, two in the morning on the subways. and like, luckily I looked pathetic enough, nobody bothered me, but like it was,
Starting point is 00:27:53 it was a hustle back that. A lot of drugs. Yeah, bad news. I mean, it's 84, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's the height of the Reagan 80s. Everything's getting stripped. Public resources are getting stripped.
Starting point is 00:28:04 That's right. Trash is piling up. People are turning to the illegal economy of drugs. That's right. But here's the thing. They are being told that the problem is not the change in the economy that Reagan had really implemented, The problem was, you know, people worse off than them.
Starting point is 00:28:20 So again, that playbook is really getting cemented right then. No, once again, they're being told it's not any systemic failures. It's people like these four kids. Those four kids were a stand-in. And by the way, like, they were there to rob, just not people. They were going to pop pinball machines for coins. They were on their way to a video arcade to jimmy them open, get quarters. Yes.
Starting point is 00:28:45 Because, again, they're from the South. Bronx and that area has also been completely stripped of resources, jobs are gone, and they need some money. But that context, right, is what gets lost. Context stops mattering, basically. His bullets were a stand in for the frustration that people felt for what they thought was in unmanageable city. And it wasn't just right, I mean, New York City, and I can remember, you know, my grandfather drove a cabin, my other grandfather ran a Jack Cleaner in Washington Heights, like they were very familiar with property crime and all those things. But New York City from the 60s and 70s after the oil shock, I mean, New York City was broken, 75. Like, it was fraying at the seams.
Starting point is 00:29:31 75. For many years. While the fiscal crisis was devastating. The thing is, that crisis begins to rebound in other places. Wall Street. It was a global crisis. Yes. But what happens is Reagan gets elected.
Starting point is 00:29:46 and he sort of doubles down on the austerity, right, rather than rebounding. But meanwhile, the rich are getting richer, richer, richer. Yes. But the eye isn't on that ball. The eye is on the misery and whose fault is it? And the thing is, I think the book I hope really kind of lays bare, it's curated. You've got this media that's curating this outrage, this racial outrage, particularly. The echoes of today, I mean, it's not even that they're echoes.
Starting point is 00:30:16 it's the same people. The guy running the media machine that lionized Bernie Gets was... Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. That's... They did all like, I've heard of that guy.
Starting point is 00:30:28 I don't like what he does at all. That was when he made his bones. That's right. That's what allows him to really make his mark in New York City, and it's what's going to pave the way for Fox News. And it's not just him, right?
Starting point is 00:30:41 It's Giuliani's on the scene here, and Trump is on the scene here. So all these guys are here. And get sort of mirror each other in that both raised and both have frustrations with the thing. Both have that same antagonism towards what they consider to be the underclass that doesn't belong there. Yeah. But Trump is watching this case. He is watching what happens when someone does something like this.
Starting point is 00:31:04 What's the response? And the response becomes his base. The response becomes, that's what I need to take the White House. And he's going to, it's kind of an extraordinary. I have to say, it's a story that even surprised me. And he didn't really, did he jump in on the Bernie Getsk? I know that he jumped in on what was so-called the Central Park Five. That's right.
Starting point is 00:31:25 So he weighs, he doesn't jump in on this case, but he's very much central to that coverage of the time, the New York Post coverage, and Giuliani is the real link between them there. Right. And Julianne is New York, the New York that's going to come out of this. And the same way they set the hyperbolic tone for today with immigrants, They set with people from, I mean, you would have thought, I lived here, man.
Starting point is 00:31:48 Like, it was actually like really fun. It was a little more dangerous than probably it is today, but like not crazily so. And but they made it out to be like, I remember the headlines were Time Magazine, super predators, young black kids that are, they're super soldiers that will kill you. Wilding was the big, you know, that would be considered like a social media thing back then. but like that was. And people really took out their frustration on these kids who weren't perfect victims,
Starting point is 00:32:21 but they certainly weren't the masterminds and evildoers that they were made out there. But they're made into the victims. I mean, I'm sorry, into the villains, not the victims. Overnight, right? These are kids that have racked up a lot of misdemeanor offenses, you know, jump in the subway turnstiles.
Starting point is 00:32:36 The minute they get shot, all of a sudden, judges are turning those misdemeanor citations into warrants for their arrest. Yeah. The hate mail that's pouring into their apartments, to the hospital. And their lives are destroyed by this, but at the end of the day, they never get grace.
Starting point is 00:32:55 They never get to be the victims. And so we didn't even know who they were. We didn't know their names. So for me in the book, it was really important to kind of lay bare. What are the costs of all this violence? What are the costs of unleashing this kind of rage? and then saying it's perfectly legal okay.
Starting point is 00:33:14 We begin to see why do we get a Trayvon Martin situation, right? Why is George Zimmerman allowed to do what he's allowed to do? It traces all the way by. It just keeps going. I was actually heartened at the racism, the letters to the editor. She puts in letters to the editor that people wrote to the Post and to the Daily News. I go on Twitter sometimes and I'm like horrified in the comment section. Like, oh my God, how can people be this horrifying?
Starting point is 00:33:41 But at least there, they go by like, Cuckboy 101. Like, these are letters, letters to the editor that are like, these animals and using the N-Word and saying, like, horrible things about them. You know, yours truly, Louis Viterrelli. They put their name on it. And back in the day, like, you couldn't just, like, you had to buy a stamp. You had to walk that thing to a post office box. That's commitment. Yeah. And the thing is, not just letters coming to the editors in New York.
Starting point is 00:34:13 Come to them. And coming to the boys, coming to New York Post from Colorado, from California, from, I mean, this becomes a national phenomenon. Because it is because it touched a moment that was really shifting. You know, rebirth of white rage. Always, you know, white rage is ubiquitous in American history. But this is a moment when it gets unleashed. like it hadn't been since the 19th century, and legally okay like it hadn't been.
Starting point is 00:34:44 And by the way, so Bernie Gets was not convicted of attempted murder or any of those things. They got him on. Carrying an illegal weapon. Right. And this is a fascinating. This is another dichotomy that I think is really interesting. Because so much of the conditions that those young men grew up in
Starting point is 00:35:03 were so difficult, if you look at the life of Bernie Getz and those kids, They're somewhat parallel, but the difference is grace. The difference is margin of error. So Bernie Yetz's dad is arrested for suspicion of, I guess, child molestate. Like, real serious stuff. He plea bargains down to disturbing the people, like misdemeanor, some kind of a thing. And continues, and is wealthy and sends Bernie to like a prep school in Switzerland. The kid who got shot and paralyzed, his dad's a truck truck.
Starting point is 00:35:38 driver who's killed. Trying to defend his truck from a would-be thief. And those two moments really typify what Grace does to the trajectory of a person's life. And the ultimate irony is these kids' first introduction to the criminal justice system is for misdemeanor bullshit. Jump in a turnstile, smoking some dope. Bernie Gets is a dope smoker with illegal guns who's bargained down. I mean, he's got marijuana in his apartment when he's arrested and no one blinks in
Starting point is 00:36:11 I. This is at a time period in New York City when if you get arrested for marijuana, you're, you're off to Attica. You are off to one of New York's building prisons. Right. And so I guess it's always curious to me that people don't draw the parallel of what margin of error means to the future of a person. And what's he, you know, today, is he repentant in any way? Do you know? No. he's not repentant or you don't know no he's not repentant i mean when kyle written house goes and and shoots people he is weighing in and supports him when daniel penny chokes out someone on a subway in the modern iteration of this he is uh you know
Starting point is 00:36:52 he's supportive so so no uh but again you know that's the grace right he is we he's asked the question what do you think about this and he gets to weigh in and then meanwhile the the wreckage of his act gets completely erased from the memory. How many of these young boys are still alive? Only two. Only two. One committed suicide. Yep.
Starting point is 00:37:18 And the other. One of them ends up in prison. He was battling a drug addiction after this. He ends up locked up. And, of course, prison will slowly kill you. So he comes home and dies shortly thereafter. So two are left. And the one, I think the center of the story that I try to tell was not just paralyzed.
Starting point is 00:37:36 but then suffered pretty severe brain damage from going into a coma after his injury. So all of these young teenagers are fighting for their life, but the media is celebrating the vigilante. And that again, that up and down, that up is down, down is that moment, I think we have to reckon with. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:38:01 And if you want to get yourselves nice and boiled up and angry, read about how the media goes. So there's a ton of lawsuits. I mean, this Gets case dominated New York for years and years. And then there were civil lawsuits and all kinds of other things. But read about how, and I can't remember
Starting point is 00:38:16 as a reporter for The Post or the Daily News. They go to, was it Darryl Cabies? Was it when he was at the- Jimmy Breslin goes to his hospital room. Goes to his hospital room and interviews him when he's like knocked out. But then another guy goes and secretly records him. Oh, this is Bernie Gets
Starting point is 00:38:36 hires this paralegal investigator who essentially goes and calls up Daryl, who is in a rehab center, poses as a doctor to try to get him to admit basically that he's not suffered any brain damage. And then goes to the rehab facility posing as someone who's just trying to get their brother in and films him. But, you know, that was when Daryl Kaby's mother, who was a true heroin in this story, She refuses to let this go. She doesn't want her son forgotten. And so she files the civil suit on his behalf. So there is a civil trial, and it is a kind of extraordinary story
Starting point is 00:39:15 where they're not giving up, but Bernie Gets gets to defend himself pro se. So he gets to depose the young man that he shot and his mother. So it's this extraordinary, you know, yeah. And that's where Revelation is. come out in the trial that didn't come out in the criminal trial where people go like, oh, I think we might a fuck this up, where all the revelations about his own words and all that. And ultimately, he does lose the civil suit, yes? He does.
Starting point is 00:39:44 He gets a $43 million judgment against him thanks to a Bronx jury, but he doesn't pay a dime. So all in all, it's quite a happy tale. Don't tell me how it ends. It's a remarkable, and I have to say, like, it just, it's, such a time and place that I remember so well as a young man. And you captured it remarkably and beautifully in all of its contradictions and and and cleavages. And the city was torn apart in those in those days. So really nicely, nicely, nicely done. So thank you. Thank you for being here. It's called Fear and Fury. It's available now. Heather Ann Thompson. Quick break. We'll be right back
Starting point is 00:40:30 after you. This show is supported by Odu. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up, and it gets complicated and confusing. Odu solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odu is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on features you need. Check out Odu at ODO.com. that's O-D-O-O-O-com.
Starting point is 00:41:09 We go, we check in with your host for the rest of the week, Mr. Michael Kosta. Michael! What are you working on for this week? John, the Winter Olympics begin this week, and I will be reporting live on the scene from Milan, the Italian city of luxury. Michael, we're on basic cable, so the show cannot afford to fly you to Milan, so.
Starting point is 00:41:44 Oh, I see. Well, then the Super Bowl is this week, and I'll be covering it live on the show. scene. Michael, there's no way. Super Bowl tickets are like astronomical. We're not, no. Okay. All right. That's fine. We'll be reporting on the record low temperatures right here in New York. Boom. Yes. Yes. Which I'll be comparing to the temperatures in the Bahamas we're all reporting live. You said yes already. Yes, you Michael Costa. Michael Costa, everybody. Here it is. Your woman is. It's really insurrectionists and agitators, and they're paid.
Starting point is 00:42:27 And you can tell a lot of reasons. Number one, they're professionals, you know, with their mouth. But they're also, you look at the signs. The signs are all professionally made. They have signs that are gorgeous. In fact, I want to get the sign because I'm a big, I need a lot of signs for different things, and I want to find out whoever does their signs.
Starting point is 00:42:43 They do a beautiful job. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the Daily Show. weeknights at 11 10 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.

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