The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Jon Stewart dives into Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency, a.k.a. DOGE, and how the Elon Musk-led project masks its allegiance to corporate overlords and negligence to the American people under the guise of slashing the government's budget. Georgetown Law’s Rupa Bhattacharyya, former Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, joins to discuss how Elon Musk and the DOGE project’s reckless budget cuts are affecting valuable programs like the one she used to oversee. She explains how federal agencies and programs were typically non-politicized until Trump’s second administration, how similar uncertainty is affecting the World Trade Center Health Program, and why these roles are what the government exists to provide.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 My name is Jon Stewart. We have got a show for you tonight. I'm going to be joined later by Rupa Bhatt. I'm going to be joined by Rupa Bhatt. I'm going to be joined by Rupa Bhatt.

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welcome to the Daily Show. My name is James Hurd. We have got a show for you tonight. I'm gonna be joined later by Rupa Bhattacharya. She is the legal director of all. They... They... They... They know their Bhattacharya's.

Legal director of Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. I know her as the individual who took over administrating the 9-11 Zedroga Act, Victims Compensation and Healthcare Fund for 9-11 first responders and all the people that live down at Ground Zero and Pennsylvania and the Pentagon, so... Deep state. She is deep state! And I am gonna take it to her ass. I am gonna take it to her ass.

I am gonna take it to her ass.'m going to take it to her ass. But first, today the United Nations marked the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by doing the only thing the United Nations can do, passing a non-binding resolution asking Russia to please stop. Please take that Putin interesting though among the countries voting against the resolution were North Korea Belarus Russia obviously and the United States of America... They're saying Bruce.

But I guess America doesn't want to set the precedent of opposing bloody land grabs. So green. And landy. But hey, Sentry being the good guys in America. You know, whatever. It's not the only thing Donald Trump is busy disrupting these days. As you know, the Doge project, the Department of Government Efficiency, headed up by the Nick Cannon of white people,

Elon Musk... is in... Is he? It's in full effect. And it may surprise you, I for one happen to be, quite frankly, doge curious. I'm actually somewhat doge adjacent. So Mr. President, if you would. We have to solve the efficiency problem.

We have to solve the fraud, waste, abuse, all the things that have gone into government. Yes! Now, if you had woken up from a coma and heard nothing else that this man had said for the last 10 years, you might think to yourself, I like this guy. I, too, believe government needs to be more efficient, to weed out waste, fraud, and abuse,

and deliver the necessary services that Americans rely on more agilely. I too believe government needs to be more efficient, to weed out waste, fraud and abuse and deliver the necessary services that Americans rely on more agilely. So what do we do first? Report through the inspector general's reports that have addressed these things? Utilize computerishness to excise redundancies in the system? Find ways to more efficiently deliver the government assistance so many Americans rely on? What's first? Elon Musk and his Doge team firing thousands

of federal workers. They're trying to cut 10% of the federal workforce, which is 200,000 jobs. Oh. Have we determined if those are effective workers? Is it based on performance? Are you going in with the scalpels so that we don't hit any vessels and vital organs?

This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw! So, straight amputation. We're just amputation. We're just amputation. It's like we're treating public servants as some kind of underclass. The DC creature is like an animal, infested with ticks and parasites. Our money is lining these swamp creatures' pockets. You know what you call someone who sucks up resources in return for nothing?

You call them a parasite. And that is what the federal workforce has become. These saboteurs, the dead-enders, the DEI undercover agents. The fraudsters, liars, cheaters, globalists, and deep state bureaucrats are being sent back in. Yeah! F*** you! Guy who tests water for appropriate levels of fecal matter? What are we talking about?

What? You know, this is a stark emotional whiplash from looking for efficiencies. But apparently our nation's civil service is now synonymous with waste, fraud, and abuse. And MAGA World is celebrating with Maximum Folksy. The gravy train for a lot of these folks, it's been on biscuit wheels and it's about to run off the dead gum tracks. It's about time. First of all, there is no f***ing way you actually talk like that. No way. You're a congressman from Tennessee, you didn't spring fully formed out of a

primordial cracker barrel. Oh, this here bureaucracy is a Chattanooga choo-choo to a crawfish boil on my flapjacks. I'm just stringing food words together like nonsense. Pew, pew. Other reactions were just creepy. Doge is dishing out spankings like daddy daycare. Doge is dishing out spankings like Daddy Daycare. Oh! I don't remember the spanking scene from Daddy Daycare.

Oh! You must mean the gay porn film Daddy Daycare. I get it, Jesse. I get it, Jesse. I get it. You were watching the film that answers the question, what would happen if a bunch of dudes f***ing a daycare? And it just stuck in your head. You know, I gotta tell you, I feel like you can make efficiency recommendations or cuts without

necessarily demonizing the people who are only carrying out Congress' wishes. But I feel like that. They don't. Here's Donald Trump's new director of the Offices of Management and Budget on his feelings about everyone who works for him. We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.

Mission accomplished. Because these workers are the worst, a hive of scum and villainy. Star Wars reference first. Mostly scum and villainy. Just not the workers you know. Let me tell you a story about Chris. He's gonna get doged.

And this guy's not a DEI consultant. This guy's not a climate consultant. I finally found one person I knew that got doged and it hit me in the heart. We just need to be a little bit less callous with the way, Harold, we talk about dozing people. LAUGHTER Do you watch your f***ing show? LAUGHTER Yes, you certainly want to be calloused, like referring to someone losing their livelihood

as being a child being spanked at daycare. But I guess that's just the price of efficiency. Doze is dropping force-guided bombs into the thermal exhaust port that is the Death Star of our bureaucracy. I f***ing love Star Wars. I just love the film. But...

Doge is Jedi-level shit, man. The FDA is looking to rehire around 300 people. The Trump administration will reverse staffing cuts to the 9-11 health fund. Hundreds of workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration fired, then nearly all rehired days later. The Veterans Affairs Department reinstated terminated employees, and the USDA is rescinding termination letters sent to people working on the response to bird flu. When I said you were criminal parasites,

I obviously wasn't referring to, I have the bird flu, come back to work. Please. But that's fine. Staffing is only part of the Doge mission. There's other crazy shit we could cut. We don't need to be wasting money on ridiculous items like seeing how fast shrimp can run on treadmills. 1.5 million to see the effect of yoga on goats.

A million dollars to study Mexican ducks in their wetland facilities. Studies on the effect of meditation on parrots. Nearly a million to study if cocaine makes Japanese quail more sexually promiscuous. I'm going to go with yes on that last one. I feel that I, not a scientist, I'm going to go with yes on that last one. I feel that I, not a scientist, can very confidently state pre-experiment, if you are a Japanese quail with an eight ball, you are getting your cloaca sucked. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

That may be the most favorite thing I've ever said on this show. No, that's... It's not... Now, obviously, that list of programs, some of them are being presented to seem even more ridiculous, and some of those were completely invented out of thin air. But the point is, why are we spending money on things that seem obviously stupid? Even though a government-funded study on Gila monsters is how we ended up with Ozempic.

By the way, quick pitch, weight gain also would be solved by Japanese quail cocaine. ["The Star Wars of Drugs"] ["The Star Wars of Drugs"] ["The Star Wars of Drugs"] It's really the Star Wars of Drugs cocaine. No downsides. You'd be having your cloacas sucked in no time.

All right. Even if this project of Doge is animated by malice for administrators and is seemingly rash and occasionally cutting off critical government functions out of haste, the savings alone will be worth it. On the Doge website, they posted $16 billion saved just in canceled contracts. Interesting if true. A closer look shows big problems.

For example, Doge claimed axing a single immigration and customs contract saved $8 billion. Turns out that contract was worth a contract saved $8 billion. Turns out that contract was worth a maximum of $8 million. The Wall Street Journal estimates the actual amount saved at not $16 billion, but closer to two and a half. Well, who amongst us hasn't lied about saying something is 16 when it's really 2 and 1 half.

Billion inches. That's not true either. See, it seems that Doge is struggling a bit to get its footing from made up claims about $50 million of taxpayer money going for Gazan condoms to billions in social security payments to dead people, a claim that turned out to not be real, despite what you've heard.

We have millions and millions of people over 100 years old, because they're obviously fraudulent or incompetent. But if you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old. True. You can't argue with that if only it were happening. But it's not happening.

We're not paying millions and millions of dead people's social security money. And even if there was a 200-year-old man walking around, he wouldn't need Social Security, he'd still be in Congress. Guys, I'm going to tell you something. Cutting money shouldn't be this hard. I'm starting to think that we as a country don't understand where the real waste, fraud

and abuse in our system really is. Maybe the savings we gleaned from cutting VA nurses and iguana STD studies isn't where the real money is. Let me see if I can noodle. You know what? Let me join Doge. I'm going to see if I can noodle some ideas here. I want to get down some certain ideas I want to do.

There we go. I got that. Let's see what I can do here. This is my want to be an accountant starter kit. So I got it off Amazon for $5,000. My accountant told me not to get it. So we're looking to save taxpayers some money. And I know, let me think, we've got the studies that are done.

Oh, how about we just take $3 billion in subsidies we give to oil and gas companies that already turned billions in profits. How long did that take? Oh, wait. How about we just close down the carried interest loophole on hedge funds? That's $1.3 billion a year. Oh, how about we stop the $2 trillion we've given to defense contractors

to build a fighter jet that blows when everybody knows the next war is gonna be fought with drones and blockchain, whatever that is. Holy shit. I can't believe it. I just saved us billions of dollars in 11 seconds. Just call me Big Balls." Right? I'm sorry, I'm being told that that nickname is already taken. Well, can I get a Doge nickname? Well, disturbingly low-hanging balls, really? Oh, like you've never heard of gra- how would you even know that? Oh,

I'm sorry. But see, this is where the real money is. The real money, the money our free market-ish system uses to prop up corporate profit at the expense of the taxpayer. Pharmaceutical companies get everything from our government, tax breaks, research grants, patent extensions, worth billions of dollars. And what do we the people get for it? The highest drug prices in the Western hemisphere, and for some reason, the possibility of an infection in our perineum.

Why would you take a drug that would give you an infection in your perineum? And why are they telling us about it at dinnertime? But you know what's so horrible about our system now? And the corruption that laid within it, we're so f***ing numb to it, we actually tout tiny craps in that exploitation as victory. President touting the first ever negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of 10 drugs.

And today, I'm proud to announce that Medicare has reached agreement with all manufacturers on all 10 drugs selected in the first round of negotiations. Can it be? The companies we subsidize with billions of dollars are allowing us the privilege to negotiate the price of 10 of their drugs? And 10 is all of them, right? It would be embarrassing if it was a small drop in the bucket and that the American people didn't expect that we should negotiate for all their f***ing drugs because we've already

paid for it with our subsidies! Are you f***ing drugs because we've already paid for them with our subsidies. Are you f***ing insane? Come on! I'll be going to the hospitals. What we do in pharmaceutical companies is like the worst shark tank deal in f***ing history. Well, we're asking for billions of dollars of your money. Oh, what do we get, 10% of your company?

No. Do we get a discount? No. What do we get? Have you checked your perineum? We live in the upside down, and don't blame the corporations. They are profit-seeking psychopaths that need the lowest wages and the cheapest raw materials to drive their highest profits.

But why do we, the taxpayers, subsidize their psychopathy? That's the waste, fraud, and abuse in our system. That's the waste, fraud, and abuse in our system. That's it! That's what we should be going after. Not the fantastical, over-generous, terrorist condom allowances. In another program, $50 million plus another $50 million for condoms for Hamas.

You know about that? $100 million for condoms for Hamas. You know about that? $100 million for condoms. Condoms. Does everybody know what a condom is? -♪ You're delivering this speech in an elementary school? Why wouldn't... Why wouldn't they know what condoms are? Look, capitalism is by definition exploitative.

It's how it operates. That's fine. But then government's role should be to ease the negative effects on Americans of that exploitation, not subsidize that treachery with our money. We're getting f**ked at a ditty party and they're making us buy the baby oil. I want...

I want Doge to work. I want better efficiencies. I want to get rid of the alphabet agencies that don't do enough, make the Pentagon pass an audit. But we are dozing in the wrong place if we want to really change the system. Companies like Walmart, McDonald's, make billions of dollars in taxpayer-subsidized profits.

Yet many of their hardworking employees need taxpayer-subsidized public assistance. Airlines get billions in bailouts that they use in stock buybacks and bonuses. But if you're on food assistance, you're not allowed to buy hot food with it. Because apparently heated entrees are for winners. We are subsidizing the very system that makes workers' lives harder in the first place, all in the name of freedom and liberty. But the greatest restriction of freedom in this country isn't DEI and pronoun pressure. It's fucking poverty and struggle. And the government's role, I'm not done!

You bastards! It's fine. The government's role should be to end the corruption that enables that exploitation. That's what the Democrats should be doing every f***ing day! Every day! Every day at 5pm sharp, the Democrats should go live on Facebook and do the People's Audit. Find the absurdities and the remedies in our exploitative system.

Get someone like AOC or Jasmine Crockett or Chris Murphy or anybody that doesn't sound like they're complaining why there's no more frozen yogurt at the cafeteria in the villages. I'm sorry. You have no Riz. And we need something more than shouting. We need to do something constructive to anchor our hopes. A new acronym for a new age is not MAGA. It's not MAGA.

It's something more like make America not governed in obviously negative... Oh! A board! A board! I'm kidding! No vigilantes! But do something. When we come back, Rupa Badacharya will be joining us.

Don't go away. What do you have to do? So my guest tonight, a distinguished lawyer, served more than 25 years in federal government, including a special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Please welcome to the program Rupa Bhattacharya. Rupa! There we go. Hello! Hi. Rupa, it is so nice to see you again. Thank you, you too.

You and I met in 2016. You had just... Please explain. You became what's called the special master or the special paymaster of the 9-11 Victims' Compensation Fund. That's right. Through DOJ. Through DOJ.

I was appointed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the back end of the Obama administration and then served for six years through the Trump administration and part of the Biden administration. And your job was to take this program that had been appropriated by Congress and translate that legislation into action. That's right.

And basically my job was to make sure that those who were injured by the September 11 attacks, mostly because they were at the sites and breathing in the toxic dust, got the compensation that they deserved. So you were a man and I don't... Look... And obviously, I don't mean to just paraphrase or those things. You were a parasite on the system.

Yes, apparently. What do you think when you hear that kind of talk about those in the government that are there to try and faithfully execute what the legislation has already appropriated? Honestly, it just makes me sad. I spent my entire career in federal government until I left in 2022.

And throughout all administration across party lines and through all of it, every single person that I worked with, agencies across the government, their only goal is to administer the programs that Congress passed and that the executive branch wants administered according to its rules and its processes. That's what we do. That's our job. And I was blown away. So you were trying to do your job, and I showed up in your office one day with a gentleman by the name of John Field from the Field Good Foundation,

who had lobbied very intensely to get it done. And we just showed up, and you were so gracious to us, and you showed us around the office. And I was so impressed with the way that you had approached it with such compassion, but also a toughness. And you had a mantra on your. And I feel like an idiot, because I'm sure it's like a managerial like hang in there poster.

And you're going to be like, yeah, it's a dumb thing that I put up. But it was a mantra. Do you remember what I'm talking about? I do. What did it say? It was our guiding principles. And it the the way that we ran the program was we wanted to be fair to claimants faithful to the statute and

accountable to the taxpayer It makes me so angry I want to smash another mug. Oh wow, this thing's really coming out. Sorry. You know, in the commercial break I had a lightsaber battle with one of the crew members, and that's how I... And you did it. The program itself had very little waste, fraud, and abuse because your mandate was

to make sure that the people who got it, who should get it, got it, and the people who shouldn't get it, didn't get it. That was my job. So this week or last week I hear they're just cutting 20% of the staffs of people and the victims compensation was one of those offices. It was the World Trade Center Health Program, which is our sister program. That's the one that administers health care to people.

That's the one that administers health care to people. So it's actually even more important because it provides these responders and survivors who worked at the World Trade Center site at the Pentagon at Shanksville who are now sick with the health care that they need. 85,000 people who are now sick with the healthcare that they need. 85,000 people who worked at one of the sites

or who lived in Manhattan have been certified with one or more 9-11 related conditions. And so the cuts that were made were indiscriminately made to cut almost 20% of the staff of the health program, which would have been devastating. And what are, in practical terms, and you know the people love a good conversation about administration and paperwork. In practical terms, what does that mean?

Does that mean people wouldn't be able to access the program, they wouldn't be able to sign up for the program, they wouldn't be able to make their appointments, they wouldn't get their medications? What would it mean? All of those things. It means that people who are going to sign up for medical monitoring, over 140,000 people are monitored. 10,000 people tried to sign up for monitoring last year.

Those applications wouldn't get processed or there would be delays in processing them. There would be delays in certifying the conditions as 911 related, which means that there would be delays in getting them healthcare and delays in getting their compensation from the VCF which depends on those certifications. It means that additional conditions couldn't be determined as potentially eligible because the studies that would have funded that were being taken away. It means that the oversight of the program which is largely run through contract. The actual people looking for fraud. The actual people looking for fraud.

They got cut too. Got cut too. What are we doing? For God's sakes. And then they were rehired. And then they were rehired what? Two days later? About a week later, thanks to the intervention of the New York Congressional delegation.

Shout out definitely to Representative Andrew Garbarino of Long Island. And he's really cool. And he's a guy. Garbarino! By the way, for those of you in Long Island, come to Garbarino's, a fantastic Italian restaurant, overlooking Long Island town.

But Senator Schumer and Gillibrand were also instrumental. Schumer and Gillibrand have been on it. Yes. Gillibrand especially had been on it forever. And Hillary Clinton, when it first started, was an incredible advocate for it. But the reason why I wanted to talk about it

is because it's a very specific program. But in the specificity of it, I think there's something universal here. There's a ton of programs out there right now that don't have Republicans in a congressional delegation trying to fight for it, and they're gone. Yeah, if you don't have... It's a sad commentary, right, that the only reason that program was saved is because there were Republicans who were willing to go to the president and ask him to reinstate it.

And thankfully, and I'm grateful that he did, but not every program has that constituency and we shouldn't live in a world where the only programs that get saved are the ones where Republicans are willing to put their stamp of approval on it. Right, as long as it demonstrates fealty to the leadership or anything along those lines. What were, when you were administrating,

what are the frustrations within government? Is it what makes it so difficult for government to be agile? Is it are there too many regulations? Is there too much paperwork? Do we need a moon shot to simplify things? Because I think I would love the idea of

more efficiency and a less adversarial role. It seems like any government program that's going to help people, and I know this from the PAC-PAC, any government program that's going to help people is adversarial. That the people become adversarial with the people trying to get the money. So we certainly tried not to be adversarial. That was not our goal. But I think one of the things that sort of gets lost in all this conversation about efficiency

is that part of the reason government is inefficient, part of the reason that bureaucracies exist, is because we are trying so hard to make sure that there isn't waste, fraud, and abuse in our programs. The reviews and the processes and the things that seem to take a long time that sort of hang us up are there for a reason. They're there because we want to make sure that we are being appropriate stewards of the public's money. Right.

And that we're handling these programs responsibly. Is it too much sometimes? Maybe. But the way to solve it isn't just to go in and indiscriminately cut people out. I wonder, let me pitch this. Is there a way, if we were to make, because there are tons of people that qualify for food assistance who don't claim those benefits because it's difficult. There's a lot of hoops you have to jump through and all those things.

If the government didn't use waste, fraud, and abuse as a default, made that money simpler to get, like what it was in the pandemic, and then bolstered the money on the back end searching for fraud? Because it seems like we're making the 3% or 5% of fraud. We're making the 95% pay a price

for that. Is there a different way to jigger those programs, make them easier to access, and bolster the fraud watchdog on the back end of it? So I'll say two things. First of all, there are very, very routine and rigorous processes in place at all federal

agencies to try to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. There are the inspector generals, the VCF underwent the inspector generals. Well, there were the inspector generals. There were the inspector generals. There's the government accountability office. OMB does a budget process to make sure that money's being appropriately allocated to the right programs, and there's annual fiscal audits. So every step of the way, there is something happening to try to make sure, but those programs, all of that process only runs if you have the staff there to do it. You need staff who understands the programs, who can answer questions, who has expertise. The second thing I would say is that if you're

going to eliminate inefficiencies in programs, the people you have to talk to are the people who are running the programs. That's what I did when I started up the VCF. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah. I mean, we, OK.

So that's five minutes of clause line. I disagree with you a little bit. Whenever I have a situation like that, I rely on teenage boys. I find them judicious and hormonally balanced. And I like to let them loose in an organization and just go, have at it boys. It must be so incredibly frustrating to see that because I'm also like I was very frustrated at the fights that had to occur to get people who had earned benefits benefits and I imagine that's and to see how easily corporate interests have infiltrated our process

through lobbying you know the tax code isn't complex because working class people made it that way. The regulations aren't complex and difficult to do, because small businesses want that. That's all the result of corporate lobbyists, because they know how to game the system. How do we stop that part from infiltrating the part that you want to do?

So that's a really good question that I wish I had an answer to. I'm not sure that I do. I'm that you want to do. So that's a really good question that I wish I had an answer to I'm not sure. I'm not sure that it. What I do know is that we have especially in the context of the 9.11 programs the BC at the World Trade Center health program we have seen over and over and over again these responders who are sick go back to the Hill over and over and over to try to keep

these programs funded. It's happening again. It's happening again. This Wednesday, you know, this Wednesday they're going to reintroduce some legislation to get funding. Right. The World Trade Center health program is facing a crisis. It's still a few years out,

and so that makes it hard for Congress to focus on it. But the fact of the matter is, is that if you don't know whether you're not, you're going to be funded a few years from now, you have to make decisions today about how many people you take into the program, because you need to make sure that the money lasts. I had this exact same problem in 2018

when we reauthorized the VCF. I had to cut same problem in 2018 when we reauthorized the VCF. I had to cut awards by 50 percent because we didn't have enough money and it was thanks to you and thanks to a number of others. To get at all those people, they were tireless and many of them were very, very sick. To give you a sense of what that is, in the middle of the VCF funding and the victims compensation, if your cancer had just been, if you had the unlucky occurrence of having a cancer diagnosed in 2021 or 2019 when the fund had lost money, you wouldn't have gotten the full benefit because they had to resource

guard. But that's what's happening. You had to resource guard. It must have been heartbreaking. But that is exactly what is happening to the World Trade Center health program right now. Right. And Dr. Howard, who was a Trump appointee, who was reappointed to his position in the last part of the Trump administration, is going to have to make decisions very soon

about how many people he can continue to allow into the program if they don't re-up the funding. And so members of Congress, including New York delegations, are reintroducing that bill. Don Barino! On Wednesday. It's already been agreed to twice and been stripped twice. Once in 2022 and once just in December when the funding bill fell apart. From an omnibus bill they were going to sneak it into like a transportation bill or something along those lines.

So hopefully this time around, you know, these responders and these survivors, many of them have PTSD, many of them have very severe health conditions, to have to go up again and again and again to ask for this funding is just uncomfortable. And again, this isn't just this program, this is happening across government and this is what we talk about when this system must be torn down. The idea that people who need the funding, that's what government exists to provide. It doesn't exist to provide a smoother road for McDonald's. It exists to provide for people. And that's got, it's got to change.

And so I really appreciate you being on the show. And we're going to see, hopefully we can get that. Rupa Bhattacharya, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right on the show. And we're going to see, hopefully we can get that. Rupa Bhattacharya, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back after this. Thank you. What are you going to be covering for the people? Well, John, I'll tell you what I won't be covering. President Trump wasting government resources

to check in on the gold at Fort Knox. What a nothing burger. I mean, there is no need to investigate or count it or do an inventory on Vault 84C. He's unhinged. Unhinged. What? Vault 84C? Why 84C?

What are you, a f***ing cop? No, I... Just trust that all the gold is there, John. Every last bar. Was that the sound of a gold bar falling out of your pocket? Yes. Yes, it was. But I brought that gold bar from home.

All right. Desi Lydic, everybody. Here it is, your moment of zen. We are also going to Fort Knox because we want to see if the gold is still there. Wouldn't that be terrible? We open up this Fort Knox. It's just solid granite that's five feet thick.

The front door, you need six muscle men to open it up. I don't even think they have windows. Wouldn't that be terrible if we opened it up and there was no gold there? 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.