The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Jon Stewart on Trump’s Inauguration and Elon Musk's Nazi Salute | Brooke Harrington

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Jon Stewart unravels the absurd "weave" of Trump's Inauguration Day, from Joe Biden's buzzer-beater pardons to the tech billionaire VIPs, to the passive-aggressive transfer of power. Plus, the Best F**kin News Team has full coverage on day one of the second Trump era. Brooke Harrington, economic sociologist and author of “Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism," discusses modern American oligarchies and the behavior of the ultra-rich. They talk Donald Trump’s “broligarchy” of American tech billionaires, how they differ from the oligarchs of Russia and the Gilded Age, and how a coalition of laborers is the only way to dismantle the system.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, a very special, special report. The Daily Show presents Inauguration 2025. The second and likely final Trump inauguration with your host, John Stewart. I'm your host on this most historic vibe shift of a day. Uh... Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States, a man whose licentious and felonious behavior

has been well cataloged and documented, returned to the capital of Rotunda just four short years after inspiring, in that very place, a day of riotous shick-f**kery. Shit-f**kery. Returned to the exact same room. Now, generally, if this were a Dateline documentary, he would return to that room to express a form of repentance

and maturity and acknowledgement of the pain that had been wrought on that terrible day. But in this show that we're filming now, it's to be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. And as with most returning to the scene of the crime, it began with tea with the people you tried to steal it from. A short time ago, President Joe Biden greeted Mr. and Mrs. Trump at the White House for tea, an inaugural tradition.

It's always important to keep up the tea tradition when you hand over the keys to, I'm sorry, what did you call them? Hitler? But gotta be a good host. Hey, the Wi-Fi password is White House, but I changed the I to a 1. I hope that's not weird. I'm not saying Biden should have done his own insurrection, but there's gotta be a happy medium between storming the Capitol and would you like a crumpet?

But everyone showed up. Yes, it's the Supreme Court taxing in. Oh, please. They're taxing in like the private jets some of them take to caged pheasant hunts. All very legal. And America's illustrious senators like Amy Klobuchar and Deb Fisher, and of course, Hakeem Jeffries were there and Fetterman was.

Are you? Come on! Fetterman? Really? Shorts? It's not even an inaugural decorum thing. It's f***ing freezing out there. It's a health concern. Federman is literally America's teenage son.

It's your grandma's funeral. I told you I don't like long pants. Fine, be cold. Even the president's family attended, most of whom didn't have to be warned not to do that weird f***ing thing with their hands. Don't, hey, hey, hey, don't, don't do it with your hands. Can you just be normal for a day? What was he doing?

Literally like, look at my dick. Huh, what, no? Okay, okay. But not to worry, also attending were all those people who warned Americans to shun this wannabe fascist dictator called Trump. Look at me, ma! Oh, let's go see Hitler and get a quick selfie first.

Hello, look at this! Oh, a quick one for the gram! Yes, former President Obama was there. George Bush seemed kind of there. Definitely high. Even Mike Pence showed up, I guess, to let the crowd finish the job. Oh. Woo! Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. Only Michelle Obama seemed to have

the consistent ethical stance of saying, when they go low, I stay the f*** home. I don't care. I'm staying home. Of course, Jill Biden was there making the strategic choice of keeping her purse on, which as you know is the international symbol of I've got to go off-camps. But the award for most useful fashion accessory went to the ever-stylish Melania Trump, whose Audrey Hepburn-esque chapeau, or head cloche as it's called, doubled as an effective... If you don't control your borders, you don't have a head.

Meanwhile many dignitaries went not only hatless, but hairless, with a plethora of stocky bald billionaires who all seemed to go to the same biohack life extension clinic and say, give me the Lex Luthor. Yes, taking the place of seats normally reserved for Democratic or Republican governors sat Zuck, Bezos, Tim Cook, Elon, Tic Tac Guy, Google Guy, the six guys who control maybe 20% of the world's wealth and 100% of your nudes. You don't need to pretend with me. I don't know what he's talking about. Delete, delete, delete.

Populism, ladies and gentlemen. Shouldn't this gathering be happening in a volcano's lair near Zurich? Or are we just open source Illuminati now? Where's the conspiracy fund in that? Honestly, there is not a useful app of communication, not controlled by at least one of these individuals. And you may not be concerned that they've all ponied up a million dollars to be sitting there

and are kissing the ass of a president who openly threatens non-ass kissers. But trust me, shit's gonna get weird. Even by that afternoon, shit got weird. This appearance of Elon Musk at an earlier Trump rally is getting loads of attention because of a one-armed gesture he made. This one really mattered. And I just wanna say thank you for making it happen.

Thank you. Oh! OK. Charitably, I'm going to say that was just an awkward, my heart goes out to you gesture. Any of you might have done it like this. You know, even Taylor Swift has done that, you know, my heart, but she almost never does the, goes out to you!

Just always stays with, but you know, listen, it's nerve-wracking day. You're not normally a public speaker. It's a one-off gesture. Please try not to use it again. Son of a bitch. I really want to make sure the people in the back see it, I guess.

I'm just going to be generous and say, maybe that was Elon's attempt at dabbing on the haters? I don't... By the way, do people still dab on haters? Is that... Was that a very old man? Okay. Wasn't that a thing at one time?

No, I think it's important in these troubled times to continue to dab on the haters. But don't be concerned that these tech titans control Google and TikTok and WhatsApp and Instagram and X and any other way that we communicate in the year of our Lord 2025 because, you know, they're not going to censor us. And it doesn't matter anyway because I know in my heart we don't need any of them, because we'll always have you, Messenger Pigeon. No! No!

How dare you, sir? Why, Messenger Pigeon? Why would you turn on me? I let you live in a cage on my roof surrounded by your own shit!" You know, I asked them to make that animation at, like, 5 o'clock tonight. Literally, with everything else going on in the show, and I was literally like,

could you make me a pigeon doing this? And they were just like, sure. Anyway, then it was time for the swearing in on the kind of on the Bible. Yes, it turns out Trump didn't actually put his hand on the Bible. Obviously, because one or the other would burst into flames. Perhaps both. And so, ladies and gentlemen, the torch

has been passed from Biden to Trump. Yes, the torch has been passed to the same generation of Americans. Let's hear from the 47th president, fresh off the warm embrace of a tea ceremony with his predecessor. My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place. He's right behind you.

Luckily I don't think he can hear you. Yes the inaugural speech followed the American tradition of a passive aggressive transfer of power. The incoming president gets to completely shit on the outgoing president in front of that president and hopefully his spouse. In recent years, our nation has suffered greatly. Record inflation trying to socially engineer race and gender, disastrous invasion of our country.

It's a radical and corrupt establishment. Vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization. From this moment on, America's decline is over. Yeah! This is a tumultuous time in American history filled with much uncertainty and trepidation. But it is very difficult for me to not in any way take the bait

of the way he said, dick line. It... It... It... It really did sound like he said, our dick line. Like, the line of our dick line. Like the line of our dick.

So you can see America's dick line? I mean, how are you going to end our dick line? With a tuck or a full reassignment? Or is this more about Fetterman's shorts? What about our dick line? I am a child. But as bad as things were, guess what folks, daddy's home, it's about to get a whole lot better. The golden age of America begins right now.

From this day forward, our country will flourish. The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before. We will win like never before. We will be a rich nation again. We will bring prices down. Fill our strategic reserves up again. We will drill, down, fill our strategic reserves up again. We will drill, baby, drill.

I think I just saw JD Vance's dick line. Drill baby drill. But for all the day's eerie energy, one thing stood out to America's watchdogs of democracy. We have watched as the 47th president of the United States has been sworn in the cornerstone of democracy. This is the true transfer of power here of the current president and the former president making this walk. This process is what distinguishes the United States from a lot of other parts of the world.

It's all just normal shit. It's just another day. It's all just normal transfer power shit. We're just going to play along like all this theater is normal. Oh, except there was one thing that might have given the game away. With just 20 minutes or so left in his presidency, we've just gotten word from President Biden that he is pardoning his brothers, their wives, his sister, other family members. He says that he is doing this because baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak

havoc on the lives of individuals. That's all just normal. First of all, Biden, you're at the inauguration. Did you auto schedule your pardons? And second of all, what the f*** man? You're just pardoning your whole family? It's not a great look. Yeah, like any good captain, as the ship is going down, Biden gave the order.

That lifeboat is for my family! The rest of you can do just like a kind of Jack and Rose thing. One on, one off, 50-50 shot, who gives a shit? Biden outie. So the takeaway of this entire day was, a man who tried to overthrow the government has been peacefully handed the reins of power, and the outgoing president has started a new tradition of blanket pardoning everyone in his orbit. The two men creating a magnificent snake-sucking-its-own-dick cycle of no accountability.

And then of course, we end with the grand finale. The attack on Greenland has begun! Yeah, what are you going to do? For more on the day's events, we go out to the best f***ing news team in the country, starting at the Capitol with Michael Kosta and Desi Lydon! You guys are bringing it! Michael Kosta, I'm gonna start with you. My friend. What's the mood over there at the inaugural parties tonight? John, it's incredible.

Donald Trump hasn't even been president for one whole day, but already unemployment is down, gas is low, my vertical jump increased half an inch, and the stock market is soaring. Yeah, I mean, obviously a lot of that economic stuff was happening before noon today. So I don't... I don't think so.

Also, Trump made eggs cheap again. I mean, we can eat 10, 20, 30 of these a day. John, they're literally selling them by the dozen. My albumin levels are foreign. Desi Lydic, you're down there as well. You've been covering Blue Washington, as it were. John, I'm with the hashtag resistance, and they are appalled by what they're seeing.

The executive orders, the renaming of military bases. They've already renamed the bases after Confederate generals? No, Hitler. It's just Fort Hitler now. It's overwhelming, John. Alright, well try and stay safe out there, Desi. John, if I could say something. I'm sorry, yeah, Josh Johnson? Are you?

Come on. Where are you? I'm at the Martin Luther King Memorial. Today was also MLK Day. There was a march honoring a man that represented the best about America. Just wanted to put that out there. Okay, fantastic. Good to keep in mind. John, can I interrupt?

Yes, Michael. I just thought of some more egg stuff. Egg salad, egg creams, egg nog, yawney eggs, egg plants. Thanks to Trump, these things are now super cheap. And the best part about eggs, John, they never expire. That's definitely not true, Michael. Well, we'll see what the new Secretary of Health and Human Services has to say about that.

Right after he legalizes raw milk. You know, speaking of the letters M, L, and K. Let me tell you about someone else we should be celebrating today. Black guy, preacher, and he talked a lot like this. The black guy from the movie Selma? No, yeah, but no. No. John, I have an update from Resistance headquarters that the Cheetos man is not going to like. Yes, Desi, do initiatives. Is there another march? Not going to be necessary.

I'm hearing Rachel Maddow is coming back five days a week. And when she compares what's happening now to the Shays' Rebellion of 1787, woo boy, I would not want to be Trump. Excuse me. I'm sorry, Grace Colton-Trenton-Troy. We're being recognized again. Why are you dressed like a caveman and a robot? Uh... We're being recognized again. Why are you dressed like a caveman and a robot?

Hmm? Oh, we were understudies for the village people. Yeah. Yeah, if the copper Native American gets sick, then cavemen and robots step in. Well, aren't you guys a little, like, shamed at all about performing at the Trump inauguration, or...? Do we look like we're capable of shame, John? Besides, this is fun. Much like it's fun to stay at the YNCA.

Yeah, that's... You know where it's not fun to stay? Yeah. Yeah. Josh, can't we just talk about this? Yeah. Yeah. How do we do that?

It's not fun to stay at a Birmingham jail. Yeah. How do you do that? It's not fun to stay at a Birmingham jail. Josh, can't we just talk about this some other day? It is literally the day to talk about it. Damn it, am I the only one who thinks it's f**king crazy that Martin Luther King Day is happening at the same time that Trump is taking power? A man who staged violent resistance is being rewarded with power to the diminishment of our greatest nonviolent resistance leader. This cannot halt!

And it won't. It's just been renamed Martin Luther Trump Day. So... That's the f***ing news team, everybody. When we come back, Brooke Harrington will be joining us. We'll be right back. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Daily Show. My guest tonight... My guest tonight is an economic sociologist at Dartmouth College who studies the behavior of the ultra-rich.

Her latest book is called Offshore, Stealth Wealth, and the New Colonialism. Please welcome to the program Brooke Harrington. I'm so happy to be here. You have studied, oligarchy, you have studied the ultra rich. As you were watching today, I'm going to assume, you were struck by the scenes of the collegial atmosphere. Yeah. Was that odd? Do we normally see all the titans of industries and things in the front row, the box seats? No, this is really different.

And in fact, I was reflecting on how different this is even from Russian oligarchy, because- Don't now. OK, that hurts. That actually hurts. Sorry. Well, at least Putin had a very clear red line with his oligarchs.

The grand bargain of the early 2000s was he was going to let them get rich on condition that they kept their noses out of his political business. At most they would be his errand boys from some diplomatic missions in Europe, for example, on their super yachts. But that was it. And it ended there. And he made a huge example of Mikhail Khararovsky, who was the Yukos oil chairman who dared to stand up for transparency in human rights in Russia. And that earned him almost a decade in Russian prison and seizure of all of his assets by Putin. He was lucky to escape with his life.

Oh, and so you're not expecting any of our oligarchs to be like, hey, watch what you're doing. Like none of that. No, but what Trump has done is so extraordinary because he doesn't have that bright line with the new oligarchs of America at all. He's basically said, OK, you bought it. Do what you want. But he's blended them. I mean, this doge, I mean, he's brought them in to the table.

But is there maybe something better about that? Because the explicit bargain is, now you have to give us money or you have to bring business to America? Well, for me as an American, this is not good news because I like democracy. Tell me more about this. I want to hear about this. I like the sound of it, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to be sold. Yeah, well, the thing about the broligarx, and this is even different from oligarchs... Stop, stop. Okay.

If that's not trademarked. Broligarch, nice. So, we've had oligarchs in the past in America. We've had Carnegie's and we've had Rockefellers. But aside from making sure they didn't get regulated or taxed too much, they kind of stuck to their own business. They just wanted to get rich. But the brologarchs really have an explicit political agenda.

And it is essentially anti-democratic and almost monarchical. So you see them more as like they're in the king's court, and the world has been returned to the more natural order of noblesse oblige, or something along those lines.

Well, they're going for noblesse without the oblige. They want all the privileges and none of the obligations. In terms of charitable funding? Philanthropy, any sense of social norms constraining them. I mean what they're all about is nothing can constrain me. I mean look what happened when the EU tried to impose its own laws on Elon Musk.

J.D. Vance, not even the vice president yet, rolls up on the EU and says you you leave our boy alone or we're gonna pull out of NATO. Wait, that's what he said? You made this sound very Crips versus Bloods. Well, there is... JD Vance rolled up on the EU? He just got out of his Benz and went inside and was like, here's your new me. With the eyeliner and everything. Right. Craziness.

So they are explicitly, but then what is the political philosophy? Is it just the great man theory that the irony of a populist movement relying on the great man theory that, you know, the irony of a populist movement relying on the great men to control all that happens. It sounds a lot actually like the divine right of kings, but with a pseudo scientific spin. So that's where you get all the Elon bros talking about

being high T alpha males. That's just a 21st century way of saying God says I'm the king and you all need to bow down. But I mean at some level don't you think they're just trolling people with that? Like do you do you actually believe they think I have a high sperm count?

So I I mean I feel yes. I don't know how we went off the rails on that. But that feels a little bit like how much of this is trolling and memes and how much of it for me they feel a little bit like look, we had a Gilded Age. It doesn't seem that different from the Gilded Age that ushered in industrialization, although now it's more on the digital side. Would that be a charitable way of putting it? Well, I think it's different from the Gilded Age

in two important ways. One is the sort of the release of the oblige part of No Bless Oblige. These guys are totally released from the constraints of social norms that said it was stigmatizing to sit on your wealth like a dragon on a hoard of gold. You had to show that you were doing something for society. Is that why, so when you look at all those like national parks of Rockefeller or you look at all that, that's why those guys did that?

Yeah, I mean they didn't necessarily have to be fans of humanity, but they cared about their reputations. And in order to keep a decent reputation, you had to be seen to do something, you know, throwing the public a bone, as it were. But isn't that what these oligarchs now, isn't that what their first wives are for? Isn't that like what it seems like now is they divorced their first wife and then their first wife is like, give this all the planned parenthood

Well, I guess is that the is that the oblige that's coming out Uh, I only know about the case of Mackenzie Bezos right that I think Melinda Gates also gives a trip Oh she too. Yes. She she is is doing her part, but it almost seems as a like a middle finger to the ex-husbands. Like, I'll show you the proper use of wealth, USOB. Really? Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah.

So let's talk about, though, when we look at the Russian oligarchs, you talk about Putin is utilizing the wealth of these men, I guess, to fund some of his endeavors or just the amassing of that money covers his own corruption? My understanding, I'm not a Russia expert, but my understanding from reading the work of people who are, is it's sort of like a pyramid scheme or a mafia operation where the capo de tutti capi sits at the top

and takes a percentage of what the lower level henchmen are getting. So, you know, he takes a chunk of yuko soil and he takes a chunk of Gazprom, and that way he stays the wealthiest man in the world. Yeah. They're earners. So Vladimir Putin, like, runs Herbalife. Like, that's in the world. Yeah. They're earners. So Vladimir Putin runs Herbalife. That's what this is.

Yeah. And for Trump, he looks at it as like, I will take my power that I have in government, and I will amplify it through industry. But through industry, look, it's almost better to me that it's this explicit. I feel like now we have a number on what this type of crony capitalism looks like.

Elon gave $270 million to get Donald Trump elected. He made, after the election, I think something like $210 billion. So now we have a number on it. We know what their access to government is worth. Is that transparency better for us? To even know? Can we do anything about it if we don't even know? Well, I think you make a good point. It's better that we know and that it not be happening sub rosa and, you know, in whispers that we can't really define in any way. It's it's all cards on the table now and and it's almost like it's being rubbed in our

faces. Right. How do you battle? So when you have something that's the state power of the United States, which is utterly enormous combined with the corporate power, I mean, I always viewed government in some ways as hopefully a check on corporate power. But if it's a lubricant what does that turn into and again I apologize I just realized

you went right from yeah well it's obviously something very dangerous because what we're seeing here is the total release of all democratic constraint and all pretense to social norms that used to constrain these people. Right. They're totally unfettered in their access to power and in their sense of what is okay to do with that power. But were we kidding ourselves in some ways? You know, I saw a gentleman who was trying to become the new DNC chairman, gentlemen, Martin, I think his name was. And he had said about money in politics, oh yeah, we're going to get all that

money out. You know, we're going to have our good billionaires, but we're not going to take any money from the bad billionaires. And it reminded me, I once had Nancy Pelosi on it. She said, money corrupts in politics. What about the money Democrats raise? Oh, no, that doesn't corrupt us. There's this sense that, oh, no, it's only those actors that are bad.

I mean, the oligarchs gained trillions during the Biden presidency. Yeah. So are we kidding ourselves that this wasn't in place, just not maybe as stated as clearly. I would want to move away from individualistic explanations of like good billionaires and bad billionaires and talk about like what do we as a society say we're not we're not going to let you get away with that because historically that's been the only thing that's constrained the really rich. If you go all the way back to the Medici in the 1400s,

they weren't necessarily good people, but they were the richest people in Europe. And the reason we have the Renaissance and all of its great works of art is because their society wouldn't let them get away with just sitting on their hoards of wealth and enjoying it for their own benefit. They had to do something for their society.

Does that mean we're allowing ourselves to be bought off? Is the idea being like, look, you guys amass what you need to amass at the top, you pull the strings you wanna pull, we need two parks. Like what, how, and this gets to a larger conversation about labor and capital. How does American labor tap into that money stream? Because that money stream is built on the backs of American labor.

Yet they don't have access to it. What if we allow them their excess? But rather than philanthropy, is there a way to. Attach to make American labor also a shareholder in that? Yes, but you could say it's the hard way, so to speak. One of the wealth managers I spoke to in the course of studying offshore finance over 17 years, he was a historian.

And I mean, he trained as a historian at one of the Oxbridge schools in the UK and he said- One of the finest historian institutes. And he was very candid about his role in making rich people richer at the expense of the rest of us and he said well once that ball gets rolling it becomes quite difficult to stop it short of like revolutions or mass general strikes. And I think historically that's what we've seen. We're at levels of wealth inequality unseen since the Gilded Age.

And you know, what happened then? Well, we had a world war, we had a pandemic, and then we had the rise of fascism. And in between then we had a lot of labor action in the U.S. So if labor unions are able to muster enough power to stand up to some of these oligarchs, they could be a force for good. It's so dispiriting to hear that same message for labor of like, you guys just need to get together and get better lobbyists.

And there is something here that seems almost more difficult, which is this rise of populism mirroring this Gilded Age. Fascism was not blended with the Gilded Age, the Industrial Age was. And so I don't know that we've seen this before. And I hesitate to say that, but it does seem unusual. And you know what's really kind of surprising to me about this is that what's really needed here

is a way for people to coalesce and organize themselves to stand up to these individual accumulations of power in the hands of the broilagarks. But the law is not on our side. The law is basically now saying corporations are people, money is speech, and so how do you... Boy, I hate to see someone who's studied this for so long to you go like, you know what's terrible to me? And I'm like, what? No! You study this!

Well, as you correctly point out, where does the wealth actually come from? It comes from labor. So if labor gets together and says, we're not going to stand for this anymore, or if consumers get together and say, we're not going to stand for this anymore, there are way more of us than there are of them. The problem is that the weird twist in the wonderful world of the internet and social media is that rather than giving us a means to coalesce

and come together, it's divided us into these little bubbles or camps that are at war with one another. Which I'm guessing now is maybe the overt strategy. Yeah. Because that's, in many ways, how they generate the income, because that, the overt strategy of the algorithm is to conflict and outrage. Just last week, there was a scholarly journal article

published by some political scientists in the Netherlands that looked at who generates the most misinformation on social media, and they found it was really asymmetric. It's almost all coming from right-wing populists, and it's not an accident. That's their strategy. Holy shit. You know, for a second there, I thought you were going to say me. I mean...

LAUGHTER Made me really nervous. Thank you so much for this. Offshore is the book. It's available now. Brooke Harrington, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE MUSIC Hey, everybody, that's our show for tonight.

Before we go, I'm going to check in with your host for the rest of the week, Mr. Ronnie Chang. Ronnie! What do you got for the rest of the week, Mr. Ronnie Chang. Ronnie! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! What do you got for the rest of the week, my friend? John, before we lean into the Trump years, I'm gonna spend this week fondly remembering

the incredible four years America had under Joe Biden, a president of faith, compassion, and courage. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah. Yeah. You know he's out of office and can't give out any more pardons, right? You know that. Oh, I see. I see.

Well, then I'll be spending this week talking about the Biden crime family and how only President Trump has the courage to take them down. Thank you so much. Ronny Chieng everybody. Great break. Here it is, your moment of joy. I just want to say you're a younger, far more beautiful audience that I just spoke to and I want to keep it off the record.

This Jane is a disaster. She's a crying lunatic and crying, crying Adam Kinzinger. He's a super crying. I never saw the guy not cry. I talked about inflation too, but you know, how many times can you say that an apple is doubled in cost? Used to get into a stagecoach, now you get into a helicopter. Times change.

I mean, they got like 60, 70 pounds of drug, and they go as fast as you can walk. They go, bip, bip, bop. And I would attack a karate champion Get slightly rebound. I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs, okay? 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. Paramount Podcasts.