The Daily Show: Ears Edition - TDS Time Machine | Memorial Day

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Celebrate Memorial Day with The Daily Show as we look back at previous coverage, and issues currently affecting veterans and the military.  President Bush speaks to Memorial Day and D-Day remembrance crowds, as Hollywood marks the occasions with promotion of blockbuster Pearl Harbor and HBO's Band of Brothers. Michael Kosta unpacks Trump's military trans ban. Ronny Chieng sits down with Senator Tammy Duckworth to hear her thoughts on Trump's treatment of veterans. Jon Stewart checks receipts on Trump's proposed birthday military parade, and Jordan Klepper is joined by trans military members to discuss how they've become so politicized. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. You're listening to Comedy Central. We live in a proud nation, one flush with opportunity and prosperity, and filled with a robust generation of Americans who have valiantly fought for their right to party. But believe it or not, there was a generation before this generation that fought for something far greater, the right to party in Europe. And this Memorial Day, they were honored by none other than President George W. Bush, who placed a wreath on the tomb of the unknowns, an honor bestowed upon Bush, not for his war

record but because he himself knows so very little. It is not in our nature to seek out wars and conflicts. But whenever they have come, when adversaries have left us no alternative, American men and women have stood ready to take the risks and to pay the ultimate price. Bush knows. He paid the ultimate price during Vietnam, a weekend a month in the Texas Air National Guard, that he'll never get back. Bush also signed legislation to construct a World War II

monument at a controversial site in the middle of the National Mall. It is my huge honor to set my name on this bill, ordering construction of a monument that will stand for the ages. Not only will I sign the bill, I will make sure the monument gets built. You're a bad mother. Watch your mouth.

The crowd, The crowd... The crowd applauded the president's forcefulness, but didn't really go for the new design he had proposed. But even the most cynical among us knows what Memorial Day weekend is really about. Huge movie openings. Disney's three-hour popcorn and soda sale factory Pearl Harbor was this year's offering. It took in 75 million dollars. The film's grand scale swelling score and star-crossed love story is an attempt to harken back to Hollywood's golden age of big-screen epics. Oh and be sure to try Wendy's new Pearl Harbor burger. It's a sneak attack on your hunger.

Which finger works better? Despite the box office numbers, critics took a huge dump on this film. With the Wall Street Journal saying it's a quote, lame comedy, dubious history, fumbling drama, and a love story so inept as to make a pacifist long for war. When historians look back on the years since World War II, they will perhaps be best remembered as the years when America looked back on World War II. With the June 6th anniversary of D-Day, ceremonies honoring those who served in the Great War

abounded this week, and as is customary in any discussion of America's sacrifice in that great global conflict, the natural first stop is Tom Hanks, who joined a group of veterans in Normandy, France to talk about his latest project, the HBO war mini-series Band of Brothers. As filmmakers, we certainly hope to entertain those in search of a great story. We also hope to educate those who are unaware of our own history. That's Band of Brothers on HBO, right after a Sex and the City episode about Volva Dynia. Dignitaries attending the ceremony and the screening of the show included the grandchildren of Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and

Dwight David Eisenhower. Afterwards, they all agreed that they shouldn't trust the grandchildren of Joseph Stalin. Meanwhile, in Bedford, Virginia, President Bush dedicated a national D-Day memorial in front of a crowd of 15,000. The crowd waited in polite anticipation of the president's remarks while three F-16s screeched across the sky back towards Washington. Apparently, on their way to bring back the speech, Bush had accidentally left in his other pants. They have seen our nations through a world war and a cold war. Our shared values and experiences must guide us now in our continued partnership.

It was a gritty performance. It was a fine performance, especially considering that mere minutes before his speech, Bush thought he was going to be talking about the D-Day from Animal House. Donald Trump was busy getting our military in shape so he can finally fulfill our country's month-old dream of conquering Greenland. And first, we're going to need to have as many troops as possible. President Trump has signed several executive orders to reshape the military, including

directive banning transgender service members. Okay, did I say as many troops? I mean, fewer troops, right? You know what they say in the Army, less is more. Look, maybe they don't say that. I don't know, but that's... Look, I don't have a problem with transgender soldiers. As someone who pees himself anytime he hears a loud noise,

I think we should be grateful to anyone who's willing to put their life on the line so I don't have to. But, hey, yeah. Okay. But I'm open-minded about being closed-minded, so what's the issue here? President Trump signed an executive order calling transgender people unfit to serve. One part says being transgender is, quote, not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.

Another says being trans conflicts with, quote, an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life. Yeah, well, look, you know, it makes sense that the military has to be honorable, truthful, and disciplined. You know, sure, this is your secretary of defense, but that's all the more reason, that's all the more reason that the rest of them

have to have their shit together. It's like how every Beatles album had to be packed with hits to make up for that one song that Ringo wrote about wanting to f*** an octopus or whatever. I gotta say, the military sure has a lot of ethical rules for their mission of killing people. Hey, you wanna blow some guys' head off? You better say please and thank you. But to be fair, Trump had another argument

against trans soldiers as well. They specifically cite readiness with transition surgeries. If you have a transition surgery, the recovery time and the narcotics that you have to be on as part of the process could affect your readiness for up to 12 months. Oh, up to 12 months. Do you know how long our wars last?

I think they'll have you back in the game in no time. Vietnam War, 11 years. Afghanistan War, 20 years. Even our storage wars last 15 seasons. First of all, transgender people make up.1% of the military. So Commander in Chief, you're ruining the lives of people who are dedicated to serving America while doing nothing to affect the larger military. I don't see why a transition surgery should affect readiness more than any other surgery.

Trump is acting like they're doing transition surgeries on the front lines. Medic! I need a medic over here. We gotta get this guy a labia stat. Also, what do you mean readiness? Modern war is just telling a drone to drop bombs. Pretty sure it doesn't matter what your sex is to go like this.

That's how they drop bombs. How are we treating our veterans? Well, we were doing really well until Trump decided to fire 6,000 of them from their federal jobs in the last three months. Yeah, and why do you do that? Well, you know, I guess this is a guy who hugs the flags as he loves America, but then fires 6,000 veterans. I don't think he cares about us.

Yeah, so what, like, what was the, what was the, would he give any reasonable fire? There was no reason. It's part of their cuts across federal government. Veterans after they serve in the military tend to want to serve the country, continue to. And civil servants. Civil servants. So 30% of the federal workforce are veterans.

And so this president has fired more veterans than any other veterans, than any other president in modern history. OK. 6,000 and counting. And how is that? How is that? OK, we get it.

All right. They don't like it. And that's specifically, was it Doge or was it something else? It was Doge's across the board cuts. When you fire this many federal employees, you're going to lose that many veterans. But Doge has also come out and they've announced they want to cut 80,000 personnel just from the Department of Veterans Affairs. That's their next target.

But okay, and that, I don't know, are these people they can lose or is it going to run fine? Is it running fine now? What's the situation in the veterans' affair? It was getting better. We passed the PAC Act, which was bipartisan, which basically signed up a million more veterans who were exposed to cancer-causing toxic smoke from burn pits. They're finally getting the care that they need and now we have those folks on need and now we have those folks on board and now they're gonna fire all the people who take care of those folks. Okay and so I'm pissed. Okay can anyone stop this? Well we can

we can try to stop them. We are fighting them every step of the way. In my case I've been able to get some veterans their jobs back. They fired veterans from the veterans crisis hotline These are people who answered the phone when a veteran a veteran is contemplating suicide They pick up the phone and they get an answer within eight seconds So at least they used to and so some of the folks who work in that hotline were fired and they reached out to me And we were able to get them their jobs back. So we are fighting back. So So we are fighting back. So.

Like one at a time. So there's. So there's jobs. There's jobs that are lost. But then there's overall just like veteran health care. Right. They've had to cancel operations. The spouses, the family members of disabled veterans are not getting support through their

hotline appointments appointments are being canceled or now they're having to wait even longer. We would just turn in the corner. We were actually reducing the number of homeless veterans. We were just adding more veterans, getting more benefits. But remember, this is a president who says, people who are wounded or died for this country in uniform are all losers and suckers.

He doesn't care about us. Okay, so just to put it out there, this is also a guy who arguably a lot of veterans would also vote for at the time. So how do you reconcile that? I mean... Well I think what they bought was this rhetoric from him that he was going to, you know, he wants to make America great, strong and powerful. And yet all he's done has made us weaker, sicker and less secure. Okay. So, yeah.

So, I mean, I guess the relevant question is, do you think it's changing the opinion of the people who voted for him? Oh, definitely. Have you seen what's been happening at these Republican town halls where people across the country is showing up in town halls, where people across the country are showing up in town halls and saying, what are you doing to our veterans? I'm a veteran.

Why did you cut my benefits? I had a veteran reach out to me from Tennessee because he was declared dead and didn't get his regular checks. Was he dead? Well, he didn't reach out to me through a Ouija board. He actually reached out to me. But, like, OK, but again, the question is, okay, so we all have, obviously, what kind of preachings are required here? Obviously the people who didn't like,

who didn't want to vote for his president, still, we maintain that we shouldn't have voted for this guy. The question is, what about the veterans specifically? Because you're more in touch with that community. Yeah. Do you feel that there is a change in sentiment that was previously overwhelmingly in his favor? Do you think it's changing a bit?

Or is it still very much, no, he's doing the right thing. We don't see a problem. The issues are exaggerated. I mean, is that? I think it's changing. I think there's two things that are happening. One, the fact that he is basically kissing Vladimir Putin's brain. You can say it.

You know, means that they're... These are people who spent their entire military careers getting ready to oppose Russia. And now they see the commander in chief basically doing whatever Putin wants him to do. So that is changing the sentiment. The other thing that's happening is all of this rhetoric against women serving, against LGBTQ veterans serving. People forget that there's been a generational change within the military. Gen Xers are now the old people. Millennials are now the upper management.

And they've only ever served. And we're happy to be here. And now it's finally, it's finally our turn to take charge. They're now the field great officers. So sick of these Gen X people. Yeah. I'm Gen X. Oh, yeah.

OK. No. So millennials are now the majors, colonels. Yeah. Wait, they're colonels now? They're now colonels. Oh, way to go're colonels now? They're now colonels. Oh, way to go. Yeah, right, they're now sergeants majors.

They're now higher ranking. No, you say this, but then it's like, he kind of said what he was gonna do before he ran. Pete Hegsef was Pete Hegsef before he got appointed against women in military. They still won. So my question is, is anything that's happened changing the sentiment?

It is because I think a lot of them didn't believe that that was what was going to happen. And they saw the reality of the fact that the military cannot do its job without women in service. The military cannot truly do its job without diversity in the force, where people can speak different languages around the world.

You want soldiers who can speak Swahili without forces in the force, where people can speak different languages around the world. You want soldiers who can speak Swahili without forces in Africa. You want soldiers that can speak all the different languages. And so the millennials have only ever been in the military where there was equal service with women and LGBTQ. What are you saying, white people can't speak Swahili? Well, you know. But you want native speakers, right?

You want more diversity. You want that diversity and inclusion is a good thing. You want people who have those backgrounds. You want somebody like me who speaks Thai and Indonesian to be able to go in and speak those local languages. And we also have people in charge of the military now, the millennial generation, who have only ever served equally without Don't Ask, Don't Tell. So they know the lie behind, oh, LGBTQ people are not good for the military.

Well, no, they know that we've always served equally and we can't go to war without each other. OK. At least we're finally getting to address, in a substantive manner, Trump's chaotic stewardship of what was the world's most stable economy and how Americans are going to have to sacrifice financially and tamp down their consumerist impulse. And that is what has driven so much of our economy and I guess our waste. And I'm sure the president will use this interview with Welker to cheerlead the effort to a more

financially responsible future for all of us. We're going to have a big beautiful parade. A military parade? Yeah, sure. We're going to celebrate our military. What's the price tag? We have the greatest military in the world. What's the price tag?

Do you know? People, peanuts compared to the value of doing it. We can't afford not to do it! Why don't you believe in me? If you hadn't spent so much on dolls and pencils we weren't even talking about this." And see. But this is the brilliance of Trump. In the same interview where he says to Americans, sorry about your Christmas, suck it up, he talks about a $90 million dollar parade that just so happens to fall on his birthday and is totally worth it.

We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we're going to celebrate it. I don't know, Mr. President, if you know how submarines work. But dragging them down Pennsylvania Avenue

will most likely void the warranty. The U.S. military, the most powerful and respected organization in the entire world. Few have what it takes. The discipline, the strength, the bravery, the sacrifices made to serve our country. But according to the Trump White House, there's an enemy within. Everything's transgender. Everybody's transgender. That's all you hear about. The Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration to begin enforcing a ban on transgender service members. No more pronouns. No more dudes in dresses. We're done with that shit. And I had some hard-hitting questions. So as the Daily Show senior war correspondent, only I had the guts to...

Ah! Paper cut! Ah! Ah! Once recovered, I met with some transgender individuals to hear their unqualifications. My name is Lieutenant Rae Timberlake. I'm in the United States Navy and I've been serving for about 17 years. My name is Clayton and I've been trying to go for a pair of rescue PJ in the Air Force and it's a special warfare career field. I'm second lieutenant Nicholas Talbot with the United States Army Reserve. I've been in for a little over a year. I'm Joe Ellis.

I'm a chief warrant officer two in the Virginia Army National Guard. I've served for 15 years. I fly the U-860 which is a Black Hawk. I don't want to swap war stories but I I've flown Spirit Airlines twice, so I'm no danger. They seem qualified to me, but there are others who think their weakening are military. They can't go to sea, they can't fly airplanes in combat, they can't deploy with the army into combat areas. We should never allow anyone in the military to undergo transition surgery, which would make them medically unqualified to deploy.

This idea that we spend years of being non-deployable is just simply untrue. I've never missed a deployment. I can fight tonight. They've paid for nothing for my transition. I paid out of pocket because I wanted to be mission ready as fast as possible. In six weeks I was deployable again and I'm deployable today. They spend many times more on Viagra than they do on gender affirming care. If we don't have Viagra in the military then who is going to take care of Pete Hakesass whiskey dick? That's not how I want to serve my country.

Turns out the US military spends eight times more on Viagra than gender-affirming care. Over 37 million more, to be exact. And on top of that, replacing transgender troops could cost an estimated $960 million in recruiting and training, which ain't easy. It's very physically intense. After going through a pretty extensive medical exam

to even get into the military, going to basic training it's a lot like what most people think it is. It's like boot camp? Yeah it's boot camp. I did theater camp. It's tough. My tour duty was South Pacific. Belly high as Collie. Belly high. Is that Holtway? Yeah. All the trans people that are serving go above and beyond the standards and they do their job every day. But it's interesting to hear that we are too strong for sports but too weak for the military. Being too weak for both, I was curious why anyone would want to kick out these dedicated

individuals. If I'm in a foxhole, I don't want to know whether this guy next to me is wondering if he's a woman or a man or flipped back and forth. Because everyone knows when you're fighting on the front lines, the real enemies are the preferred pronouns of the person next to you. What the fuck is going on?

So I go by rank and last name. If someone uses a pronoun that I don't prefer, I really don't care. To me, it's a distraction. My job is to fly the helicopter. I'm curious what the reaction has been to you being trans in the military. I received an outpouring of support when I came out. They're my family and they have my back.

At the end of the day, all anybody cares about is whether I can perform my job when I have that uniform on. Must be nice to have respectful coworkers. I work with this guy Ronnie who's a total dick. He's just a dick. So if the people in the military itself don't care, then why did the administration impose an executive order stating this? An adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex can fluctuate a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.

I was named an honor graduate at basic training, so I would say, you know, at least someone out there agrees that I have some honor and some discipline in me. Would you leak war plans on Signal? Are you that disciplined? I don't have any plans to do so. Good to know. If more people met trans people like us, then there would be no issue. If the world's on fire, these are the folks I want in the foxhole, but would they want me? Do you guys think I would be an asset in the US military?

How many pushups can you do? It's sort of like jazz. It's all about the pushups you don't do. And right now I'm not doing millions. How fast can you run two miles? Well, I can drive it in under 40 seconds. Yeah, so I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma for basic training. It was about 120 degrees Fahrenheit most days.

Yeah, that's not gonna work for me. If I'm in the sun for more than seven minutes, I get heat rash just like that. Have you ever tried an MRE? Yeah, and they told me that it was just a little fracture in my foot. Think that you're talking about MRI? No.

MRE is a meal that's ready to eat. Yeah, military shit. While lawsuits are still pending and the fight's not over, I imagine these troops have lost the appetite to fight for a country that refuses to acknowledge they even exist. President Trump is my commander in chief and I will gladly answer the call if he calls me up to active duty. America is my home. This is my country. This is my country.

This is where I want to be and who I want to fight for. I'm willing to serve. I'm able to serve. And I can get the job done. I'd say come to the fleet. Come to the field. Come see what the thousands of transgender service members do every day in support of our nation's defense.

Sounds like patriotism to me. But what do I know? I didn't serve because of bone-scratching. -♪ For 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

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