The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Trump Defies Court Order & Deports Migrants, Lewis Black vs. Air Travel | Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Jordan Klepper breaks down how Trump's attempt to mass-deport Venezuelans by invoking a racist wartime law has led to a feud with the federal judge and an all-out constitutional crisis. Troy Iwata checks in on sick MAGA children who have just learned that their letters from the president were signed by... an autopen. Lewis Black asks airlines to fix their s**t amid recent catastrophes. New York Times Opinion columnist Ezra Klein and staff writer for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson, talk to Jordan Klepper about their new book, “Abundance,” which details how lawmakers can solve the affordability crisis by “building and inventing more of what we need.” They also discuss how Democrats can build a more effective opposition to Trump by using their power in blue cities and states to implement results-oriented policy and create a positive party identity.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 your host, Jordan Klepper. -♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh might need their own pardon, and Lewis Black screams about plane safety like a Southwest passenger who got over-served. So, let's get right into it. term was deporting violent immigrants from America, and he often mentioned one violent gang in particular. Trendy Aragwa. Remove the savage gang Trendy Aragwa.

Trendy Aragwa. Trendy Aragwa. Trendy Aragwa. You know, the members of that gang are like, is that us he's talking about? Trump sounds like my grandfather ordering Chipotle. I'll take the Barbara O'Cora! Buenos Nachos!

And over the weekend, Trump announced he was deporting hundreds of these suspected Venezuelan gang members all the way back to El Salvador so close enough and of course these suspected gang members would be afforded a rigorous legal procedure including a trial the presentation of evidence and all the rights of due process I'm just with you he did a. The administration invoking an obscure law, the Aliens Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the government to deport people

with little to no due process, and was last used to round up Japanese Americans during World War II. Last used to round up Japanese Americans during World War II. Why does Trump always have to pick the oldest, most racist laws to do what he wants to do? Of cutting taxes under the authority of the

It's Okay to Drown Italians law of 1863? It's not just that it's archaic. Invoking that law has some big problems. One is that if you're deporting gang members, but there's no due process, then you don't really know if you're deporting gang members, but there's no due process, then you don't really know if you're deporting gang members. You're just deporting people who you think look like gang members.

And if you start deporting every shady looking guy with questionable tattoos, I mean, who's gonna go to jet skates? But, you know what? You know what? I'm sure Donald Trump has the cultural understanding to carefully discern who is a member of, what's that gang name again? Trendy Arguella.

Yeah, yeah, you guys are f***ed. There's another problem with invoking this law, which is it's supposed to be used in wartime. So to make this work, Trump had to pretend that we're at war with Venezuela, which we're not. Not to mention, a pretend war is an extremely complicated concept to throw at the Secretary of Defense on St. Patrick's Day.

So, man. Okay, so bottom line, bottom line here. Okay, there's a lot of legal questions up in the air. So, on Saturday, a federal judge decided to pump the brakes. to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States, adding, this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately. Oh, well, it was a good try, Donald,

but the judge has ruled, and that's the way the system works. So Trump brought the Venezuelans back, gave them due process, did the whole constitution thing. I'm f***ing with you again. He ignored the judge. The administration made a calculated decision to ignore a federal judge's directive to turn the flights around.

My God. I mean, if you had told me that Donald Trump would trigger a constitutional crisis just seven weeks into his term, I would have said, that is a lot later than I thought. I mean... Donald showed a lot of restraint. I mean, Trump's really becoming presidential.

Of course, the administration didn't just come out and say, we don't listen to judges from now on. They had the respect for the judicial branch to come up with some bullshit. The White House argued that Boasberg's written order was issued when the planes were already midair and that his verbal order, some 40 minutes earlier, did not count.

It didn't count? Is that how rulings work? You have to put it in writing? You can't just say it? Well, this is definitely not the first time that Trump has defended himself by arguing that oral doesn't count. Oh!

Look it up. Look it up. Look, the judge wasn't terribly impressed with that argument, so Trump's lawyers went with another response, which was, can't catch me, force field! The Trump administration argued that the court I was terribly impressed with that argument. So Trump's lawyers went with another response, which was, can't catch me, force field! The Trump administration argued that the court no longer had jurisdiction once the planes were over international waters.

Yes, okay, apparently, the Constitution is not in effect over international waters. That explains Carnival Cruise Line's new ship, the SS Cruel and Unusual Punishment. And while the Trump administration is saying that it has the right to ignore judicial orders, President Trump himself is somehow going even further. President Donald Trump just took the truth social

and deemed this judge, responding to this decision here, calling him a radical left lunatic of a judge, a troublemaker, an agitator, who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama. He says this judge should be impeached. So there you have it. Donald Trump went from, oh sorry, we would have listened to this judge

if we had heard it in time, to actually this lunatic judge should be impeached. And if you would have told me that that all happened in 48 hours, I would have said, wow, again, longer than I expected. Now, some of you might be thinking, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, enough about this constitutional crisis. I wanna hear about another constitutional crisis.

Well, you're in luck. Last night, the president posted on social media, said quote, the pardons that sleepy Joe Biden gave to the unselect committee of political thugs and many others are hereby declared void, vacant, and of no further force or effect because of the fact that they were done by auto-panning. He's voiding Joe Biden's pardons. It's not enough that he's fighting the judicial branch

in the present. He's also fighting the executive branch in the past. He's also fighting the executive branch in the past. He's causing more problems in the multiverse than Jonathan Majors. But yes, I guess Donald Trump just found out about auto pens, which leads us to one of the most annoying events in a Trump presidency. Donald learns about something new,

so we all have to learn about it, too. Presidents Biden and Obama both used an auto pen device to sign official documents, a practice that is legally binding. The actual use of the auto pen dates back to Thomas Jefferson. What? Thomas Jefferson? I mean, I guess that makes sense.

When you have that many secret kids, that's a lot of birthday cards you got to sign. Busy man. Now, to be fair to Trump, he's not just saying Joe Biden used an auto pen. It's something far more sinister, a conspiracy so evil that Trump took time out of his busy schedule,

waiting for the airplane bathroom to discuss. The whole subject of what event, did he know what he was doing? Did he authorize it? Or is this somebody in an office, maybe a radical left lunatic, just signing whatever that person was? Yes. Good question.

Did Joe Biden really sign the pardons that he said several times he signed, or did a radical left lunatic sneak into the Oval Office and start signing whatever was in the room? Pardons, laws, doctor's notes, yearbooks. I mean, did Joe Biden really want Cindy to have a great summer or was it the deep state? Yeah.

My favorite part of this whole story is how Trump tried to claim that he would never use an auto pen, only to remember that he actually did use an auto pen. I never used it. I mean, we may use it as an example to send some young person a letter, because it's nice to, you know, we get thousands and thousands of letters and letters of support for young people, for people that aren't feeling well, etc. Yeah, if I'm doing important things like pardoning January Sixers, I'll sign it myself. But for doing stupid shit like writing letters to sick kids, DocuSign is fine. Like, either way, Trump basically just admitted that he doesn't personally sign

any of the get-well letters he sends to young people who aren't feeling well. Now, obviously, that's not the important part of this story. What's important is the danger that... Excuse me, Jordan. Jordan. Well, oh, Troy Iwata, everybody. Um... applause Troy. Troy, Troy, where are you right now?

Jordan, I'm at the hospital for young people who aren't feeling well. And you might not think that their feelings are important, but when these sick kids found out that Trump used an auto pen on their letters, their hearts broke. And they died. What? Holy shit. on their letters, their hearts broke. And they died. What?! Holy shit. All the kids died? Well, no, there's still one hanging on,

and he is being so brave. And, oh, okay. Oh. There he goes. That was the last one. Okay. Are we sure it was their broken hearts? It wasn't whatever medical condition they were dealing with?

No, a lot of them weren't even sick. Some had scrapes, some had a tummy ache, some had that fake get-out-of-school cough, you know, with the curled tongue, the... That one. But no matter what it was, when they learned about the auto pen, their hearts just stopped working.

Except for one kid whose life support cord I tripped over. That was my bad. And I said I was sorry! Okay, look. Troy, I don't get this. Trump has been so cruel to sick kids. He's cut cancer research and medical services. He's threatening their health insurance.

I mean, what do they love so much about Trump? I mean, little kids just love tariffs, Jordan. I don't know. Maybe some of them are racist. But the point is, they're gone now. No more little booger fingers, no more department store tantrums, no more screaming on airplanes. You know what? I'm kind of talking myself into this. Troy, no.

Troy, you're being very callous. Sorry. You're right. You're right. Okay, some of these kids were 5 and 6 years old, so all they had at the end were their stuffed animals and their jobs at Doge. It was... It's a real tragedy. It is. You're right. You're right.

I mean, I don't know how their families are gonna live with this. Well, fortunately, President Trump sent them all letters of condolence. He got a lot of them signed pretty quickly and... Oh, wait, oh, wait, families, don't open those letters! Oh, shit, everyone's dead. Everyone's dead.

Treddick Stuff, Troy Iwata, everyone. We come back, Lewis Black is grounded, so stick around. Jesus. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. As the news story falls through the cracks, you could burn it with your cigarette. Of course, nowadays, travel sucks.

And it's only getting worse. The recent string of horrific plane crashes are making many wonder, is it safe to fly? Scary moments at LaGuardia Airport after a Delta plane's wing struck the runway. Near miss between the Southwest Airlines plane that is landing right there and a private jet, look at that, that crosses its way. after a Delta plane's wing struck the runway. Near miss between the Southwest Airlines plane that is landing right there and a private jet,

look at that, that crosses its way. An American Airlines plane engine on fire after landing at Denver International Airport. The former president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association had this stark warning. Unfortunately, in 2025, the United States airspace system is no longer considered the gold standard around

the world. Yeah, no shit. What else are you going to tell me? Alec Baldwin is no longer the gold standard in workplace safety? And look, I'm no aviation safety expert, but I'm pretty sure the plane is supposed to land right side up, not splayed on its back like it's waiting for a happy ending. Oh, Svetlana, my landing gear isn't gonna tickle itself. So it's safe to say air travel is in rougher shape than RFK Jr.'s larynx.

And all of these mishaps are no coincidence, since America treats its air traffic controllers like crap. Air traffic controllers are under tremendous stress right now, many controllers working mandatory overtime, six-day weeks of 10-hour shifts. Staffing across the country is a huge and chronic problem. The country is still short, some 3,000 to 4,000 air traffic controllers.

How is this possible? There are 300 million people in this country, and we can't find any more air traffic controllers? Listen, America, some of you need to help land airplanes. We can't all be TikTok influencers. And I was doing it first. What up, fam? Remember to smash that like button or I'll kill myself.

Wow. Three million likes. Joke's on you. I'm still gonna kill myself. So yes, it seems like air traffic controllers are in a wee bit of trouble. Luckily, inbred Freddie Mercury is here to help. Critics say issues could get worse with recent firings of 400 FAA staff members by Elon Musk in the Trump administration's doge.

Good God, Elon! What are you doing? How can I put this in a way you understand? You're supposed to keep the planes up here! Audience awws! Applause Naturally, with all the chaos, you might be terrified to get on a plane, but there are plenty of insufferable ways to get over your fears.

If you're feeling anxious on the plane, try deep breathing, meditation and distraction with books, music, movies or conversations with others. There's also having positive self-talk, having some reality conversations. I'm OK. This is a reality conversations. I'm okay. This is a plane ride. I'm almost there. I can make it. I tell them, put a rubber band on your wrist.

When you start feeling phobic or worried or anxious, just gently snap it, and it sort of pulls you back. Who listens to him? God, that is beyond dumb. I'm sure your seatmate would love to spend seven hours listening to you snap a rubber band and mumble, I'm okay, snap. Everything is fine, snap.

No one else can smell my nervous diarrhea, snap, snap, snap. Snap, snap, snap. Personally, personally, when I'm flying, I like to ease my anxiety by screaming, there's a bird in the engine. We're all going to die. But hey, you do you. Of course, if you're riddled with anxiety, why not distract yourself by watching my latest TikTok? There's a bird in the engine. We're all going to die.

See you in hell, fam. Jordan, Lewis Black, everyone. We come back. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. We go around the clock. Thanks a lot. -♪ Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo- My guests tonight are journalists and co-authors of the new book, Abundance. Please welcome New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein and staff writer for The Atlantic, Derrick Thompson. -♪ Oh, future, about reforming America's institutions. Why delve into sci-fi? This is a good, deep question. Yeah, there's a sentence in the first chapter of the book that sounds like one of the most

obvious sentences ever written in any nonfiction book ever. We say, quote, to have the future that we want America needs to build and invent more of what we need. How in the world you have to write an entire book about the most obvious sentence you've ever heard you crib that says absolutely still a GPT wrote that says it's so easy and the book and the thing is you wouldn't have to write a whole book about that sentence if you lived in a world of sanity.

But we don't. We live in a world of the constitutional crises that you talked about. And we also live in a world that has affordability crises and housing crises. And a lot of these crises, unfortunately, are worst in blue states and blue cities. And so what our book is trying to do

is to redefine liberalism, the Democratic Party, for an age where the Democratic Party is incredibly unpopular, but it has to be strong and popular to take on Donald Trump. But I think we have to take a good long look in a mirror and say, why is it that we've allowed the places we have the most power to become so problematic that people are leaving and we're losing power in these places?

Yeah, now, this book is essentially, it's written to the left as sort of a credo as to what we should be looking forward to. What is this idea of abundance? In a nutshell, what are we talking about? So for a long time, the left has looked for what it could subsidize, right? If we don't have enough health care insurance,

can we give you a health care voucher? That's Obamacare. Can we give you food stamps to get food, Pell grants to get higher education, rental vouchers to get housing? Then you look at places where liberals govern and a lot of it doesn't work because we don't have enough of the core thing to get people a bunch of rental vouchers in New York

City in San Francisco, what often happens is that they can't get housing because there isn't enough of it or the price goes up higher education is a similar dynamic health care has some dynamics like that you got at a certain point focus on building enough of the things you need housing is a big one from California. I'm from Irvine California down south from Los Angeles and live in San Francisco during much of the writing the book. This is a solved problem we know how to

build apartment building. Yeah, we know how to build homes. We just don't let people do it and the result is a California New York Illinois are losing hundreds of thousands of people a year. So many that by 2030, after the census, where we reapportion political power based on population, after that, if all goes as it's been going, a Democrat who won every state Kamala Harris won and also won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,

still wouldn't win the presidency because blue states would have lost so much power by driving out working-class families to red states. So, yeah, you got to fix this stuff. Yeah, and maybe I want to tweak that optimistic look at the future. Uh... You speak about this. You talk a lot about the regulations

in places like California and places like New York. Is the answer to make California look more like Texas? Is that what we're talking about? Sometimes I think absolutely the answer is to make California look more like Texas. Is that what we're talking about? Sometimes I think absolutely the answer is to make California look more like Texas. I mean, sometimes if the problem is that a city has too many regulations and too much zoning and too many rules

that get in the way of accessing the most basic technology of putting up sticks and adding an elevator, then, yeah, you take away the bad rules that are getting in the way of adding housing supply where you have to just add more damn houses. It doesn't mean, though, that we're Texas Republicans. And I think it's important to say that that are getting in the way of adding housing supply where you have to just add more damn houses. It doesn't mean though that we're Texas Republicans. And I think it's important to say that

neither is Donald Trump in a weird way. Like Trump was elected because of an affordability crisis in this country. He was elected because of inflation. And the biggest part of inflation, the biggest part of anybody's budget is housing. Trump could have been elected and said, I'm a Texas Republican and my first order of business

is gonna be to make it easier to build houses in America. What does he do instead? He slaps a tariff on lumber from Canada and drywall material from Mexico. Guess what's really, really hard to build if you have no wood and you also have no drywall material? It turns out to be houses. So the first thing he does is make it harder

to build the thing we need to solve the affordability crisis. Donald Trump does not understand how to fix the problems that ironically led to his election. That's where Democrats need to stand up and say, we're going to build an opposition movement that fixes people's problems by understanding people's problems.

Now, how much is it? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. You're building an argument for building, for coming together. Obviously, you're writing this book before this past election. And there's times where I'm hearing about this vision of if we can get people together to get on the same page, we can fix big issues like the housing crisis, like the environment. It feels like we're talking about, like,

we can make this Titanic run beautifully. But then the election hits and we hit the iceberg. So how much of this is still applicable to a democratic movement that feels very hobbled right now? I got to say, man, the thing that surprised me least in the election was the blue shift to Trump, right? That blue cities and blue states had the biggest shift to the right because this was an affordability election

and we're actually I think just generally in a new age in American politics for a very long time after the financial crisis. The problem the economy had was to ban we didn't have enough demand. We didn't have enough jobs we didn't have high enough wages and everybody on both sides talked endlessly about the band and in the background for a long time, for decades, there had been this building affordability crisis in health care, in housing, in education, in child care,

in elder care. And nobody was really doing anything about it. And then the pandemic hit and inflation hit. And the entire, like, Sauron's eye of American politics moved to prices. And inflation calmed in parts, right? It's eye of American politics moved to prices. And inflation calmed in parts, right? It's not going up the way it was, although we'll see how the tariffs go. But the affordability crisis then was in full view, and it got worse and it got worse.

And so we're in this era where people are going to have to figure out how to solve this. And yeah, this was a bad election. Like we are in a bad place. Everything you, I was like having trouble deciding during your monologue, should I laugh? Right? Yes. Um.

Like, this stuff is. This is, Ezra, this is the problem with liberals today. They're watching a comedy show being like, should I laugh? Should I think about it? How do I feel? Let me run some focus groups. What do you feel, Ezra?

Let it out. I have felt? Let me run some focus groups. What do you feel? I have felt like disgusted these last weeks. This has been the worst time I can remember in American politics. And the problem that liberals keep running into is they keep trying to beat Donald Trump, not based on what he does to people's lives, but what he does to people's institutions. And if the Democratic Party is going to win, if it's going to beat the populist right, which is coming up again and again, not just here but in other countries, you have to have answers to the problems people face in their lives,

not answers to the abstract questions of politics. Yeah. Not answers to... Not answers to who is on the side of democracy, but answers to whose states are better governed. Which places do you want to live? Who has something to say about what is making your Tuesday hard?

Now, it's interesting you talk about messaging. I get to the end of the book, and you bring up Operation Warp Speed. And I'm like, oh, I forgot about Operation Warp Speed. Yeah, so did everybody else. I mean, the thing about Operation Warp Speed is you have a program that, by some accounts, saved 10 to 20 million lives around the world by inventing

and accelerating the distribution of mRNA vaccines and yet nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about it. I think the Democrats don't talk about it because it's kind of awkward to give credit to a program that was initiated under Donald Trump. But the weirdest thing of all is that Donald Trump doesn't talk about it. In fact, he's one of the biggest skeptics of mRNA science right now. So it really is bizarre. Like imagine if we landed a man on the moon

and nobody talked about the Apollo program, because it just wasn't something that either party could bring up. We saved even more lives with Operation Warp Speed than we saved with the Apollo program, and no one talks about it. I think it's important to take really, really clear lessons from what Operation Warp Speed did.

We set a very clear goal. We said in 10 months, we're going to develop a therapy that saves people's lives. We're going very clear goal. We said in 10 months, we're going to develop a therapy that saves people's lives. We're going to get it to everybody if they want it. And we're going to make the cost of this world saving therapeutic, maybe the best medicine in the world, $0.00.

We set a goal. We identified what the bottlenecks were going to be. We took away the bottlenecks that existed. And we met the goal. Frankly, that's how government should work more often. We should have mayors and governors saying... APPLAUSE We should have mayors and governors saying,

you really set a goal for housing supply. I want to add 100,000 units, and I'm not going to let anybody tell me no. I care about climate change, so I'm going to add this amount of energy that we're going to create from solar and wind and geothermal, and I'm not going to let anybody tell me no. But for some reason, outside of a crisis,

we don't have this kind of outcome-oriented politics. This book is about putting outcomes over processes. It's about setting a North Star with a big, bold, beautiful sci-fi vision in the first three pages of the book and saying, we can do this, but in order to do it, we have to get out of our own way. But you're talking about long-term visions. You mentioned having this lens of abundance.

It's sort of what you're proposing here. But I think you go and you talk to people, and we are the politics of short-term results. Everything is about, what can you get me now? We're not even thinking about the giant medical miracle of Operation Warp Speed from a few years ago. Like, how does something like this resonate with folks who are on their phones? They're flipping through.

They want an answer right now. They want to be angry right now. They want action right now. How do you speak to a grander idea when it feels like the world is moving faster than that? I'm so glad you asked. So, you don't get long-term results in politics without short-term results.

And this is a thing I think Democrats have really forgotten. We've been doing high-speed rail in California for a long time. Nobody's winning any elections on that. Under Joe Biden, they passed $42 billion for rural broadband. It passed in, I think, 2021, early 2022. By the end of 2024, you know how many people are hooked up to rural broadband? Couple dozen. We passed $7.5 billion for electric vehicle chargers to build a nationwide EV charger network.

We built a couple dozen by the end of his presidency. You cannot win elections if you are passing billions of dollars that people cannot feel within two or three or four years. And that is not, that does not have to happen. In the time that California has not built 500 miles of high-speed rail, China built 23,000 miles of high-speed rail. We can do this. Making sure that money through government flows faster is how you make sure that people know government actually matters in their lives. When it goes too slowly, they don't know. And then somebody comes out and says, oh, vote for me.

I'm the strong man. I alone can fix it. I will make it work. And then you run the risk that they're going to believe him. Now, in looking at the Democratic field right now, Democrats, I think, are hearing this message, and then they're saying, maybe we should go on more podcasts. It feels like they're taking baby steps to this.

Who is carrying this message? Who do you see as somebody? Like, we come out here, and we talk to audiences in between acts. And more often than not, people are... They're desperate for an answer, whether that looks like resistance or whether that looks like a vision of the future that they can get behind.

And we're desperately missing some of those voices out there. Do you see this message being carried by anybody articulately? I see people in Congress and the Senate and governors explicitly picking up this message. I mean, someone asked a colleague of Ezra Klein's at the New York Times asked, where's the Democrats'

Project 2025 and Richie Torres, Representative Richie Torres from New York, just tweeted a photo of the cover of this book and without any words just said, this is my idea of Project 2025 for the Democratic Party. I mean, it's... That feels lazy. That feels lazy on that part. Wow, yeah.

Oh, there you go. Just to take a picture of war and peace. The second part. We'll just do the second part. We're happy to do the work of writing the book if people are going to be taking up the ideas. But people really are taking up the ideas. And that's cool.

I want to say one other thing. You talked about what's the value of a positive vision. And I think it's a fair question. Politics is incredibly negative right now. But I really do think that there's the value of a positive vision. And I think it's a fair question. Politics is incredibly negative right now. But I really do think that there's a lot of voters that are starving for not just a negative identity for their party, but a positive identity, right? It's easy for Democrats to say right now

why Donald Trump sucks. You can do that over and over and over again. You could do 10 hours of the constitutional crises that he's starting. You could make a television show about it. You could certainly tell him. You could make a weekly television show about it. What's the positive vision?

All right, Donald Trump sucks. What are we going to place him with? What problems are we going to solve if we have power? The problem right now is that a lot of Democrats who actually have power in blue cities and blue states aren't doing anything with that power in terms of adding housing and clean energy. We want them to show Americans what will we do if we win. If we can't show Americans the positive vision, if we can't show Americans what happens if we win,

do we even deserve to? Well, it's a fascinating read. Abundance is available now. And also check out the Ezra Klein Show and Derek's Plain English Podcast. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. We'll take a quick break. Right back after this. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. That's our show for tonight. Now here it is. Good moment is now. Oswald. Who out there thinks Oswald did it by himself? I used to be that naive. I know so much more now.

Oswald's family and descendants, they have changed their names. They are impossible to find. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried.

I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. I know so much more now Oswald's family and descendants. They have changed their names. They are impossible to find. I've tried. 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. Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus.