The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Desi Lydic covers Trump’s 100th day celebrations: inviting ABC News into the White House to misunderstand the Declaration of Independence, grooving to his famous “YMCA” dance, and pu...tting the economy on financial Ozempic. From the dark halls of Santa Monica to the caves of the Trump administration, Stephen Miller has been working in the shadows as the White House Chief of Staff. From influencing election denial to mass deportations, can Stephen Miller’s vampiric bite kill American democracy? Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential biographer Jon Meacham joins to discuss the impact of Trump’s presidency on democracy. They talk about biographing imperfect presidents who bent history, the origins of the first 100 days under the Roosevelt administration, Trump’s unprecedented destruction of democratic institutions, and how the partisanship of facts has transformed reality into a reality show.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. I'm Debbie Leiter. We have got so much to talk about tonight. Trump's first 100 days get certified rotten and fresh. The Declaration of Independence dies of embarrassment, and we'll find out why America's GDP is shrinking.
Starting point is 00:00:53 Oh, Zampak. So let's get right into it. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] May there be a little disturbance? ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Trump's been in office for 100 days, May there be a little disturbance? Trump's been in office for 100 days, or as he likes to call it, longer than any president in the history of the world. It should be a week of celebration, but tell that to the economy.
Starting point is 00:01:19 Economic alarm bells. The U.S. economy contracting by 0.3%. The contraction in the economy, first that we have seen in years in fact. America's economy is shrinking. Yes, the US economy is undergoing what economists refer to as a George Costanza. Now obviously the economy is a complex interaction of multiple markets, so it's difficult to point to any one factor, but it's all Trump. It's Trump. It's Donald Trump. The fact is Trump just does not do well with the GDP unless GDP stands for get that pussy! Which sadly those numbers
Starting point is 00:01:59 are also down. Melania doesn't live there anymore. But even though it's all his fault, this is a great opportunity for him to be a leader, to speak from the heart to Americans who are about to suffer real financial hardships because of his policies. Somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more. Oh! Wow, check out Mr. Rogers over here.
Starting point is 00:02:31 I can't believe in a span of 100 days we went from we will all be richer than we've ever imagined to everyone gets two dolls, all right? But if you're sad that playtime will soon be over for your children, take comfort that it's just beginning for the ol' commander and child. The president came out swinging and dancing to celebrate 100 days in office. Trump had so much fun tonight. He had so much fun.
Starting point is 00:02:56 He seems like he's enjoying himself. Clearly, he was having a good time. You can tell when he's on stage, he's having so much fun. He's dancing. That famous YMCA dance. It's dance time. They've worked hard and had fun. Isn't that the pursuit of happiness?
Starting point is 00:03:13 No, no Laura, it's not. We're not gonna be eating cold beans huddled over a fire like, well, at least the president's happy. As long as he's backing that ass up, I think America's gonna be A-okay. By the way, that was the first time I've seen Trump dancing from behind, and I gotta say, don't do that ever again.
Starting point is 00:03:37 Don't do that. I owe the front button apology. Anyway, it's no surprise that the main story on Fox News is that Trump is live-laugh-loving being president, but as we all know, the American media is just as divided as the country itself. So depending on which cable news network you watch, Trump's first 100 days were either f***ing sick or f***ing sick. 100 days, Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president in the history of
Starting point is 00:04:03 modern polling. Voters across America are weighing in saying, yes, Trump, keep going. Give me an assessment of Trump's first 100 days, one to 10. A solid two, nothing more. On a scale of one to 10? Mm-hmm. 20. Donald Trump deserves an F.
Starting point is 00:04:16 That would give President Trump an A, maybe even an A plus. Fear and pessimism. Thrilled and excited. A disaster. It's awesome. 1,361 days to go of this journey. Fear and pessimism. Thrilled and excited. A disaster. It's awesome. 1,361 days to go of this journey. Man, I wish we could have 10,000 more days with President Trump.
Starting point is 00:04:36 10,000 more days? That is 27 years! I can't still be talking about Trump when I'm in my late 40s. It's not that funny. But while cable news debated Trump himself, celebrated the big 100 by inviting ABC News reporter Terry Moran to the White House for an interview. And Trump kicked things off by asking the same thing every kid does when a guest comes to the house. Want to see my room?
Starting point is 00:05:06 Hello everybody, how are you? This is the Oval Office. This is an amazing space. I've added a lot to the space in terms of beautification, in terms of modernization. Oh. Modernization? This looks like my great-grandmother decorated the mantelpiece with her great-grandmother's ashes. And I know that beautification is in the eye of the beholdification, but we can all agree that the foam core Gulf of America map is pulling focus, right?
Starting point is 00:05:42 Is the Gulf of America having a bridal shower in the banquet room of a Hilton Garden Inn? Because if it's not, get it out of here. But okay, you know what, show me a few more things in your room and then I gotta go join the grownups. See Ronald Reagan here. You have Lincoln, you have Washington, but you look over here, that's Monroe, the Monroe Doctrine.
Starting point is 00:06:02 Why is he up there? I think the Monroe Doctrine was pretty important. That was his claim to fame. Trump is always in the, I forgot to do the reading mode. Man, that Monroe Doctrine, so important. My favorite part? Probably the doctrine. And doctrine, as we all know, is a female doctor.
Starting point is 00:06:27 But you know what? We can't expect Trump to know anything about a president whose picture he put up. It's not fair. So let's give him something easier. Donald, tell us what the Declaration of Independence is. And remember, this is the document in which we declared independence. Of course you have the Declaration of Independence. What does it mean to you? Well, it means exactly what it says. It's a declaration.
Starting point is 00:06:52 It's a declaration of unity and love and respect. And it means a lot. And it's something very special to our country. Look at Terry Moran's face. He looks like a teacher about to call the school psychologist. This is a great drawing. Stay right here. But of course he'd make that face. Trump said that the Declaration of Independence meant unity. Unity is the opposite of independence. How did Trump find the one time that unity
Starting point is 00:07:34 and love is the wrong answer? What makes this even more sad is that the Declaration of Independence is basically the colonies filing for divorce. It's the one thing Trump should absolutely recognize. And all of that was supposed to be the softball part of the interview. It wasn't until Moran pulled up his serious chair that the questions got hard. Now we have this trade war with China that Moody's and other analysts say
Starting point is 00:08:03 is gonna cost American families thousands of more dollars per year. And there is a lot of concern out there. People are worried. Even some people who voted for you saying I didn't sign up for this. So how do you answer those concerns? Well, they did sign up for it. I said all these things during my campaign. I said, you're going to have a transition period.
Starting point is 00:08:25 Really? That's what Trump said? Trump actually said that? Could we just check the tape on that? When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one. 1,047. But first, prices will go so high you'll be sucking D for eggs.
Starting point is 00:08:41 Oh, yeah, my bad. I misremembered. But the wildest part of the interview by far was when it turned to Trump's deportation of Kilmar Garcia, who Trump says doesn't need due process because anyone can tell that Garcia is in the gang MS-13 just by looking at his tattoos. And you'll pick out one man, but even the man that you picked out, he said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked and on his knuckles, he had MS-13. There's a dispute over that.
Starting point is 00:09:10 Wait a minute. Wait a minute. He had MS-13 on his knuckles tattoo. He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way. But let's move on. OK. Let me just explain what's going on here. Garcia has tattoos on his hand.
Starting point is 00:09:22 And someone labeled a photo of them trying to prove that they're actually a code. The problem is, Trump thinks that the labels are part of the tattoo, and he is very, very insistent on it. Let's move on. Wait a minute. Terry, Terry, Terry. He did not have the letter MS-13.
Starting point is 00:09:40 It says MS-13. That was Photoshopped. Do you want me to show you the picture? I saw the picture. We'll renew this. And you think it was Photoshopped? Here we go. Here we go.
Starting point is 00:09:50 Don't Photoshop it. Go look at his hand. He had MS-13. He did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I'm not an expert on them. I want to turn to Ukraine. No, no. I want to get to Ukraine.
Starting point is 00:09:58 No, no. No, no. He had MS as clear as you can be, not interpreted. Now I understand why he's so proud of that Golf of America poster. He thinks Golf of America is actually written on top of the water. Makes sense. And what is so crazy is that Terry Moran kept trying
Starting point is 00:10:24 to change topics, but Trump wouldn't let him. I have never seen an interview where a reporter catches a politician in a gotcha and the politician is the one who says, stop trying to move on. I am not done embarrassing myself. But I will hand it to Terry Moran. He held his ground to the point where it actually wore Trump out. And that's when we saw a moment of vulnerability from Trump.
Starting point is 00:10:47 He's got MS-13 on his knuckles. All right. Okay? We'll take a look. It's such a disservice. We'll take a look at that, sir. Why don't you just say yes, he does, and, you know, go on to something else. He's contested.
Starting point is 00:10:59 Ukraine. Why don't you just say I'm right? Up is down, left is right, Santa's real. And that is Trump in a nutshell. I can't prove the insane things I believe, so just go along with them. Don't believe your eyes, believe the Photoshop. But I, I for one, will not believe the Photoshop, okay? I will go into the rest of the term with my eyes wide open, staring and watching. Oh, God, no, no!
Starting point is 00:11:26 Oh, my eyes, my beautificated eyes! Oh, make it go away. When we come back, the truth about Stephen Miller's billboard. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
Starting point is 00:11:40 Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back to the Daily Show. One of the defining policies of
Starting point is 00:11:52 President Trump's first 100 days has been his, let's say, enthusiastic deportation effort. We all know that the architect of that policy is his top friend, the president of the United States, and his say, enthusiastic deportation effort. We all know that the architect of that policy
Starting point is 00:12:09 is his top aide, Stephen Miller. But how did Miller get such power? Let's find out in a brand new Daily Show-ography. Come gather round the dying embers of democracy and attend my chilling tale. The legend of a pale wraith who haunts the soul of an entire nation. A vampiric fiend with an insatiable urge to suck. America is for Americans and Americans only!
Starting point is 00:12:39 This is the Twisted Chronicle of Stephen Miller. What he does in the shadows. By now you surely know of the plague wrought by the bald monstrosity. Mass deportations. Chaos and confusion. People detained and families separated. A toddler and U.S. citizen deported. Kids in cages.
Starting point is 00:13:00 A Muslim ban. This is how democracy dies. But what of the bean's hideous origins? I first became aware of the wretched creature through tales told of him in the American West in a cursed land called Santa Monica, a festering evil village with not even that great of a ferris wheel. Even as a child, Stephen Miller struck fear into the hearts of the innocent, as his third-grade teacher would later recall. He was a strange dude. I remember he would take a bottle of glue, and then he would pour the glue on his arm,
Starting point is 00:13:40 let it dry, peel it off and then eat it. Yes, while some creatures thirst for blood, this one had the taste for paste. But Miller's cravings could not be sated by glue. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. He began studying the dark teachings of his era's most demonic figures and was soon penning mad screeds to the local newspaper about the horrors of his liberal high school. We do nothing for American holidays,
Starting point is 00:14:08 but everything for Mexican holidays. Condoms are available to students grades nine through 12. We have a club on campus that will gladly help foster their homosexuality. Refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms, we invite a Muslim leader to the school to explain the splendor of Islam. Osama bin Laden would feel very welcome
Starting point is 00:14:23 at Salman the high school. Come on buddy, save something for your manifesto. The still-gestating monster was determined to wreak havoc any way he could. Ha! Ha! Whether it was jumping out of the stands into a girls track meet to prove he was faster than them, or running for student government on a platform of being a total dick. Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash? And we have plenty of janitors who aren't paid to do it all! By stepping out of the sunlight to run for office,
Starting point is 00:14:58 Miller learned he was perhaps more suited to lurking in the shadows. Breaking the shackles of Santa Monica, Miller sojourned for a time at Duke University, once again feasting on every conceivable controversy. Shows like Will and Grace and Sex and the Sea promote alternative lifestyles and erode traditional values. The word Christmas is slowly being exiled from society, I, for one, am offended.
Starting point is 00:15:23 And I'm Jewish. Smoking is not nearly as dangerous as special interest groups have made it out to be. The real risks are the fascistic tendencies that prohibit smoke. Prisoners are afforded so many luxuries. Continue to worship at the altar of multiculturalism. So-called affirmative actions. Sorry, feminists. I would say he probably wasn't much fun at parties, but I'm pretty sure he never got
Starting point is 00:15:42 invited to any. Mimmer's facility with arcane maledictions soon caught the eye of America's greatest master of the dark arts. Joining us now from Raleigh, Stephen Miller, columnist for the Duke Chronicle, a student newspaper. And so, the Tiki Torch was passed to a new generation. With the notoriety he had achieved, Gross-Feratu insinuated himself into the entourage of some of the most repellent figures in America's hell mouth.
Starting point is 00:16:11 During these years, he sent nearly a thousand emails planting stories in right-wing media. They didn't all cite well-known white nationalists, but it was more than you would like. And then, in June 2015, he found a master truly worthy of his devotions. I was watching the announcement, like everybody else, live on television. And as soon as I saw it, I said, I have to join this campaign. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime,
Starting point is 00:16:41 they're rapists. Miller became the Bronze Lord's most trusted minion. Our republic is being destroyed now before our very eyes. He conjured dark utterances for the new president's speeches. This American carnage stops right now. And fed him a constant stream of diabolical talking points. I would never, ever in a million years, allow my daughter to compete against a biological man. Never.
Starting point is 00:17:08 Unless it was a joke to make fun of how girls are lame, obviously. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Miller's ability to hold followers in his thrall became the stuff of legend. We're getting a lot of texts from women. Our audience at Primetime believes you're some sort of sexual matador. Indeed, this 39-year-old man doesn't look a day over 53. It seemed he could convince weak minds of anything, whether it was that his master didn't
Starting point is 00:17:37 wear terrible, ill-fitting clothes. Donald Trump's a style icon! Or that he didn't actually lose the 2020 election we have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result okay Miller's brief attempt at pretending not to be bald was taking it too far but anything else so now the creature stands astride his defiled kingdom we don't know how this battle ends but we know that we will be riding in this battle in the struggle to save democracy with a real man.
Starting point is 00:18:08 And we must ask ourselves, is it truly he that is the monster, or is it us? But no, seriously, he's the monster. It's like not even debatable. What an asshole. Ha! Ha! What an asshole. Ha! Ha! Boom! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!
Starting point is 00:18:25 We'll be coming back. John Meechan will be joining on the show, so don't go away. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:18:35 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:18:42 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back to The Daily Show. My guest tonight is a Pulitzer Prize winning presidential biographer and bestselling author. Please welcome John Meacham. You got some medium heads in the audience. Usually I get that reaction at assisted living facilities. Right between Murder, She Wrote and Jeopardy.
Starting point is 00:19:24 Oh, you're right in the middle there. They went right in there, exactly. That's a good run. That's a good grouping to be in. It's a good place. It's a good place to be. Well, thank you for being here on such a celebratory week. So exciting.
Starting point is 00:19:34 So many things. You were once an advisor for Joe Biden. You've written books about Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson. You're writing one now on Eisenhower. books about Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson. You're writing one now on Eisenhower. What inspired you to want to write so extensively about the US presidency?
Starting point is 00:19:52 See, for me, I'm intrigued, but I have a hard time because there just isn't a female lead that I can connect to. Yeah, yeah. It's very... And you... And we've now proven we'll send anybody to the White House. Yes. That is true. Not just once. We proved it twice. Two times.
Starting point is 00:20:14 Very impressive. So the presidency is, as President Kennedy once said, the vital center of action. It's where the life of the nation is most dramatically manifested both for good and for ill. Who knew for ill would be quite so formidable in this era? And so the human drama with the larger story of the populace of power to me is the most fascinating story you can possibly have. What I think about with the people I've written about have been flawed, imperfect people, fallible people who just at the last possible moment managed to bend the arc of history in the right direction.
Starting point is 00:21:02 And they just got it right 51% of the time. These are not 60-40 people, these are not 80-20 people necessarily. These are 51-49. And I think that should give us some hope for democracy itself because a democracy is the fullest expression of all of us. And I'm sure you're a better person than I am. That's not hard. Don't get cocky. Doubt that.
Starting point is 00:21:23 But... Did you see my first act? Well, yeah. I was going to mention that. But I think that if we get things right just enough of the time in our own lives, which most of us do, you know, I get things wrong a lot. But when I get something right, okay.
Starting point is 00:21:43 So that's what democracy is, because it's the fullest expression of all of us. Do you think President Trump will get it right in the 11th hour? One lives in hope. Ha ha ha! Some strong pause there. There was a long pause. There was a long pause. Look, I think the best thing that's happened
Starting point is 00:22:00 in these hundred days is the evidence of the public reaction to what's unfolding. And the numbers are not great. that's happened in these hundred days is the evidence of the public reaction to what's unfolding and the numbers are not great and so it may just be that as Winston Churchill once said you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing once they've exhausted every other possibility. Boy, have we ever. Exactly. Thank you. From a historical standpoint, what
Starting point is 00:22:31 is the significance of the first 100 days? Is it really that meaningful, or is it just a hallmark holiday for the media? Well, Doris Goodwin and I have a, we do action figures for it. It's very exciting. That was funny. I'd buy one. Yeah, thank you.
Starting point is 00:22:47 We'll fill them on the web. We'll put them up on the web later, on the website, if that's still up. It started out as a great undertaking. It was Franklin Roosevelt and the winner of 1933, 25% unemployment, a serious question about whether American democracy would survive, whether democratic capitalism could survive. You had totalitarianism taking root in Berlin, in Rome, in Moscow, huge question about whether democracy would work and endure here. FDR, the night he became president, the first of the 100 days, is having a glass of whiskey
Starting point is 00:23:22 and going to bed like we all should do. And an aide comes to him and says, kind of pretentiously when you think about it, said, Mr. President, if you solve the crisis of the Depression, you'll go down as our greatest president. But if you fail, you'll go down as our worst. And FDR looked at him and said, if I fail, I'll go down as our last. He understood the stakes of the hour.
Starting point is 00:23:44 And so in those hundred days he did everything he could, just threw everything at the wall trying to get the first New Deal passed. And you know the 1930s and 40s we live in the long shadow of that. It redefined the relationship of the government to the people, not just the New Deal, but the Second World War. Something like, we had federal spending with something like 3.9% of GDP in 1941. It was 30% during the war. It went back down to about 22%
Starting point is 00:24:18 in our most prosperous years in the 1950s. And so I know we all want to think that it's just the private sector and it's just individual initiative and we're all Horatio Alger. You know what? The government has a lot to do with this. The public sector has a lot to do with this. And to cut mindlessly is just mindless. Yeah. You talk about after January 6th, your biggest regret about Trump. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:55 President Trump, I guess I should say to be respectful. We should, you know why? Because there was this creep. Sell me on it. I will. Here. This is actually a WASP point. Those are the kind I make. So there was this creature in America for four years in right-wing media named Biden. Yes. Right? Biden was doing this and Biden was doing that.
Starting point is 00:25:19 We know he was the President of the United States. And so let's give him the title on the hope that perhaps the beginning with a little civility might hearken some sanity. It's a small hope. Okay. I'm with you on that. You, one of your biggest regrets about President Trump is that you thought that he was a difference of degree and not kind. Right. We're now a hundred days into his second term. How do you see him now? Right. So, I, for the first four years, basically, from 2015 until after the 2020 election, so
Starting point is 00:25:51 not just January 6th, but the call to Georgia, the fake electors, the attempt to overturn an election, that, and this is against my business model, when I say something is unprecedented, that doesn't help me as a historian. But this was unprecedented. No American president had ever done this. Andrew Jackson had lost a much closer election. He hashtagged it. He called it a corrupt bargain, but he went back home to Nashville and just ran again.
Starting point is 00:26:19 Nobody stormed the Capitol. Nobody did this. And so that was a difference of kind. And I didn't think the American people would do this again. I didn't think 49.9% would do it again. But you can't be for democracy only when you win. And so the question now is we're all facing this extraordinary test of citizenship and he is, I think, knocking down a lot of the barriers, a lot of the guardrails, a lot of the institutions
Starting point is 00:26:55 that are flawed and imperfect, like all of us, but which have in fact served us well enough to still have a system that's worth defending. And so, again, these polls show me, suggest, that people are not thrilled about chaos that at least is economically painful. And that's a really important thing here, right? Is politicians all act on incentive. Lincoln said that. All men act on incentive.
Starting point is 00:27:28 And so people talk themselves into thinking in the 2024 election that President Trump would represent prosperity. Well, eh, you know. My favorite headline of the week was, Trump has planned to work around tariffs for car makers. What does that mean? Well, outer space, the tariff aliens came,
Starting point is 00:27:57 and we're going to stand up against these evil tariffs. It was like, you know. So cognitive dissonance is an American characteristic, but we don't have to quote quite that bad. Right. I hope not. There has certainly been a lot of just him acting out, doing whatever he wants, flooding the courts, finding loopholes.
Starting point is 00:28:17 Do you think in a way that this could act as a blueprint for Democrats moving forward? Well, I hope not. Yeah. Because... You're right, that was a bad thought, bad suggestion. A shim on me. Okay, all right, it's good.
Starting point is 00:28:32 I'm officially not a better person than you. That's okay. Well, you're from Kentucky. That's true. Uh... Touche. Yeah, yeah. Says the Tennessean.
Starting point is 00:28:42 Yeah. No, I think, here's what I do think is happening. I think that, and I was not a great math student, so when a pendulum goes this far, right, when it drops back, it doesn't go back to the middle. It keeps going. So you don't have, President Trump is not a recipe for us to have a president from the Brookings Institution next time, right? For some sort of moderate, you know, we're all going to reason together.
Starting point is 00:29:11 The pendulum will probably move pretty far that way. And I think, I never thought I would say this, but the longer President Trump governs the way he's governing, the more likely he's making the presidency of AOC. And as the right wing gets their chyrons ready about that, that's simply a historical point about when you push too far, there's always a reaction. Right. So it does feel like there is a moment of populism.
Starting point is 00:29:51 So also with the popularity of Bernie and AOC. So you think that's an actual possibility. Sure. You think it's likely. Sure, I don't think it's likely, but I don't know if it's likely, but we live in a world where Donald Trump's been president twice. What's likely?
Starting point is 00:30:03 What's, how can you even predict? Donald Trump's been president twice. What's life like? What's what? How can you even predict? This is a post-Cartesian world. Do you feel like the checks and balances and the guardrails that have been woven into our democracy will hold on, or are we going to need a bigger guardrail? Well here's the thing, here's the thing. It's actually, and I used the image I shouldn't have, it's not an inanimate image. To call it a guardrail actually suggests that there's some non-human force that's going
Starting point is 00:30:37 to save us. Institutions are human. So when we say the courts, we should really say judges, right? Yes. When we say Congress, we should say Congress people and senators. It's when we say universities, it's university presidents and boards, right? It's us. And we are going to get what we deserve.
Starting point is 00:31:01 And that's a terrifying thought in many ways. But I do think what Harvard did recently is really important because fear is a really good starter for demagogues. It's hard. It's not a great finisher. It's hard to keep a lot of people afraid for a really, really long time. But to fight fear, you need courage. And courage is one of the most contagious things you can imagine. I hope so. We're definitely seeing cracks in the media ecosystem right now in terms of how they're
Starting point is 00:31:48 covering the administration, the pressure, the aggression towards media in general. What would you like to see more from the media at large in terms of covering this administration? I think we're all the media now. This is another question of terminology. There's the press, and then there's the media. And anybody with a cell phone actually can now reach far more people than Cronkite ever thought about reaching. Right? I mean, just anyone.
Starting point is 00:32:19 So the notion of a gatekeeper, I think, is pretty much gone gone to state the obvious. I think that the more you can say... The more you can just actually stand up for truth and just facts, I think, is the best thing to do. I think... Remember those. I know. They're sweet. They were sweet. They were sweet.
Starting point is 00:32:42 They were a little cute. They were fuzzy. They were so adorable back there. They really were. They were sweet. They were sweet. They were a little cute. They were fuzzy. They were so adorable back then. They really were. Those were the good old days. They really were little tiny facts. Um, and so just say, and the notion, this is one of the more troubling things
Starting point is 00:32:58 that's happened in the last decade or so, is the notion that facts are partisan. Right. That the moment when the future vice president, the incumbent vice president said, well, we weren't going to do any fact-checking. Remember during the debate, one of the moderators tried to say something.
Starting point is 00:33:16 He said, we're not going to do it. As if, okay, we're just suspending reality now. You know? Right. And so I would, I think investing as much, as many resources as possible on saying this is accurate, this is not. Two plus two equals four, and just because President Trump says it equals... You're better at math than you said you were.
Starting point is 00:33:40 I am. Good job. I was sort of being a little modest. Yeah, just here's what's discernible, here's what's not. And when you can manipulate that, which is part of the era we're living in, then you're moving from a reality-based universe into a full-on reality show. Right. But unfortunately, that reality show becomes our reality.
Starting point is 00:34:05 Da-da-da-da-da. Yeah. As a revered historian. Revered. Revered. It's like being the best restaurant in a hospital. Do you think that we will look back on this time differently than the way that we're experiencing it right now?
Starting point is 00:34:23 It depends on how it turns out. If this is seasonal, then we will look at it as a case study in how the legitimate cares and concerns of a lot of people were manipulated and marshaled by someone who did not actually have their cares and concerns at heart. And it will be an example of how American democracy can
Starting point is 00:34:52 veer out of a lane of reality based rule based order. If this is chronic, then it will be a great battle to tell the truth about this and to bear witness to know this is what is true just because someone who got more votes than the other guy says that something is true does not make it so. That's the truth. I sure hope that we veer right out of this. And I appreciate you being here to help process this moment in time. You are a grounding force
Starting point is 00:35:30 and give us a little optimism for the future. Well, what's the alternative, right? I mean, we didn't, as John Belushi said, we did not give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. Yeah. I'm gonna end it right there. John has two books coming out later this year with introductions to the Federalist Papers as well as the Decorative Declaration and the Constitution. John Nisham, everybody.
Starting point is 00:36:00 We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back after. Are you ready? Are you ready? Not at all. It's cool. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
Starting point is 00:36:12 Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
Starting point is 00:36:20 Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Michael Pasta will be here tomorrow to cap off our coverage of Trump's first 100 days, so don't miss it. Now here it is, your moment of zen. Elon, I love the double hat, but he's the only one that can do that.
Starting point is 00:36:36 Well, Mr. President, they say I wear a lot of hats. Even my hat has a hat. 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.

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