The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Trump Sends Vance to Concede to Iran & Reflecting Pool Is Filled with Corruption | Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

Jon Stewart dives into Trump's talent for breaking what ain't broke, from throwing one of his cronies $1.7 million in taxpayer money to clean the D.C reflecting pool (which quickly went from "American Flag Blue" to Mountain Dew green) to launching an aggressive war on Iran with the goal of re-obliterating their nuclear program but instead settling on a gentle parenting-style deal that lets Iran keep their nukes, along with a few hundred billion dollars. Trump was not in the room when his own team discussed the Epstein files, is just one of the few pieces uncovered in Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s new book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” They sat down with Jon to compare Trump’s first and second terms as president, how Trump controls the terms when reporters reach him on his cell phone, and what they uncovered behind his most controversial acts like the tariff policy rollout and the Iran War. They describe his second term as a story of hubris, built on gut feelings and belief from his cabinet that he is someone of destiny because who else can survive four indictments, two assassination attempts to win the presidency a second time.  -- The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central. Stream full episodes on Paramount+ Follow TDS: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Center, it's America's only source for news. This is the Daily Show with your host, John. Daily Show. I'm John Stewart. So this must be a Monday. Ladies giving me shit about only work of my day. There's a question. Oh, you work one day a week.

What's that like? We do have a great show for a time. I guess tonight, journalist Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Who? Oh, really love it. Great journalist. Jonathan Swan, of course, years ago started out as Jonathan. and duckling and then blossom.

Tried to do the dumbest joke I could do it. Their new book is obviously about the imperial presidency of one Donald Jahasafefer Trump. The Trump administration, of course, once again, finds itself at the center of the big news today. The Trump administration continues to try and find a solution

to an intractable, problematic waterway in a dangerous part of the world. Mounting problems at the reflecting pool on the national mall. You are looking right now at what is rapidly turning into a $16 million headache for the White House.

Damn you, socialism wrought! To our beloved symbol of national ankle-deep waiting. Pieces of that new coating began peeling off.

Phosphate levels far higher than what is recommended. A significant algae bloom has turned the water into a sea of green. And it's really fucking green. I didn't realize. That shit's neat. Did they replace the water with mountain dew?

What is... I mean, didn't they just have a pool company come in and fix it? How did it get so green? One of those companies, green water services. Quite perplexing. How did it get so green? I kid, of course.

It's not about the name. I'm sure green water services. A very reputable company that fairly won the reflecting pool contract because of their expertise. and track record. The administration paid a company to do the work

in a no-bid contract. The company's owned by a trust run by Republican donor, John Kaffaro. It's the pool guy? That guy, that's the pool guy. Does Trump do business with anyone normal? Even the pool guy

looks like an extra from guys and dolls. It's like Donnie Brasco got stung by a beat. I'm sorry, to be fair, that's probably an old picture from like the 80s one. Gomez Adams was the raise. Do we have a recent picture of this guy that we can...

Are you rapment? This guy. He's a Mar-a-Lago neighbor and has given more than $300,000 of the political committee is tied to the president. Back in 2001, Kaffaro pled guilty to conspiracy to bribe then- Congressman James Trafficking Jr. The pool guy, the pool guy bribed the congressman, and now he gets the pool kind.

That tracks. What do I do? Let's just say I'm in the chlorine management business. Well, if you're like me when you first heard that the reflecting pool had algae, you probably thought yourself, well, I hope the president of the United States is personally involved with overseeing this. President Trump says he personally inspected the site. Oh, good. That's good. I'm going. I believe he posted a picture of that excursion.

I'm just curious. Wait a minute. That's not actually me. You know what I don't like about that picture? Can I tell the truth about this? This is an AI-generated image, right? And the picture of that person does happen to look a lot like me. But what that means is, I am AI's idea of a person that is old and needs to be healed. Hold on. If Donald Trump is personally overseeing the pH balance of Abe Lincoln's kiddie pool, who is handling the high-stakes incredibly fragile Iranian truce negotiations?

Hey guys. He should have sent cigar face. Face would have taken care of it. Unless you want your whole country to have green water. All right. I will give J.D. Vance a chance. These are the kind of negotiations that will require steely-eyed focus on the American side, and I'll bet J.D. Vance has just the right touch of gravitas and tact.

I have joked that I have two very, very important people in my life in Indian and a Pakistani. The Indian is my wife and the Pakistani as field marshal Minir. My wife's Indian. This dude's Pakistani. Hey, what you say? People? Two browns don't make a white. A rabbi, my wife, and field marshal munier walk into a bar. It's a risky move on Trump's part, given that the first time he sent J.D. Vance overseas, J.D. Vance killed Pope Francis.

So, Pope Francis lived in leper colonies, in, in, has went through so much in his life, survived, spent 10 minutes with J.D. Vance. And went, check please. I'm out. Unfortunately, the negotiation meeting seemed to get off to an even worse start. Social media claims that Vice President J.D. Vance was snubbed by cuttery officials during those weekend talks in Switzerland. There's a viral video going around that showed Vance standing alone as leaders around him exchanged hugs and greetings.

It really answers the question. What if a middle school dance were a person? My mom's coming soon. I'm going to get out of here. But things just went from bad to wallflower with Venn. Vance getting more and more exasperated as the mean girls just couldn't see that he has a lot to offer too. And why would they possibly so mad? Wait a second. You know what? I actually think this might not have been a diplomatic snub.

This might have been the result of a health code violation. Can we take a quick look at the footage again? There's J.D. Vance. Oh, he went for the fucking wipe. D diplomatic faux pa. It's second only to the men's room, Pee and Peak. Which as many of you know, started the... Franco-Prussian war.

But you know what? It doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter who we sent. Because there's not a lot of wiggle room in these negotiations. President Trump has been very clear about what's expected. The president said there will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender. Tata. So basically, J.D. Vance is just there to pick up the white flag. Get it signed. Hand out a couple of orange slices. Call it a game. Before all you knit-pieceers out there wondering, well, what does surrender even mean? Very simple.

They laid it out quite clearly. We want to see no nuclear bomb, no nuclear weapon, not even close to it. I say no enrichment. They want it for civilian, you know, for civil, civil, I think it's uncivil. We also want the enrich uranium. Destroying Iran's missile capabilities and their capacity to produce brand new ones. No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form. Boom.

So we already know what the deal is. So why don't we go through the deal point by point? Probably isn't going to take much time at all. Pretty simple. Number one, they have to give us all their valuable nuclear material. It's actually not valuable. Not a lot of value, but we'd like to get it psychologically, but nobody's touching it. Okay.

We're not actually going to get it, but at least they can't touch it. I mean, they can look at it. Looking is not cheating. You know what I mean? As long as Iran doesn't use it for enrichment. you know, for military or civilian use, that's where we actually are drawing the line, right, Mr. Trump? Well, it is a little hard, though,

when you say that somebody wants it, other people have it, other adjoining states have it, and you're not letting them have it for purposes of electricity or things like that. It's always a little tough. You have to use a little common sense. You're the no nuclear guy. You're the one who said it.

Now suddenly, I mean, you know, enrich a little bit. I mean, you know, we all enrich. nuclear material at some point. You know what I'm saying? The point is we don't have to be such hard asses about the nuclear. Because really the main reason we went there was the ballistic missile program. That's why we're there and we are definitely not budging on that. The conventional ballistic missiles, which we'll be talking about and support. I mean, they have to have some because other people have some. You got to have some. Sir, you shouldn't let them have any missile. I said, well, what am I going to do? Are we going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles?

but they can't have them? Yes, sir. It doesn't work that way, you know? It doesn't work that way. The assholes. Like, we were the assholes who were like, no missiles, no nuclear, and you're like, you gotta be reasonable.

We're just backing you up. And now you're telling us, use your edge people. I mean, they've got to have missiles. You never know when some impulsive assholes going to start bombing them out of nowhere. The missiles. At least no money's changing hands.

As for money, U.S. pledges to help create a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran. Allowing Iran immediately to start selling its oil that could earn Iran $60 to $70 billion per year. Also in this agreement, the unfreezing of Iranian assets, which could be upwards of $100 billion. So the hardline extremist regime of Iran gets a nuclear stockpile, missiles, and money. Iran is a circumcision away from being Israel. Now, wait. I don't actually know if Iranian circumcised, so that may not be.

You get my point. Sure, someone will leave that in the comment section. I don't know if their penises have the hijab. I don't know. Maybe they just have where you just see the penis's eyes. There's no graphic for that joke, by the way. If this is what we're giving the Iranians, I don't understand why the Iranians are snubbing J.D.

Vance. They should be kissing his booger laden ring. I mean, what does America get for all these concessions? Yesterday was a very, very good day. We made a lot of good progress. Oh, yeah. Go get them, Joan Diddy and Vance? What kind of project? Go get them, old Jamountain Dew, Vance. I knew you'd come through. What did we get? The Iranians have agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country. That's is a major milestone for the American people. Oh, yeah, that's a big milestone.

We haven't had nuclear inspectors in Iran since, oh, when you started bombing them last year. The Iran inspectors went in there after the JCPOA that Obama negotiated, and they only left when we attacked Iran. So just out of curiosity, why did we tear up the Obama deal with Iran again? That horrible Iran nuclear deal, that horrible, stupid deal. of that deal, will we give $150 billion we get nothing? The deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium. It also fails to address the regime's development of ballistic missiles. Who would make a deal so stupid as that?

The dumbest deal I've ever seen, the worst deal ever negotiated of any kind. Yeah, what kind of a dumb f***? You know, I guess the theory is, why trade smaller concessions with Iran for peace when we could instead lose a war with them and make bigger concessions. Well, I hope you learned your lesson, Iran. There's plenty more concessions where that came from. You mouth off again, and you're getting Greenland.

Let's just make the best of it. J.D., can you at least tell us the nuclear inspectors will be starting right away to secure the uranium? In terms of when the nuclear inspectors are going to start, it's funny, we were trying to call some of the inspectors last night around two in the morning, as you can expect.

Not many people were answering their phone at 2 in the morning. Is that funny, though? We've been at war for four months, and no one thought to call the nuclear inspectors before 2 a.m. last night. It's really less funny than just shitty foresight and planning. Honestly, I mean, if you ever wondered

who the fuck buys luggage at an airport? That's our negotiating tape. And we forget, stop walking through the airport, just carrying my shit in my arm. Anything in exchange for letting Iran have, like, half a trillion dollars. If there is any frozen Iranian assets that are unfrozen, the money would actually go to buy American soy,

American corn, and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people. A classic Trump deal. Oh, it is a classic Trump deal. Announce a bold action with grandiose ambition and then shit the bed and then state confidently that bed shit was the goal all along. And then finally, name the bed after Trump. Yes, folks, we went to war with Iran to force them to take money to buy our crops.

Win, win. How did no one else figure this out? How did no other president have the foresight to bomb a country into a crop-buying spree? Well, I think one big difference, Phil, is that we have a smart president, whereas in the past we've had dumb presidents. Adding, when we come back, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan will join us in the studio. High stress environments and constant new cycles can lead to elevated core body temperatures, which directly prevents the body from entering deep sleep. When the body is too warm, it cannot recover properly, leading to persistent fatigue regardless of how many hours are spent in bed. The chili pad 2.0 by Sleep Me offers a scientific solution to this issue.

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Please welcome to the program Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Please. Now this is, it's out now, yes? No. It is not out now. You have a secret copy. When does it come out? Tomorrow.

So when this airs, we'll be jumping the embargo. It's kind of broken, right? Yeah, I think we're well past. Make me feel special just for tonight. So it's not embargoed. How... Is. How many people did...

You have information in here from inside the situation room where they're having a meeting to discuss the damage from the Epstein files. There's only five people in the room, six. How many people were in the room? There were a couple of meetings that we describe in the book. And so there is one, which was about half a dozen people. And then there were others with multiple people, the senior levels of the White House, the DOJ and so forth. So you have information.

Six people are in the room. without giving away the secrets who's the rat tell me the rat who is it best it's it's Lutnik you sound like Trump right now

can I ask when I read the book honestly there's a part of me that thought I bet Trump called them like he some of this is a lot of this information from Trump? He wasn't in these meetings. Yeah, they had the Epstein meetings without him because

they knew he didn't want to talk about Epstein. This was to, this was to protect against him not wanting to discuss this and leaks. Those were the reasons that these meetings had. How'd that go? I hope you're enjoying the book, John. I am enjoying it, but I am baffled that this administration, who is, they are so tight-knit and so loyalist, that you would be able to glean this... Did you have... Was it on tape? Is that people...

Suggested it might be on tape? Yeah, we're not going to speculate or talk about us. No, I'm not asking you to tell me. Yeah. I'm asking you to give me... How? We appreciate you.

We're not going to talk about sourcing. No, and I wouldn't. And I wouldn't ask you to. Would you tell me to, or we would tell him to? What I would do is... I'm going to say a name. Are you even surprised at the level of access and information that you got? When you went into this, did you think you would get people to grant you the kind of inside information that you were granted?

It was really hard. I mean, this presidency for lots of reasons is almost unrecognizable from his first term. It's almost unrecognizable as a presidency. Well, it is actually. No, that's true. That's the title. Really the premise of our book, we're seeing a form of regime change in our own country. We haven't seen anything like this.

But in the first term, there was prolific leaking. And one of the biggest pieces of nonsense in this term, and there's a lot of it, is that they're the most transparent administration there is. Actually, they're very good at keeping secrets when they want to. The perfect example most recently is this memorandum of understanding to end the Iran war. Very senior people in the government had not seen that document. very, very senior people, only the tiniest number of people had seen it. So this almost killed. I mean, this was really hard.

We've both covered him for a long time. I think people feel like this stuff spills out. It's hard. It's hard reporting. When you're reporting on something like that, here's something that crosses my mind. One thing that you do glean from the book is every move they make is intentional, including the misinformation and access that they give you. might have a scenario where you talk about it when the USAID or the Musk memos were coming out,

and they thought, oh, okay, we need something to distract this. Why don't we announce that I'm going to prosecute Obama? To reopen Gitmo. That's what it was. To reopen Gitmo. So if they are purposefully misinforming, how do you guard against that finding its way into your reporting? It's a good question, and it's a fair question. You know what? Thank you. I'm a fucking journalist. But what do you do?

Part of it is the fact that we've been covering his world for so long. We actually have a sense of who is telling the truth, who is not. But we don't just take one person's word for it. This is not, you know, I was just in this meeting and let me tell you about, you know, the heroics. We spent an enormous amount of time. verifying what is in this book. If we were at all in... It pained us how much we did not put in the book.

We either didn't put it in because it really wasn't relevant anymore or because we couldn't confirm it to our satisfaction and there are things we are still trying to confirm. But what is in here we are confident of. That doesn't mean that I'm not confident that the White House will at some point say we're wrong. I'm sure they will. But even that's purposeful.

For sure. But we assume... I mean, we've gotten to a point where we just assume false until proven otherwise. I mean, you assume what you're being told is false until proven otherwise. You don't take anyone's word for it. There's no, what is it, Reagan, trust but verified. There's no trust.

You have, there's a story in here that Donald Trump called Howard Lutnik a pussy. Accurate. I'm not here to speculate. I'm not saying, I'm not saying it's accurate he is a pussy. I'm just saying, I'm happy. I'm glad you issued that correct. But so then do you call a bunch of people and have to go, hey, I heard Trump called Lutnik a pussy? Yeah.

Yes. True? Yeah. And the thing about this book, like you asked him that. Yeah. We asked him directly. And he certainly didn't push back on it. He didn't say, yes, that's true.

We had other confirmations. But it wasn't something he was racing to deny. The thing about this book is you can, there's a lot of, um, reporting historically over Trump, which is sort of, I would call it wispy. I'm not making, like, it's hard to get inside the room. But when I say wispy, it's like Trump is thinking this, Trump is saying this. You know, we say on this day, at this time, in this room, and here are the people around the room, this was said. And that was either, that either happened or it didn't happen.

You can, like, there's an element of you can check our work a little bit more than if we just said Donald Trump amorphously was thinking this thing. or on this Air Force One Flight, this was said. We tried to do that in this book because we think it's important that you can anchor something in a scene and a setting, and people can hopefully have a bit more faith in the reporting. What would you like this to, because one thing that you don't do is psychoanalyze

or make judgments about why it operates this way or, you know, the psychology behind any of it. So do that now. for me. What's, because here's what's very clear. He understands the power of bending reality.

And he does it with great ease. So this would be the type of question. Does he truly believe that the Democrats rigged the 2020 election vote-wise? I'm not talking about when he gets into atmosphere.

Is that something he actually believes, or is it It's something that he strategically proffers because he knows the reality distorting effects that that has on the larger game he's playing. It's hard to know often, which is why we don't get into psycho now other than the fact that we're also not psychiatrists, but it's hard to know when he actually believes something or if he is just saying something over and over again because he is very aware of the power of repetition and the effect that it has on voters, on the media, on the general public, on other

leaders. In terms of the 2020 election, there are many people around him in our reporting who think he has convinced himself of that, that he does now believe that. I also don't know that whether he believes that really matters because so many of his own government in 2020 said this was not the case. And why he flees interviews when he's asked to litigate it. What do you think is the best way to, you did this. In 2020, you sat down with Trump and you were talking about COVID deaths. And he was making the case, I think, about the minimization of it. And you brought out facts and figures. And you showed them to him. And it was like the world stopped. Like, people went crazy for it. Because they hadn't seen him litigated. Is that the way to report on him?

Because we really don't do that very often. It's interesting you use the word litigated because the way I thought about that interview was I was litigating reality with Trump. And it was actually the opposite of what you said. He handed me the sheet of paper. He handed you the sheet. But it was important because the thing that drives me crazy often watching certain interviews with Trump is the tendency to move on. And it just drives me really crazy because

don't move on. Stay. Stay. And so this was... Sit, stay. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

So this was a moment where I could have moved on. I actually had planned to move on. We'd spent about 20 minutes talking about COVID. And I was ready to... There was a lot of other things to talk about. I only had half an hour technically.

But then I could tell he wanted to hand me this document. I was like, what the... What's this fucking document? So he hands me this document, and it took me a moment to understand what it was, but it looked like it had been put together by an intern. And it was essentially this chart where he was trying to argue to me that we're winning on death,

basically, on COVID. And it was really preposterous, but you have to sit there absorb it and then pop the reality bubble with a needle. Why is that so challenging? It seems very basic. And yet, even it's very difficult to execute it. So why is that? Well, it used to be somewhat easier, though,

we'll say that Jonathan did the single best television interview with Trump that has existed. They have structured this White House, the press corps, so that it is primarily people or half people who they consider to be friendly to them. They control the media pool that is in there now. They control the seats. Routinely, the only person really challenging him aggressively, and not rudely or unprofessionally, is Caitlin Collins. Collins.

Kills him. And she takes an enormous... And she takes an enormous amount of shit, and she keeps a total straight face. Right. But she doesn't have backup. In the old days, when we would be in the pool, even in the term one,

and they made it harder, but it was still doable. You'd ask a question, somebody else in the pool would follow up on your question. Now it is, you ask a question about Ukraine, Iran, I can go on and on, and he turns to the reflecting pool, and it's 20 minutes of him just talking. And so it is much more challenging.

It is also why, you know, this has come up a lot as we've been talking to people about this book, but we don't, a lot of reporters have a cell phone number now, obviously. Oh, I got it right here. I totally would believe. Do you have a cell phone number? Yes, I have a cell phone number. Can we call him right now?

Let's not. What you should do? This is probably a little f***ed up, and you guys are professionals, but what if I call him as his pool guy? And I just call him and I'd be like, sir, I'll tell you, this fucking thing just stays green. There's nothing I can do.

I can't even tell you. I don't know what's going on. A lot of people have his number. And for reporters, it's, you know, wow, I have the president's number and I can speak to him directly. There's a flattery to me. And he controls the terms, right? There have been some pieces of news that have come out,

but generally speaking, it's him setting the agenda. He says one thing here. He says something totally different 15 minutes later, and it's just him flooding. his own and it's what he did in New York when he was a tabloid guy. No question. Right. But this gets to the heart of its weaponized access. But we're not doing it.

No, no, no, no. I'm not, you guys are great. I'm talking about the other people. I'm not talking about them. The other people. The other people also, there are many who do a good job. But yes, we don't do, we don't engage in this phone. I mean, everybody's doing a good job.

I don't know what I was thinking. I'm just saying. Let me explain why. Because this is the gist of it. Judith Miller, right? You remember Judith Miller in New York Times. So she went to the White House, and they fed her information that Saddam Hussein had aluminum tubes that could only be used for enriching uranium. He was making a nuclear weapon.

And she wrote in the New York Times, I have discovered, me and my part, we, through our diligent reporting that Saddam Hussein has these tubes, Dick Cheney goes on, meet the press the next day and says, the New York Times, no friend to, this administration, but she was being used or was a willful participant in a manipulation. And if that's the case that the phone number, they understand that it's his terms and then that access is actually worth less than journalism. It's actually abetting. It's aiding and abetting in the crimes that they commit. How does that? end? How do we stop that? And is that something that you believe is a problem? Because it seems like it's a dangerous, dangerous problem with this administration. We don't find it useful. The reason

we don't call him on his cell phone is because it's not useful. I mean, it's a two-minute call and he's going to say how everything's great and whatever. And again, like the book, you're not going to get a detailed scene inside the situation room that is potentially includes information that's damaging for the White House and the administration from Donald Trump on a two-minute call. So the type of reporting we do, it's not actually possible to get that from a phone call with Donald Trump. I'm talking more about the cadence reporting, the 24-hour reporting that where it's not possible to have the kind of reflection and analysis that you might have over the quality of the sources. But we don't do it for our daily reporting either.

Right. Yeah, I mean, look, I can't speak to, I mean, I can speak to, but I'm not going to speak to how every single person in this White House press corps or in D.C. now does their jobs. The media environment is very different. Donald Trump obviously has taken advantage of that. He came back to Washington, and we talk about this a lot in the book, to a very different set of power dynamics, where you have media companies that are terrified of him. We are very fortunate to work for one that is independent and which he has no levers over. Right. And yet cares deeply about. As much as he talks about the New York Times. He seems to care deeply about what you guys think of him. He has a specific relationship with the New York Times. For anybody, I mean in his head, I don't mean, actually.

For anybody who wants to, sorry, for anybody who wants to understand how he looks at the New York Times, there was an episode of the Daily Podcast that The Times does where A.G. Salzberger, our publisher, went to the Oval Office with me and Peter Baker in 2019, I think it was. And AG only went because Trump had invited him to come off the record. And AG said, I'm not going to come off the record, but I will come if my reporters can interview you. And so he joined us. And he used the opportunity to directly say to Trump, the language you are using about a free press is being used to emboldened despots around the globe. And Trump just kept saying, I think I'm entitled to a good story from my paper and my hometown paper, some version of that.

That is how he sees it. And that is totally different. It is not useful to us. We did sit with him for an interview. We requested repeatedly, but we made very clear it was a fact-check interview. It was not to sort of sit for open mic night. And by the way, in that interview, he hands you a list of people from history that he's been told he's more powerful, them.

And the list is Mao, Stalin, him. Like, he doesn't go with, like, George Washington. He goes with despots and tyrants and is like, fuck those guys. I'm bigger than them. Top ten is what he said to it. The top ten. Is America too small for him now? Is he now view this as I'm Alexander the Great?

Something to that, actually. I mean, Jonathan has a... It was actually... It was an extraordinary moment because throughout the reporting of this book, we had basically come to a thesis that he was far less responsive to domestic politics than he was in the first term.

The first term, if polls went down, stock market gyrations, he'd be much more reactive. It's not to say he doesn't think about that at all. It's not... He definitely thinks about stock market. He definitely does. It's not black and white,

but he thinks about it far less. And we were, so one of the questions we're asking, why is he willing to take much bigger risks this term than last term? I don't think he would have gone to war in the same circumstances. I don't think he would have taken America to war in Iran last term in the same circumstances. I'm not sure he would have authorized the operation to snatch a sovereign head of state in his pajamas out of his bedroom. You know, that was a very risky. American service members could have died in that operation.

Thank God they didn't. he, when we sat across from him and he handed us that piece of paper that he said was written by a historian, it turns out it was written by a former golf caddy for Gary Player. But, um... Wait, don't do that, just don't rush over that. He thought it was written by historian, it was written by a golf caddy? Yeah. Yeah, this is a... What a golf caddy just came up and said, like, uh, this Ken Burns handed me this.

Sort of. He was, he was golfing with Gary Player, who he's known for a very long time. We asked him a question about power and presidential power. And he immediately said, he sent his all-purpose aid, Natalie Harp, out, and said, Natalie, get the documents. And he said, do you know who Gary Player is? We weren't quite sure where this was going. And then he described golfing with Gary Player, and Gary Player had this historian with him named David King. And we spent a while trying to figure out who David King was. They sent us the text.

They said he's a presidential historian. We tracked him down. Jonathan tracked him down. And he's a businessman. Gary players former caddy and volunteer caddy and he's a history buff sure but he's not a historian

I get that a lot of buffs out there there's a lot of us yeah it was interesting because the document itself basically just said Donald Trump's the most powerful man who's ever existed ever on the planet because he's in charge of the US military and technology but also willing to use the power and then the people

and he has planes the people that compared him to as you mentioned Mao Stalin Hitler there was no moral dimension to it it was just expressed in terms of raw power. And he was reading it out to us. He was sitting across the Oval and he's like, relish it. He's like, Napoleon.

It was delayed. Wow. You know, and it was, it's very clear that what he wants to do is reshape, reshape both America, but also the world. He does, I think, want to be a Napoleonic type of figure. Has he read the whole book, though? I mean, it doesn't end that great for, no. No.

But we're still talking about Napoleon, don't we? That's true. We are still talking about it, but this is maybe the most, and I'll get to, what I took away from the book is, you know, there's always people are going to want palace intrigue and those kinds of things. What I took away was process, that the process of this White House is very much the apprentice or shark tank.

People come into his office and compete with an idea. And he chooses the one that he thinks has the most pop for this episode of the show. And they do it. And no one follows up in a future episode. So the tariffs go out there and it's like, that's great. And then when it tanks the economy, nobody's like, hey, we should probably revisit that.

He's like, that's an old episode. It's a lot of, it's all trailer, no movie. It's all advertisement and no follow-through. And so what you're seeing here, the Iran War is a great example. Obama's JCPOA was 18 months of very tough negotiations and they go all those things. And Trump comes in, he's like, how about I just bomb them? And we take a week. And there's no follow through.

Is that what you've found there? That it's a slightly different cast on that, I think. I mean, look, it's definitely a White House that does not like process. He doesn't like process. Or competence. And one of the things that he and... You can say it. One of the things...

One of the things that he and... Stephen Miller spent a lot of time on. Ooh, did you feel that? It got cold all the sudden. Did you feel that on the back of your neck? That was weird. One of the things that he and Stephen Miller spent a lot of time on, and obviously...

Say it three times. Let's see if he comes. How to see it for this episode. Was essentially how to do things quickly and how to claim powers that weren't actually the executive branches, either because you could declare national emergencies. Interaction Act. 100%, but it's across the board.

It's a fentanyl emergency. It's a border emergency, even though the border crossings were down. There is a refugee emergency, so we have to change asylum status and so forth. And Trump isn't really thinking about these processes. He just wants things to be done fast. Stephen Miller was thinking about both. And then Trump has other people who can offer to get him things quickly. On the tariffs, the reason I'm interested in that being the thing you pointed to is this was something he's kind of wanted to try for decades.

He did not have an economic theory of the case about how tariffs would work. He thought tariffs were an incredible tool and weapon and blunt instrument. And that is exactly how they were implemented. What you do see is him saying things like, you know, jacking up the tariff rate to China on China for 145% and then saying,

holy shit, or some version of that, when he learns that's how high it is. Right. And his whole government was quite scared as they were not just approaching Liberation Day, but blowing past it. But don't you think because they're not, the litmus test isn't competence.

It's loyalty. And the loyalty has to be given through humiliation rituals. Everybody that works for him has to go through a humiliation ritual. Those cabinet meetings are not discussions of policy. They are public humiliation rituals of anyone who wants to be in that office.

And they're very long. There's no question about that. Well, because there's so much ass to kiss. Respectfully. How does this... As you watch this careen down the hill, you know, as you project out, we've got two and a half more years of this. If he thinks he's Mao and Stalin now, where are we going?

Well, part of the book is really a story of hubris. I mean, he came in this second term. Actually, it's a little deeper than what you were saying, because a lot of the people around him, there's an almost mystical belief in him, particularly the ones that went through the campaign with him. It's Donald Trump is a figure of destiny that survived four indictments to assassination attempts, somehow won this election.

Maybe in the first time when you would talk to senior aides, a lot of them had absolute contempt for him, and they would mock him and say, you know, this guy's dangerous, we're trying to stop him. You never hear that. These are people who, oh, you never hear that. You never hear that. There's none of the backbiting now on that. No, no, no.

These are people who believe in him. and actually even when he says something that they think, well, maybe that's kind of out there, well, maybe he's picking up on something that we're not picking up on. There's a deference to his judgment. And the Iran war, the Iran war is actually sort of a perfect example of that.

We have in the book, this incredible sequence of events where Bibi Netanyahu comes down to the Situation Room. Great guy. I'm sorry. Comes down to the situation. He gave Trump this presentation about regime change. Here's how it's going to work in Iran.

Here's the people who might take over and whatever. Anyway, the CIA goes away overnight and does some analysis. They come back the next day in the situation room. The analysts come in and they say this is total bullshit. This is like divorced from reality. The CIA director, John Rackcliffe, tells Trump it's farcical. Rubio tells him it's bullshit, and Trump says, you know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But he had a gut feeling.

Again, this was a gut-driven decision. Trump thought this would be a fast war, that they would collapse quickly, that this regime was a paper tiger. And he was wrong. And what he said to Tucker Carlson, I think, was actually encapsulates what Jonathan's saying. Great guy. Which is most of what this presidency is now, which is everything is going to, Carlson was trying to talk him out of it,

doing this war and Trump says something to the effect of everything is going to be okay everything's going to work out it always does because it always it always is okay yeah and that is how he thinks and so well because for him it's that Norman Vincent Peel power positive thing but that it works out for him but this brings us so we'll bring it around full circle and end on this so they have a mystical belief in his gut that allows him to do this so he does it and it shits the bed And we end up in a more dangerous, weaker position. We elevate this theocracy to a level of power in that part of the world that they have never had before. And they are now at that position.

So in terms of litigating reality, now that this has come down, do they go, hey, you took a swing, some of them work, some of them don't? Do they still believe in the mystical, messianic powers of Napoleon II? Do they ever go, like, maybe that's Waterloo? Like, how does reality not ever permeate this reality distortion field? I think it's more nuanced than that. Of course it is. There were many people on his team who thought this was a bad idea to start with, the war. There was really only one person who actually said that to Trump in a forceful way, which was Vance.

And that actually irritated Trump to some extent. A lot of them didn't make the argument to him. It's very obvious to them, and actually, I think to him as well, That's why he's doing such a fast reverse, basically saying, you know, you're out of control. We've got to get out, willing to take this deal. But he's going to say this is the best deal that anybody's ever gotten it and nobody's ever gotten it. And Iran is weaker. And who's still buying that in the White House?

I don't think that many people still buy it in the White House, but I also don't think that you're going to see a lot of them quitting on mass. I mean, one of the things that we wrote about in the book was that, you know, some of his advisors were talking last year about how The most disastrous thing for his presidency would be if he got into a war of Iran, and one of them said, you know, I will resign if that happens. And I can tell you, without telling you who, that that person is still there. So, uh... So, J.D. Vance is still there. That's what you're telling me. Remarkable.

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Die-hard soccer fan right here. That's awesome. I am as well. How long have you been a fan? Six, maybe seven days. But I've learned so much about this beautiful game. I'm something of a soccer player myself now. You know, 11 men against 11 other men, each side trying their best to pretend to be injured. It's a little more complicated than that, Judge. All that, right, red card.

Today we have an update for you from the Department of Interior Press team. The reflecting pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the reflecting pool, just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf. 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. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.