The Problem With Jon Stewart - Come Back, America! with Rory Stewart

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

As Trump's actions and rhetoric rock the global economy, Jon is joined by Rory Stewart, former British Cabinet Minister and current co-host of “The Rest is Politics.” Together, they examine the rapidly shifting relationships between the U.S. and its traditional allies, discuss the opportunities these shifts create for China, explore which policies and failures have contributed to the rise of populist leaders worldwide, and consider what these developments mean for the future of the West. Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more:  > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast > TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast  > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod   > BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/theweeklyshowpodcast.com Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic  Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Researcher & Associate Producer – Gillian Spear Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Again, that's tryqs.com slash podcast for 10% off and free shipping. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Hello everybody. Welcome once again. Weekly show podcast for John Stewart. My name is John Stewart. I'm actually the person in the intro. It just, I don't know. It just worked out that way. We are talking to you Wednesday, April 23rd. We always try and date it because of the speed in which current events. has been moving. It is exhausting. We are approaching the first hundred days of Donald Trump's re-presidency and the first congressional casualty, Mr. Dick Durbin, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Illinois? Illinois? I like to add the S. Although what would he plural, Illinois? Illinois's? I don't know. We'll figure it out. He said he is not going to see you. re-election. And here's the shocking part. He's only been in Congress, I think, 40 some years. And he's only 80. To see a senator self-deport at the ripe young age of 80, my God, my God, what have we become as a society to drive these kinds of adolescent junior senators from office? It's like watching someone declare for the drag. as a freshman. No, sir, you're not ready. You're not ready to go. You must, you must mature. Oh, so generally fucked. And the trade war is apparently now. This is going to be such an interesting

Houdini-esque escape from these utterly disastrous self-inflicted tariffs. You saw Trump today in a press conference. You know, China, they've got to make a deal. They've got to do it. And so because they have to make the deal, and because everybody's kissing my ass, even though no deals are done, I'm probably just going to, you know, remove the tariffs at some point. Having nothing to do with the fact that yesterday I sat down with Target and Walmart and all the big box stores and they were like,

you're fucking killing us. We are the only thing keeping the economy going for cheap goods. And we will have nothing on our shelves in like a week. you're going to see a run on toilet paper that would make the COVID-era panic seem like a stroll in the park, for God's sakes. And somehow they'll pull off the feat of saying this was the plan the whole time and what a brilliant strategy it was to tank the global economy for as long as he did while still getting nothing out of it. Meanwhile, overseas, who the hell knows how will the EU move towards China? Will Russia just be able to consume Ukraine in the way that they want to? We just have no idea.

This is a failure on all levels. The first hundred days have been nothing but stern and drang and noise signifying nothing. And it doesn't have to be this way. So many of their policy goals could be achievable in non-caotic. terms and yet they seem incapable of playing that out. Fucking madness. But we're going to get the view from Europe today with our guest, which I'm very excited about. Quite a Renaissance gentleman that we have joining us on the program today.

Delighted to have him. Ladies and gentlemen, delighted today. The Stewart brothers. That's it. Reunited. Rory Stewart, Nay, Leibowitz. Brothers from a different mother, co-host to the rest of the rest of it. politics, but truly an enlightenment gentleman, author, former MP, former minister.

We're just, we're excited to have you discussing things with us today. Rory, you are obviously, you know, your career as an author and as a minister. You're so ensconced in politics as well as broadcasting and all these other things. We just thought you'd be a great person to give us a broad perspective. on the view from overseas towards America. As you know, America, we're very shy. We don't like people to think about us. That's right, John.

Famously shy. Famously shy. Yeah. And obviously I don't want to start on a confrontational note, and these conversations should be civil, and we're going to try and keep it that way. But Rory, here in America, we're wondering, why is Europe so hostile?

Why do they use us so? Why? The UK, the EU, why do they victimize America to such an extent? It's hurtful, Rory. It is, is this. And you're right. And this is what J.D. Vance wants to know and all those wonderful signal chats. Why will we so mean to you? Why have we been bullying you for such a long time? Why, Roy? That's really the simple question. No, that's right. I mean, it's an amazing flip, isn't it? Jay D. Van's sometimes wakes up in the morning and thinks the United States is this incredible global superpower that's going to tell China what to do. And in other moods, he's like, oh, we're the victimized kid on the playground. Everybody's stealing our lunch money, these horrible Europeans, you know, I think that somewhere the, I was trying to get my head around

the mentality, but I guess the mentality at the moment feels like from Europe that the Trump administration is obsessed with not being taken for a sucker. They seem to think everybody's kind of ripping them off all the time. Yes. Is that right? Oh, I don't think there's any question about that. And we have a very powerful man baby at the helm. You know, I think so much of this, what's what makes it so difficult is that a lot of the ramifications that are being felt economically throughout the world are the product of kind of a psychological wound. that our present leader suffered as a real estate developer from Queens, who did not feel that he was given enough fealty from the Manhattan real estate.

And so because of that, this is all a search for validation, loyalty, and fealty. Unfortunately, it seems to be plunging the world into a global depression. And John, it's weird, isn't it? Because I noticed this that we talk so much about his psychology. And of course, it's very difficult to work out his psychology. So you'll get people who know him well, they'll say one moment, oh, he won't be able to put up Freeland Musk for more than a couple of days because he can't bear anyone else in his limelight. And then they'll have to change their view. And they'll be like, oh, no, the thing about Trump is he really likes wealthy people. Or they'll say, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't, you know, the one thing he cares about is the stop. market. And then when he tanks the stock market, everyone's like, no, no, no, he doesn't really care about the stock market. But what I think it's showing, if I was going to be pretentious for a second, is that the structure's falling down. You only start focusing on the psychology of the individual when the system isn't working. Because when you've got a properly functioning system, you know, the civil servants are working, the courts are working, Congress is working. The

The details of the sort of mysterious psychology of the president is less important. It only becomes important when it all goes executive orders. And I think that's what's so strange about this. This is a guy who, particularly with tariffs, has suddenly found this sort of emergency weapon that he can deploy. And then we all have to start worrying about his psychology. Well, it's actually, it's the modus operandi for this administration is to, you know, throughout the history of the United States, the executive has always had.

a great deal of power. But it's always supercharged that power through the process of emergency declarations. We have an emergency declaration. We have to suspend habeas corpus. Emergency declaration. What if we imprisoned all of our Japanese citizens? Emergency declaration in the 50s for tariffs. They're very shrewd about, you know, the Alien Enemies Act. They find those moments. So he catastrophizes to get elected and then uses those trumped up, pardon, upon catastrophes, to enact these emergency powers that basically negate the other branches. And I think that's how he operates. And John, can I again?

Please. Lori, I'm here to help you. Thank you. You know, originally I was going to get Europe's vision of us. I'm here to help you. Well, you do need to help us. Please. So let me, I think, give a little bit of background.

So I was a briefly a British soldier, and then I was a British diplomat, and I served in the Balkans, so the Bosnia and Kosovo interventions. I was then in Afghanistan. I was in Iraq. Famously walked through Afghanistan and wrote a brilliant book about it. Thank you. Thank you. And in all those places, I work very, very closely with the United States. And so I think I need to begin by sort of setting up the world that I grew up in. It was an American world. I mean, European or British, but it was an American world. And I think it's just trying to get across the sense that since the Second World War, the world has been defined by the US.

The US set up NATO, basically set up the UN, set up the World Bank, set up the IMF. And when we deployed to Afghanistan, we deployed because the United States had triggered Article 5 of NATO. It's something you've pointed out. We came to help the United States, somebody who was in NATO being attacked and we deployed to help. And I developed so much respect for my American colleagues for their professionalism, for their seriousness. And I really mean this.

I mean, they were more professional and serious often, I'm afraid, than we were, because they had more power and more responsibility. Right. And took that power and responsibility seriously. Is that the... Yeah, and you really got that sense. You know, I became close to people that listeners will be familiar with, General Petraeus, General McChrystal, Richard Holbrook, Hillary Clinton. I worked with these people. And I was so struck by how committed they were, how serious they were, and how idealistic they could be.

Often when we Europeans were being a little bit cynical, it was the Americans in the room who'd say, no, we've got to do this properly. we actually care about democracy or we care about human rights. We're not going to allow this warlord to just go around abusing people. And it was very precious to me. It was very precious to me when I used to teach at Harvard. I now teach Yale. I'm married to an American. By the way, don't think that that means that you can stay.

Just know this. We've changed the rules slightly. But particularly not after appearing in your podcast, John. I'm going to blame you when I turn up in something. ICE agent looks at my TikTok account and flings me out. That's right. We'll send you to Louisiana and whatever happens happens. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to, I'm coming after you. As you should, I'm going to be there. And you better, you better come and visit me in Guantanamo or El Salvador or wherever it is, because it'll be your fault. Absolutely. No, so just to finish the thought,

I mean, I think to really understand the bewilderment and maybe even the overreaction in Britain and Europe to Trump too, you have to understand how for 70, 80 years, America created this very, very complicated, delicate balance of allies. I'm going to finish with a final little anecdote, which mattered to me. When I was chair of the Defense Select Committee in the UK Parliament, 2015, we were looking at basically options of shutting down most of the British defense manufacturing and just buying from the US because it was going to be cheaper. They produced the scale. And we were looking at closing down most of our Navy and becoming a sort of Marine Corps attached to the US. And we didn't do it in the end, partly because we were worried

about employment in the UK and the Navy put up a fight for its own institutions. But nobody then, nobody 10 years ago ever said, well, wait a second, are you not taking a big risk here? Because what happens if the US was no longer a reliable ally? It was inconceivable. I mean, Literally nobody in that room said, well, hold a sec. You're going to put yourself completely dependent on buying U.S. defense equipment. What happens if a president comes in who says he's going to switch off the software on the F-35s? Right. Or, you know, you're going to get rid of your aircraft carriers and your Navy,

and you're going to design yourself into a Marine Corps to deploy with the U.S.? Well, what happens if the U.S. is trying to take Greenland off you? Yeah. That never came up before? That wasn't something that got thrown around in the room? I mean, it's maybe a silly point and obvious to listeners, but we had no doctrine. When we went to military training or we looked at strategy, we had no doctrine for what to do if the U.S. became an adversary. We literally don't have any plans for defending Greenland

because it was inconceivable. Right. So you never thought that we would trigger Article 5 by attacking you. Right. I mean, we wouldn't know what to do. It makes sense. Yeah. So here's where it gets complicated, I think, Rory, because you mentioned. a couple of things and we'll roll back. And this is maybe the explanation of where you talked about sort of viewing America as sort of this idea that our government and our civil service, they all functioned really efficiently and effectively and were run by serious people who had created this worldview where we were the centerpiece of a democratic free world. We amplified our power throughout these various allies,

and we respected each other and we supported each other. The truth is it was the failure of that world order to live up to expectation that led to Trump in the first place to a large extent, as you've seen from Brexit and populist movements throughout all of Europe. And your experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, you viewed the idealism of the... and seriousness of the people in a really positive light,

and it was moving, and you were impressed by, you know, how hard they worked. But it was a disaster. It was a pig fuck. Yeah. And that led to a real loss of faith and cynicism in this world order. And Trump came in as a hard, truth-telling diagnostician. Sure.

This world that you thought was real is actually, we're the victims of this. The irony is we set up a world that we now claim is abusing us. Yeah. It was our choice. John, you've put your finger on probably the most difficult thing that we face, which is this contradiction. Because you're completely right. along with all the stuff that was so positive, there was what you call the pickfuck. By the way, that's trademarked.

Don't think you can just slap that on T-shirts and go out there and sell that wherever you want. It's part of the Stuart Bother thing. We can use this. We're brothers. Stuart Brothers, pick-fuck t-shirts. We're fine, yeah. So I was back in Afghanistan in August, this August just now, right? And I sat down with the governor of Bamian.

Last time I sat down with the governor of Bamian, she was a human rights lawyer. This time he has an injured eye, a big turban, he's surrounded by guys with Klaschikovs, and he was the governor of Bamian before 9-11. Is he Taliban or is a warlord? He's Taliban. And he blew up the Bamian Buddhists. He was the guy that did all this, and he's back again. So if you wanted a symbol of how little we achieved, we literally invaded the country to get

rid of the Taliban. We spent 20 years. We spent over a trillion dollars, a thousand billion dollars, and then we hand the country back to the Taliban again. So in that sense, of course, Trump's got a point, you know, and I could add to that, right? Of course, you know, I ran the British International Development Institution, and I could see there was so much wrong, right? You were obviously being tongue in cheek when you're talking about government efficiency. Of course, government's massively inefficient, and I could see all the problems with USAID. But what's happened now is we live in such a binary world that there's not much room for the Stuart brothers to say, well, you know, yeah, government screwed up and it was inefficient and we got to reform it, we got to do better.

It's all now either you're 100% behind USAID and it was the most wonderful liberal institution in the world or shut it down, turn off the computer, cut all the funding worldwide. So it's the sense of, and this is where I think you want to call out Trump and Musk. It's the bad faith that initially people thought, well, you know, maybe they've got a point here. And here are some recommendations I could make to make government a bit more efficient. But of course, they don't care about any of that stuff. Well, no, and I think they do it. Where I think it goes wrong is the conflation with USAID and American hubris and adventurism overseas.

The arrogance of we will spread democracy to Afghanistan, and they will, embrace it, and we will be famously viewed as liberators in Iraq, and it will all work out. And so I think to lump in programs that are distributing medicines to poverty-stricken children with HIV with a foreign policy that seeks to impose a worldview that may be alien to those areas and to enforce it, same thing with COVID. You know, you can go from, you may think that these governments overreached and that they did certain things, but a lot of it might have been in very good faith. But ultimately, when you begin to erode your belief in the civic institutions and the infrastructure that upholds them, they become vulnerable to demagogues. Look, Brexit went first.

You guys were the first ones to say. With the canaries in the mine, yeah. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Look, you know, the holidays are over. Let's face facts. Christmas gifts, you got crushed. Why?

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after 1989. There was an idea of liberal democracy, and the number of democracies in the world literally doubled between 88 and 2003. The second one was this idea of globalization, free trade, open markets, and the third one was this rules-based international order, UN interventions in Bosnia, etc. And something happened between about 2004 and 2014. All those things were discredited. 2008 financial crisis wrecked our faith in markets.

Iraq and Afghanistan wrecked our faith in these kind of international interventions. The rise of China, you know, China and we don't remember, most people don't remember. In 2004, the Chinese economy was smaller than the Italian economy. It was the seventh largest economy in the world. No disrespect to the Italians, by the way. No disrespect. That is in no way meant to diminish the accomplishments. The wonders of the Italian economy.

And goodness of the Italian people. 100%. 100%. So as China explodes and becomes within 10 years the world's largest manufacturer and exporter, it doesn't become a democracy. So by 2014, we've got that and we've got the rise of social media. And put all those things together. And then it's very remarkable.

You talked about Brexit. It's not just Brexit. 2014 Narendra Modi is elected in India, 2014 Putin takes Crimea, 2014 ISIS goes across the Mosul border, 2015 far right party elected in Poland. Erdogan also becomes a much more autocratic leader. Exactly. This is Erdogan's route. 2016, Trump's elected for the first time. So the world is beginning to change very, very quickly.

And now we've entered with Trump to the kind of shadow world. So if I go through those three things, liberal democracy has become authoritarianism, free trades become protectionism, rules-based international order has become the strong, will do what they will and the weak must suffer what they must. Do you think that this is then self-correcting pendulum swings, right? So the overreach of, let's say, liberal democracies who, you know, the fall the USSR and all of those Eastern European countries becoming more democratic, these are now. swings because it's not as though these, you know, more autocratic societies function better. And, you know, with China, it was really their entry into the WTO, but China was going to grow anyway. Is it maybe a failure of expectation of the people in these countries? We believe things to want to be more successful than they are.

or should be. Is it our expectations that are out of whack? Or is it a natural cycle of kind of pendulum swings that go along in terms of these disruptions? Or is it a failure of our societies to adequately remedy the unforeseen collateral damage of some of these swings? And I know that's a hugely broad question, and you can take any one of those. Well, I think it's four things. I think it's power. I think it's America. I think it's a modern age and its ideology. And what do I mean by that? I mean that 189 to 2004, America has defeated the Soviet Union. It is completely unchallenged. China is still a minnow in the world. And power leads to overreach. You're like, we've done this in Bosnia. We've done this. Hey, hey. Go easy. Settle down. The second one is America. And of course, America is a country based on Kandu. I remember arguing with American officials in Afghanistan, and I would say, you literally, you can't do this. You know, H.R. McMasters was trying to eliminate all corruption from the Afghan government. He's the guy that

wanted to be Trump's national security advisor. And I said, you can't do it. And the answer was always, we're American. You know, don't give us problems, give us solutions. What is it we need to do? Is it we need more troops? Is it when we need more money? And when I said, you know, there was the document that was circulating. This is honestly true, right? The American government, European governments signed up to a statement by Ashraf Ghani, who became the Afghan president, and it ran as follows. Every Afghan is committed to a gender-sensitive, multi-ethnic, centralized state based on democracy, human rights, and the root of law, right?

No, you think it's funny. I think it's funny. But at the time... I remember that. Hamid Karzai had on his resume. He, him. I think I remember that. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, why did we not realize at the time how grotesquist was?

So that's partly about America. Then I think there's the point about the modern world, which is that we are in a world of instant gratification. When I was waiting for you to come on, I was scheduling my Uber Eats. And I don't want to know that there are – I don't want someone to tell me that it's going to take time or it's complicated. Right. I want it now, right?

Progress. Yeah. And then the final thing is ideology. I think we thought that democracy had won, and we couldn't see that we were. were in this funny, funny little bubble and that most of the world wasn't really going in that direction. And that even these words didn't mean the same to different people. So I remember feeling this.

I worked part of my life in Indonesia and in Africa. We call 100 different countries democracies. In some cases, it means it's Sweden. In other cases, it just means there's been a vote, but there's a bunch of corrupt, autocratic bureaucrats who aren't paying any attention to anyone. No, it makes total. And I think the thing that America had a difficult time reconciling is we can't remove corruption from our country, let alone. So when you hold other places that you're going into, and the other side of it is interventionism takes many forms.

And we've tried soft power, you know, as they say classically, soft power, heart power, economic sanctions, all those things. None of it seems to be particularly foolproof in terms of influence and good outcome. We've tried lightly bombing countries to decapitate their autocratic leadership, and that turns them into God-forsaken hellholes of warlordism. We've tried toppling them with our magnificent army and then holding those countries together with the sinewy textures of our nation-building engineers. That doesn't seem to work. You know, what we haven't learned how to do is to manage the expectations and dynamic. to create little harm. I'll go even further.

I think we caused a lot of this populist turn by destabilizing the Middle East and causing a great deal of migration that ended up going into, you know, globalization and all these other ideals are now being challenged by the idea of the nation state. Yeah. John, so I think you're absolutely right, but I think we need to guard against too much despair.

Yes. The risk is that the right thinks we don't want to have to do with other countries because we don't like poor people in other countries. The left can begin to think a bit like you're saying now, well, we screw it all up anyway, so maybe best we stay at home, we don't do anything. Of course, the truth is that under American leadership since the Second World War, and particularly in that 89 to 2014 period, every year the world got more prosperous, more peaceful, there were fewer refugees, who were fewer internally displaced people, more democratic governments. And the big success, which we don't talk about enough, is Europe. If you look at countries like Romania and Lithuania in 1989, they were very, very poor autocratic states. They are now prosperous liberal democracies. But it requires something that is quite different from the kind of intervention you're talking about.

It requires really rich carrots and sticks, and it requires patience. So how did this miracle for these dozen countries in Eastern Europe work? It worked because they had the carrot of being able to join the European Union. They had very, very generous structural funds over a long time. Their population believed in it. They had a reason to get by it. Let's give US a bit of credit for the direction that Japan went in, South Korea went in, Taiwan went in. But partly it was because you haven't talked about it very much.

I mean, how many of your listeners know that you've still got 25,000 soldiers in South Korea, right? All of them, because our listeners are very, very well. So keep going for that, 60 years. And the truth is you went through South Korea being a pretty poor military, authoritarian, protectionist government to what it is now, which is one of the most vibrant, interesting, dynamic, liberal countries on earth. So there's a lot of stuff which has gone in the right direction since the Second World War, while the US has been right at the center of this system.

So I want to keep making the argument for that odd combination that Americans, soft and even hard power, those 25,000 troops, can push things in the right direction. Sure. But it requires, I think, a couple of things. One of them is patience. The second thing is, don't talk to the American people too much about it. It turns out the places which are going best are the places you never mention. How dare you, sir?

I think you could be right. The fact you don't talk about South Korea is part of the trick, right? You had 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan. No casualties for 18 months. You could have continued doing that forever, but you talked about it so much. Biden felt he needed to go big or bust. You don't think that was South Korea. Well, there has been, though, for a long time, and again, this is now the Trump kind of play

of victimhood is that South Korea has used us. All these countries, by not militarizing, by using our defense as a shield and creating stability for themselves, we're able to focus their resources on this economic development. So they've done great, but we've suffered desperately because of that because we're being forced to, you know, nobody ever talks about that. We like our influence being global. We have more than 750 military bases. Nobody made us build those. We did that. That was us. And as much as we want to pull back, our defense department is getting a raise again. It's going to be a trillion dollar, uh, uh, defense bill because we're going to build a golden dome and we're going to do all these other things. I continue to believe this. And I wonder if you feel the same way about the UK, that the issue in our country is not trade or trade deficits or all these other things. It's that we were unable to

properly distribute and reinvest the gigantic wealth that has been generated in the, this country over these past 30 or 40 years into effective, competent change in our own country. That's a completely right, John. So the story of Reagan and the story of Stature was that by releasing the markets, we were going to generate growth. And you did. Trickle down, baby. Yeah, you generated incredible growth. I mean, I think one of the things that's difficult to understand in the U.S. debate is you are all thinking, well, the reason, you know, Trump came to power is that that the American economy is relatively weak and that what Trump's doing is going around the world saying, you know, we've been taken for a sucker and they're all getting rich at our expense.

Of course, the rest of us have spent the last five years looking at you thinking, you're an economic miracle. Europe's economy was the same size as the American economy 10 years ago. You're now 50% bigger than us, right? So we look at you and we're like, wow, right? Then the question is, how do you reconcile that with how somebody feels in Dayton, Ohio, who's voting for Trump? How does this make sense? On the one hand, the American economy is going gangbusters. You've got the seven largest companies in the world.

You've got 70% of all global equities in the United States, you'll be, et cetera, and so on and stuff. And yet, a lot of people feel their lives are very underwhelming, very disappointing. They're struggling with cost of low. So here's where it gets tricky, Rory, because you're right. And by the way, the difficulties in those industrialized, or I should say de-industrialized areas is very real. folks have much harder lives now as we can't compete with China's low wage and low regulation environment that creates those. And it did hollow it out. But part of the issue there in terms of the political pressure is it almost invariably occurred in our small swing state. There's only

five states that matter in this country because of our electoral college. Generally, states are blue or the red, there's some purple states that are still in contention, they are almost all suffering from deindustrialization. So that became, because here's, you could make another slogan in our country and it's called nobody gives a shit about Oregon. Yeah. Because if Oregon was the swing state, then their issues, which would not be deindustrialization, they'd be something else. Yeah. would be the ones that dominate our policy and our public discussion. You know, if Iowa was a swing state, we would all be talking about tariffs on any hog producing countries that might be going along.

So this is an outsized response to a narrowly focused geographic issue. Sure. Boom. Taking a quick break, we shall be back. Well, let's look at this problem with democracy, right? Whoa. Hey. Whoops. Tread lightly, sir. This is an issue in Brexit. So I present the rest of politics, which is the UK's biggest podcast. And the question that comes almost every week to us is, why are we not rejoining the European Union? And people point out that something like 65% of the British Republic now think Brexit was a mistake. So it seemed like a no-brainer, right? 65% of the public think Brexit a mistake. We'll rejoin the European Union, particularly when America's getting a bit around. why don't we get closer to our European allies? But the problem is the problem you've just identified. Labour and Conservative, two main parties, are fighting about this tiny group of states called the Red Wall.

And those people, and they're mostly in de-industrialized areas, voted to leave the European Union. And so although Kirstama and the Prime Minister and his entire cabinet voted to remain in the European Union thought Brexit was a horrible idea, they're not moving even a millimeter closer to even soft versions like rejoining a customs union or anything with Europe because they're worried about those few swing voters. And what will happen is reform UK will primary everybody from the right and they'll be the ones that, I mean, I don't think labor's in trouble with that, but I would imagine that the Tories will be consumed by reform. So this is another way in which we all are a bit Americans.

So this is a story in Canada. It's a story in Australia. It's a story in the United Kingdom. It's a story in Germany. You know, Germany, the far right now, the AFD, which is this party that Musk was getting behind this neo-fascist party, now up at 26% of the polls. It's the biggest party, right? Right. In the polls.

And I was a conservative member of parliament. Yes. And I... After having been a member of the Liberal Party. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The Labor Party. And I don't know where my, you know, my politics in U.S. terms is probably a little bit to the left of Hillary Clinton. But I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not full Bernie Sanders, right?

And, and when Boris Johnson became prime minister, I was so horrified. I mean, the guy's a complete, he's a terrible human being. He was clearly going to be a terrible prime minister. But a wonderful zip line photo op. Yeah, he's a, he's a funny buffoon. He's a good clown, right? I mean, it's the age of clowns in politics. He's a funny guy. Trump maybe can also be quite funny sometimes. I mean, that's part of the problem with these people. You're funny of them, both of them, but they're quite funny. They're quite good television performance, right? Yeah, no, they're charismatic, but they play into a real sense of grievance. That is real. The problem with a good diagnostician is they also have to be a good fixer. And that's where we're starting to see the chaos unroll. And a couple of things that. So I and 21 of my colleagues would not put up with Boris pushing

ahead of the hard Brexit. And we resigned. We left parliament, which is one of the reasons I've been a bit puzzled by why my Republican senator and congresspeople friends were not doing the same with Trump. I cannot understand what they're doing. I mean, they say to me, Well, you know, I'd lose my seat. Well, we all gave up our seats to protest about Boris Johnson. So why are they not prepared to risk their seats to protest against Trump? I'm sorry, did you just say, are they not prepared to risk their seats? Is that?

Yeah. Are you suggesting that self-interest and self-preservation should not be the sole motivation for, listen, Donald Trump has a hold on his constituency. see, I can't honestly think of, even Reagan did not have, you know, they keep talking about cancel culture. The real cancel culture in this country is anybody who might speak out against Donald Trump, who might be on the right, is immediately exiled. There was a gentleman, this just recently happened.

There was a gentleman who was full MAGA, Pentagon spokesperson. He wrote an op-ed about the chaos going on. the Department of Defense, Donald Trump Jr. just put out a statement, this man is excommunicated. This man has been ex-ciled from the MAGA. You can be cast out like it's Thunderdome. Mad Max must you must wander the desert. It is a, it's a bizarre purity test. It's incredible. And for me, as a conservative who's turned against this, you see it very directly. So, you know, I had J.D. Vance tweeting against me and saying, you know, I've always said that Rory thinks he's got an IQ of 130, but actually he's got an IQ of 110. That's right.

I love, by the way, I loved the specificity of that. That it was, that you think it's 130, but it's 110. And most people are like, 110's pretty good. I would take 110. That's what I thought. I was pretty proud of the 110. It sounds great. So then you get, once that happens, and I've had Elon Musk tweet out against me, I've had Donald J. Trump Jr.

Yes. It's amazing what's unleashed because, of course, they have tens of hundreds of millions of followers in some cases, right? So then you suddenly a hit with a barrage of, you know, five, six thousand replies. And I'm trying to get in a fight with J.D. Vance about my intention. interpretation of Christianity and his interpretation of Christianity. But most of the response that you get is you wouldn't be able to beat him in a push-up competition. He will punch you in the face, sir. Exactly. You know, the amazing thing is the issue with them is they believe their IQs are 180. Right. And they're 110 or 100. You know, there's an infallibility. Now, what's happening

right now, will test their ability to the reality distortion field that they have been able to project that's been really effective at inoculating them against any kind of accountability or criticism is really going to be pushed here because of this trade war. There is nothing that they pushed more vehemently. There is nothing that they described in starker terms as being the medicine that was necessary to reverse the victimization that Americans writ large have faced in the world. And you are watching it crumble. The president sat down with the heads of Target and Walmart and other big box stores. And they were like, hey man, I just want to let you know, in two weeks, we are going to be out of shit. Like you are going to see empty. And all of the sudden,

And then the bond market went crazy and treasuries, you know, the dollar is weakening. Treasuries aren't being bought up as much by as the safe haven. And all of a sudden today, Donald Trump said, you know, I'm thinking actually, you know, all these people are kissing my ass to make deals. I'm thinking I'm just going to drop the tariffs to like 40% 50. I don't know. You know what? China has to make a deal.

So why not just drop all the tariffs? Because they have to. and I'm wondering, will this be the moment that finally they go, oh, the man behind the curtain isn't brilliant, doesn't have the answers, or will there be just another reality distortion kind of moment for them? John, I mean, again, you know far more about the U.S., but from the European and international perspective, we are in a real, existential crisis here. I mean, for the first time in 70 or 80 years, Europeans are asking themselves maybe we need to be closer to China than the US. I mean, it's mad. There is no moral equivalence between China and even Donald Trump's US. Yeah, I just can't see that being an option. I just can't. And yet, it's happening. Basically, China had one objective over the last 20 years, which is to break the link

between the US and its allies. As did Russia, same thing. Absolutely. And you can see Xi Jinping, the Chinese premier, has been touring around Southeast Asia. Usually doesn't say anything, but the last week he's been saying, I'm going to be your reliable ally. You can see op-eds appearing in the Chinese newspapers about how Europe needs to reach out to China. We're going to get great offers on Chinese electric vehicles, which is going to make a lot of sense to us because they'll be very cheap, and it will help us in the energy transition, and poor people in Europe are struggling to afford electric vehicles, which we're forcing them to buy. So all this is happening, right? And it's completely bewildering. So we're praying that the world is going

to write itself. You know, we're praying that the old United States that we used to know is coming back, and that in the end, the institutions to the United States, the midterms, And of course, sadly in the middle of this, it's a really sad thing. People are slightly thinking, well, I kind of hope he screws up the global economy because that might finally destroy him. You know, people are thinking, well, the one thing Hitler didn't do is screw up the economy. He was quite good at creating jobs. Well, that's the authoritarian bargain.

The authoritarian bargains. You can disappear the unpopular. You can get rid of the immigrants and the trans and the thing. But the trains, really? You've got to get the trains running on time. Yeah. So Trump is very interesting. If he can be the first proto-fascist who turns out to be entirely economically illiterate and completely incompetent and totally able to drive up prices in the United States, crash the stock market, destroy America's position as the World's Reserve currency,

and it's felt by people, right? It's felt in Medicare. It's felt in Medicaid. I mean, it's not, I'm talking to you from Yale University. Obviously, the average voter does not particularly care what happens. when Ivy League University or even USAID or many of the stuff I care about, Voice of America, the Wilson Center. All the things that have been holding our great country back. That's right. And the tariff thing, I mean, I spent so much time talking to colleagues in Switzerland, in Europe, in Southeast Asia, in China about this.

And it is bewildering. I mean, your listeners will understand that Trump, Trump is saying four completely contradictory things. He's saying these tariffs are going to generate a huge amount of money for the US government, right? No more taxes, all the money from tariffs. That's right. It's the most beautiful word in the English language. Exactly.

We're going to import all this stuff from China. And second thing is it's going to create lots of jobs, right? That's the opposite. We're not importing things from China. We're going to make them here, in which case you don't get the tax revenue, right? Third thing he's saying is, no, no, no, these are temporary things which are being used to achieve something else, right? They're being used to get a concession on fentanyl from Canada or Mexico. Sure.

Canada's been flooding us with over $40 worth of fentanyl over the last 10 years. So that's a completely different theory. That's like, I'm not actually going to keep tariffs. I'm not going to get the revenue from it. I'm not going to get the jobs from it. I'm just using it to stop the fentanyl coming in. And then the fourth theory, which seems to be going with China, is I'm using it to damage somebody else's economy. It's like sanctions.

I'm just punching them. And I'm going to take some damage in my own economy, but they're going to feel it more. Walmart will feel the pressure, but China macroeconomics will fear it more. He may be right. But then there's a whole question about who's got more political resilience, Xi Jinping with his people or Donald Trump with his people, as the painer inflicts it on these two economies in different ways. I think we're seeing right now how it's changing.

And so just, I mean, that's a kind of overly complicated way, As soon as you, I learned as a politician, as soon as you have four points, you've lost everybody. But the first one was good enough, Roy. I was riveted by the first one. I don't remember any of the rest of it. But let me ask you this then. So, but China, look, nobody is going to trust. They have the same problem that Trump has. When you are creating something out of executive action, you are not creating something lasting through legislation. And people understand that that has less stability. So a new president, in four years from now and immediately reverses it. And so nobody is going to resure the factories that we're going to cost billions of dollars. But so the question is this, though. You keep saying, you know, 70, 80 years post-war stability. As Bannon would say, these are the great turnings, the 70 to 80 year great turnings.

This is the new one. So what is the new turning? Because it's very clear that the populist leaders have a very different view. They have a nation-state. Look, in the old days, it was democracy versus authoritarianism or capitalism versus communism. Now, it's woke versus unwoke. It's purity versus multiculturalism. Meritocracy versus DEI.

Now, I don't buy that any of those things are real in the way that they are portrayed. but that seems to be the organizing principle. And how do you create stability out of that? And can the EU and the UK be the leaders of that old democratic order? Or will they fall prey to the same pressures? Will Russia and the United States be able to split Europe like they're doing now? Yeah. Well, I think first thing is you've made a really important point,

which is the world's changed. We've entered this funny shadow world. And basically what we're looking at is a new form of fascism, really. I mean, fundamentally, these people, doesn't matter whether it's Erdogan or it's some of the people around Trump or it's Narendra Modi. These are people who think, like many people did in the 1920s and 30s, that liberal democracy was kind of weak and indecisive and incompetent,

and it failed people. I think Musk said that empathy is the world's biggest problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, like you, I was talking to Ezra Klein recently, and he's, the whole world's been talking to Esra Klein. I think you made that joke. Kids everywhere. Kids everywhere.

He's like Shalamey promoting a Dylan biopic. You can't get rid of him. It is like that. Exactly, you can't go rid of him anyway. Anyway, and one of his points is he thinks that Musk was motivated by the fact that he felt that his employees were root to him and that they kept asking for empathy and that a lot this rage with DEI and wokeism is just Musk and other tech bros feeling that the people who work for their companies were not obedient enough to the great leader.

That's interesting. Anyway, this idea that we're going to come in, we're going to bring in strong men and they're going to be efficient, they're going to get stuff done, and we don't care too much about all that other stuff. And it's in their mind, it's all nonsense and inefficiency. You know, it might be woke, it might be law, but also that they're going to reclaim something. They're going to reclaim their country's default setting. The default setting of America being white, Christian, and male. The default setting of Germany being Germans. Isn't there something

that it's a reset seeking to change what the great society or the New Deal or any of those other kinds of migratory, globalistic, you know, it's a reset. It's a reset and it's a reset that has two particular implications. The first is corruption, which I think you talk about a lot, which is these regimes foster corruption. I mean, tariffs is a very good example. Tariffs are a lovely thing for Trump because each individual business has to come on bending knees and ask for a little exemption. The second thing that it breeds is violence and conflict. So you mentioned Germany. The AFD in Germany say that there are real Germans and they do an analysis, which basically in their sort of ideology, says that Muslims are not real Germans.

And that includes German citizens who are Muslims. And they have this idea of remigration, which basically means you push them out of the country. Of citizens. Of citizens. And this is true in Austria, too. These parties have a full ideology where they've actually counted the number of people from different countries that should be. So they say we don't want zero Afghans, but in a Germany of 100 million, we think there should be 300. They've counted the numbers.

It's a very, very weird. Can those people have families or it's capped at 300? I think it's capped at 300. Maybe if you get above it, you leave again. And actually, the Austrian far right, Kikl's far right, has been very clear about this, that this will extend to citizens as well. Now, why does this lead to violence? It leads to violence because it questions the fundamental idea since the Second World War, which is the equality of everybody's rights.

That it doesn't matter whether you're Muslim or white, you have the same rights. Once you question that, then other things become more likely. And this is where it gets dangerous, because then you begin to think, well, you know, I should add a little bit to my territory here. And look at the way that Trump thinks about Greenland as an example of this, because I think other leaders are going to begin behaving like this. What's so strange about it is that he doesn't even have the grace to lie or be a hypocrite. So you talked about Timothy Shalame.

When Timothy Shalame is being Henry V, right? Yes. He's going off to France, and he's at least pretending that he has a legal claim to France. You know, his dad's mom's dad was actually the king of France. Yes, yes. And when Hitler's invading Poland, he's at least faking a border incident, claiming he's responding to the polls attacking him. What's not about Trump and Greenland is there's no moral or legal excuse at all. He just says, I want it. Yes.

I've got the troops. I've got the money. Give it to me. And that collapse of international legal frameworks, morality is very unusual. I mean, it's taking us back almost a thousand years. It's the mentality of a warlord. No question. No question. But I think they are underestimating the role that stability plays in the economic successes of the last 70 or 80 years. And I think liberal democracies were underestimating the role that immigration or uncontrolled immigration played in that stability. That by, you know, there's a difference between recognizing human equality and not controlling borders. And I do understand you welcome people, but there has to be the biggest problem in immigration in this country is that our system is just utterly broken. There are no rules. They're getting green cards. You could be here for 40 years.

You could be here. We don't know how many people we want to have in. We don't, you know, by not being able to successfully articulate and execute policies, we make ourselves vulnerable to these other kinds of disruptions, which are far more existential. Yes, and I didn't quite get on to your point about Europe. Immigration, uncontrolled immigration, is the number one reason for the rise of the far right in Europe. And unless mainstream, centrist parties can come up with serious policies on how to be humane, generous, but also control immigration, how to say, we're going to take asylum seekers,

but we're going to be realistic about the numbers we're going to take. These are going to be the criteria, we're going to share the burden across Europe. If you can't do that, you're dude. If you can do that, this is an incredible opportunity for Europe. That's right. Astonishing opportunity. Suddenly, we can be what we haven't been for a very long time, which is stand up and be serious about these values, which are at the heart of the European Union. You know, we talk a lot about democracy, we talk a lot about equality. And of course, Musk wants to suggest it's all fraudulent. It's not. And particularly in Eastern Europe, where people have been through this experience in 1999, they believe it.

deeply talk to a poll. They really believe this stuff. There is room for a law and order liberalism. There is a room for a stable, progressive feeling that is not just based in idealism, but based in infrastructure and based in the idea of real governance that doesn't, you know, one of the problems here on the left is if you're going to solve one problem, that problem also has to solve every problem. If I want to do housing, that also has to solve global warming. I also think, boy, this is getting us into a whole other discussion. And I apologize for this, but, but, but, and I really appreciate you taking the time and bringing these insights. But I think that the world's climate policies have been disastrous in a lot of different ways.

One of which is the rhetoric of we cannot get to 1.5 degree. We have six months left. We have eight months left. We have, if we don't change our ways, they're asking human beings to no longer be progress oriented. I think how many cop conferences has there, what has it been, 40 now? And then what they would do is say, oh, we'll just put a carbon tax on. Oh, good. Well, in six months, when you're voted out of office, let us know how that goes. I think we have to rethink how this is all being accomplished. Yeah.

And, John, I mean, the most simple thing in Europe is that most of our information, environmental policies have been regressive, which means that they've had the biggest impact on the poor. Right. Because what economists... As everything does. Yeah. And this is partly because economists have got a perfectly logical argument, which is what you want to do is you want to tax people's carbon consumption of their energy use because that's going to encourage them to reduce it, right? But of course, who finds the biggest proportion of their income going on filling their vehicle or heating their home?

It's the poor, not you and me, right? So we are pushing a green transition onto the shoulders of the poor. So this also involves having much bigger conversations about tax, about redistribution, about the kind of societies you want to have. And these are not easy, but to return to where I was, I was a working politician. And there's something very odd going on a policy. I've written a book, which in the US, it's a title you might like. It's called How Not to Be a Politician, right?

Yes. And it's the story of my spending 10 years being a pretty useless politician. But I'm trying to be honest about what it's actually like being a politician. You know, how totally mad your life is. How much time you're spending wasting fundraising, how much time you're spending trying to negotiate with the whips. Even in the UK. Even in the UK. I mean, it's much worse than the US, but even in the UK, you know, when I'm running to be mayor of London, I'm spending a lot of time going to see very, very boring, wealthy people trying to ask them for me. money and putting up whatever their be in their bonnets is about residence parking or Israel or whatever they want to talk to me about, right? I decide I want to minimize the horrors of what's happening with Israel and Gaza at the moment. But I'm saying to them, listen, I'm running to be mayor of London. Why are you asking me about my policy on, I don't know, Kashmir. Put that aside. I guess what I'm getting to is we have created a frozen system. Politics feels paralyzed. And one of the reasons you get the musks and the Trumps is that they are offering to come up with a sledgehammer and smash the whole thing up. And one of the things I'm trying to get across, I guess, to people who've not been

politicians is until you've been in the system, you don't feel how you're just kind of stuck intreecal all the time. You just cannot move. We spend all our time meeting people and reading smart books about how we can transform things. And then when you try to do it, nothing happens. 100 legal reasons, 100 process reasons. You know, I found myself as the cabinet minister in charge of budgets of tens of billions of dollars. And it was unbelievably unsatisfying. I felt it was more fulfilling when I was restoring one block in the old city of Kabul in Afghanistan. I ran a non-profit called Tercas Mountain, which my wife now runs.

It was really exciting and fulfilling, and I'm working with a couple hundred people and getting stuff done. When I'm in charge for a huge government department, the basic answer to almost everything you want to do, is I'm afraid it can't be done. And if it's not your civil servant saying it, it's the polling people, or it's your political leadership saying, no, that's not going to work with this voter or that voter or the other. Right. So how do we find energy and responsible energy? Because you began with this, and maybe this is what I'm going to finish with. When I was running in opposition, I realized that the easiest way to win is you just say, this is all bullshit. These guys are idiots. They've got no idea what they're doing. Look at how crap.

Hey, stop describing my show. That's my job. Exactly. And of course, incredibly tempting, and it works very, very, very well. But of course, it also feeds into all the problems of our modern culture. There's kind of Uber-Eats mentality, lack of tolerance with complexity or delays, and produces ultimately Trump, or in a smaller version, Boris Johnson, which is the politics of spectacle, the politics of statements.

It's not really about, you know, my boring four points about how his tariff policy undermines itself, right? It's all about claiming to do something. It's the politics of reality TV. And I think undoing that involves more than just you and me being thoughtful and earnest. It involves really thinking about the modern world and thinking about our culture, which is quite difficult to look at. and the role that things like social media play in our culture, who our heroes are, what our morality is. And a persuasive case to improve those that can have electoral success

because ultimately it almost sounds like you're describing this kind of strange paradox of politicians in incumbent situations who show no courage so that they can keep these jobs that they don't do anything in and get very little satisfaction from, you know, that's the strange part. Yeah, and deeply depressing. I mean, most of my colleagues are depressed. Most of them feel their lives are much less than they wanted them to be.

Let me finish with one last plug, because I worked for an amazing American nonprofit called Give Directly, and my slightly awkward link to that is they have a policy of giving unconditional cash transfer to the poorest people in the world. And like a micro loan kind of a thing, or is this a different? Except they don't ask for the money back. Oh. It's just a grant.

And the results are spectacular. You know, you turn up in a Rwana village, three months after they've received, literally unconditional cash for every house, and the whole place has been transformed. Electricities are, everyone's got livestock, the roofs have been repaired, the kids are in school. It's unbelievable. But it's an exact example of what we've been talking about all the time. The evidence is there, but the politics of it are unbelievably tough. how do you explain to a voter that actually what all the research or the randomized control

studies showed that the best way to do international development is to literally just give someone $900 in cash, not monitor them, not ask them what they're going to do? Right. Bottom up, not top down. Yeah. And there is another example of, amongst, I get hundreds of examples of the fundamental challenges of our society. Decentralization against centralization, bottom against top, and above all communication. And that will be, and listen, your mouth to God's ears, but this is a moment, as you said earlier, and I appreciate you summing it up in that way, of opportunity.

And something is going to be built in the shadow of this chaos. And if we do it right, it's going to be something really lasting that can give the same kind of years of stability and progress. And hopefully that emerges from all of the. and that we still have podcasts after that happens. And that we still have America because we love America. We want you guys back. Come back. Come back America.

The perfect way to end it. Rory Stewart, thank you so much for joining us. Obviously, co-host, the rest is politics. Please say hello to Alistair and everybody else. And really appreciate you being here and taking the time. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.

Bye. I don't know any other way to describe. a gentleman like that other than delightful. You appreciated the accent? I cannot tell you how much I appreciate an accent like that, breaking things down. What it is is the four things that will destroy the world are simply this. I'm sure he'll love that impression.

It's terrible. I don't have the accents down. But my God, the other thing is for the life that he's led, you would think there'd be a little more wear and tear. on the tires. He was a in Afghanistan, a soldier, then MP, minister, writer, teacher. I mean, Jesus. I guess there's not too much sun damage in the UK to be done. So I cannot believe that you went to the pastiness of his countenance. I mean, how dare you? Look at me. At long last, Lauren. But it is, you know what it was, I thought most interesting is there is a wistfulness and a kind of confusion

in the accusatory tone of Trump and Vance and the kind of, hey, we were under the impression, actually, that you in the United States were benefiting quite a bit from this. And we appreciated this stability, so fuck. I know. Looking into this episode, something that really sat with me

was the European Commission Chief's comments. I'm currently having countless talks with heads of state and government around the world who want to work together with us, on the new order. Everyone is asking for more trade with Europe, and it's not just about economic ties. You know, Lord.

It's different time now. I think it's so amazing when you think about, you know, what has been the cry of the conspiracy right forever, this new world order, and what is Trump ushering in? Yeah. I mean, something that I'm sitting with is I'm like, I can't believe we're kind of rooting for Trump to, like, and you guys talked about this in the episode, but it's like, we're hoping he screws up the global economy.

So people start to see the reality of like who he is. Man, boy, do I hope that it doesn't take a screw up to the global economy for people to see who he is. And to be quite frank, I don't even think that will do it. I just don't think that they view his action. and negative effects as being in any way correlated, they'll always view it as, sort of like in the old days, you know, the left used to cling to communism.

Well, communism's never been tried. You know, just because Stalin killed eight million people in a forest in Russia, communism's never been tried. And I think you will always have that with Trump. And God, I hope it doesn't take this economic chaos to do that. I hope we pull out of this spiral.

Cooler heads have to prevail, but, but man, it is wild to watch, isn't it? It is, yeah. It's been a hundred days, guys. I don't even think it's been a hundred days. Look how old I look. I've aged so much. Not at all. Brittany, what are the people saying?

What are the good people saying? What are they saying? Yes, our listeners. What do they want from us? Oh, congratulations on a Webby Award. Hey, congratulations to you. The real. You, guys, look at us congratulating each other.

did it guys. We're like the Spider-Man meme. Yeah. Hey, John. Whatever happened to Elon coming on the Daily Show? Oh, he came on and it was great. I thought it was a productive conversation. I don't know. You know, the whole thing occurred. I guess we did a bit on Doge and I obviously came up with all kinds of billions of dollars that we could save from subsidies and corporate thing, blah, blah, blah. that was the real cost savings to me he you know said he said not not us we didn't make any entreaty he said i'll come on the show if you air it unedited and we went sure that fine that's how most of them air so sure what the fuck and then he said like you're a propaganda and he started to back away and and i said look he come on or don't come on but don't pretend like it's i don't live up to a

standard. And that is the last. And that is, and that is, I think, and I think Tesla was at, you know, at least 80% of its value at that point. And it's since, I think, plunged to whatever it is, obviously not connected. But I did DM him. Is that a thing? Yeah, it is. I texted him and just said like, hey, man. So is there somebody I should, you know, have our guys reach out to to make this happen? And I got ghosted. You got ghosted by Elon.

I got left on red, man. Wow. Yeah. I mean, we've all been there. Not by Elon, but... Girl. Well, actually, judging from his most recent revelations of his baby mommas, I think everyone has been left on red at some point. Oh, man.

By that gentleman. So, yeah, I don't imagine it will, I would be surprised. I think I have some bad news because I was reading that one of the reasons he's claiming he's leaving government is the nasty and unethical attacks from the left. So that might be why you're on red. Completely, I'm sure, undeserved, you know, in no way reflective of standing on a stage with a chainsaw celebrating the loss of livelihoods for tens of thousands of well-intentioned government workers.

I'm sure, yes, no, this is all completely out of the blue. Surely. Listen, if there's one thing that this administration does better than anybody I've ever seen, it's play the victim. I've never seen any people ever, including when my kids were three and two years old, evade accountability and responsibility and blame others in the way that these people do. It's truly shameless. Amen, sister friend.

Thank you. Look at us, the sisterhood of the traveling pants over there. Do you want another one? Yeah, give me another one. Give me another one. Is it worth it in this day and age to go to school for journalism? Oh, wow. Any question that starts with, is it worth it?

I always want to end with, let me work. Let me put it down and reverse. All right. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, I don't know if they're talking about the financial. I will say this. Is it worth it to society?

Hell fucking yes. we need committed, idealistic, tenacious, resilient, young students to go into journalism and try not to be defeated by the general outrage, incentivized financial system that we have of discourse. Like, we need those people desperately. And the people that I've met that are going into that, that are young people are. impressive and committed to all those incredible outcomes. Is it worth it to them? I don't know the world that you're walking into. You know, the executive producer of CBS 60 Minutes just quit rather than apologize because he didn't do anything wrong editing an interview, which everybody does.

It didn't change it. So I don't know the world they're walking into, but I know if that world can change for the better. need those people. So whoever wrote that, yeah. Do it. Do it. Yeah. I mean, I was a working journalist who didn't go to J-school, so I might be a bit biased. Right. But I will say that with the changing media landscape, I would just urge people who do invest in a program to make sure it's forward thinking and thinking about the new technologies and the ways you make a living now as a working journalist, how to be a freelancer, you know, those more practical, forward-thinking things. So let me go with Lauren's answer. Can we strike my answer? Because the answer that Lauren just gave

was actually actionable and perfect. I think, boy, that's such a good answer is to think about what that environment is now and choose a program like that, Lauren. What she said. A little bit of life advice. Sister, what are, what, I don't know which member of the traveling pants you are, because I'm not sure who's in that. And I think there was four of us. But Gillian is working remote today, so she's not around. But yes, boy, that's a good answer. Brittany, how else can they get in touch with us?

What can they do? Twitter, we are weekly show pod, Instagram threads, TikTok Blue Sky. We are weekly show podcast. And you can like, subscribe and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with John Stewart. Great job, as always, guys. lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamedevick, video editor and engineer Rob Vatola, who, Rob, I'm telling you, that pushing back my computer was just the ticket. I felt it. I don't think I banged on the desk as much for our audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce.

Researcher and associate producer Gillian Speer, executive producers, as always Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Thank you guys so much. And we will see you on the next weekly show podcast next week. Bye-bye. The weekly show with John Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. is produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Productions. Podcasts.