The Problem With Jon Stewart - The State of Things with Ali Velshi

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

At a moment when both Trump and the public are reflecting on his administration's direction, Jon is joined by MS NOW's Ali Velshi, host of "Velshi" and co-host of "It's Happening with Velshi and Ruhle." Together, they discuss the economic realities of immigration, explore what it would take to restore a flourishing American middle class, and examine how the media might rebuild public trust in a shifting information landscape. Plus, Jon predicts SOTU and doesn’t let up on Punch the Monkey! This episode is brought to you by: SHOPIFY - Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at https://shopify.com/TWS SHARK NINJA ESPRESSO MAKER - Get $60 off the Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier Series with code STEWART exclusively on sharkninja.com while supplies last INCOGNI - Use code stewart at https://incogni.com/stewart to get an exclusive 60% off. 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  Producer – Gillian Spear Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Go to avocadogreenmatress.com slash TWS, avocadogreen mattress.com slash TWS.wes, avocado green mattress.com slash TWS. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show podcast with John Stewart. My name is John Stewart. We have been away. we are back, we were away for a week, because I was obviously, as many of you know,

in the Winter Olympics, skiing and shooting and going down hills. Is it really the Winter Olympics, or is it just dares you do with your friends while drunk? Because it just seems like an opportunity to do shit that is just that bodies are not really built to do, but on ice. The whole thing just strikes me as a dare.

Hey, I bet you, hey, hey, get on that thing and go down that hill. I'm not doing that. That's good. Do it. That should be the motto of the Winter Olympics. Do it. Do it. But we got a fine show.

A fine program tonight, today, tonight. The State of the Union is tonight. So we're probably, if we talk about it, it'll be purely speculative. So obviously, whatever. happens on that, we will not have time to comment on. But for this episode, we will be commenting on someone who will be there, who will be covering it for his news organization. He is a gentleman whose show I listen to on the weekends. I find it always not just informative, but entertaining and passionate, and I truly enjoy it. So I'm excited to get an opportunity to talk to Mr. Ali Valshi.

All right, kids, we are going to welcome in right now. Mr. Ali Velshi, he is the host of Velshi, air Saturdays and Sundays at Sunday's 10 a.m. On MS Now and co-hosts that's happening with Velshi and Rule on MSNows YouTube there. Ali Velshi, welcome. It is good to be back with you, my friend. It is lovely to see you, sir. I want to first offer my condolences as a you are, I don't know if you're,

would you consider yourself, you're not born in Canada. You're born in Canada. Oh, with each passing day more and more so. I consider myself Canadian. More and more so Canadian. So I offer, you know, it's very rare in athletic competitions that you see sore winners. But it does appear that America, while rightfully celebrating the incredible feats from the men's team and the women's team in ice hockey, it does feel incredibly personal that we're acting as though Canada is our long-term nemesis.

Yeah, well, our government is. I will say, I don't think Canadians. I don't think Americans are. No. And Canadians are really mad at the U.S. government and they're showing it in terms of their travel to the United States that they're withholding, they're spending. My parents who live in Toronto have a list of things that they buy that they may or may not have known are American and the non-American, you know, corollary that they can go to the grocery store and buy. No. Yeah, yeah. No, they're very, Canadians are very angry at the Donald Trump stuff. they're not mad at Americans. And I think Americans don't have any animosity with Canadians. But again, John, Americans don't have problems with immigration either. Like this is a moment where we distinguish the American government from the American people.

You know, I would love to be that charitable. I would love to say to you, oh, no, no, no, it's just the government. But this is a government that was installed by the American people. They handed over the reins pretty much. to a guy who said, I'm going to round up everybody. And he was in no small measure saying he was going to absorb Canada, indeed the United States. Are Canadians making the distinction?

Well, look. They booed pretty hard on the, you know, national anthem. Now, if you remember, so when Donald Trump got elected, Justin Trudeau was wildly unpopular. He was running as prime minister. He was lead. He was, he was, the other guy, the conservative, who was a little Trumpy, was leading by, depending on the polls, 20, 25, 30 points. This is Pallier. Pierre Pellier, yeah. Then Trump won and started this nonsense. And, and Mark Carney became the prime minister. You know, Justin Trudeau stepped out and Mark Carney became the prime minister. So Canadians reacted very fast to the idea that you understand that you're the smaller of the neighbors, but you also understand that when that elephant rolls over, you.

you're a mouse. So, you know, you don't want that all for ruining. That is the Canadian self-deprecation of the mouse. I liked Carney's framing of it, that idea of the middle powers. The middle powers, yeah. And he got a standing ovation at Davos for that speech. So here's the thing. Carney's great, right? He was the head of the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada. Nobody's ever done those two jobs. He is the man for the moment on the world stage. He understands the economy, He understands this tariff nonsense. So Canadians did what Canadians do. They elected the guy who was of the moment, but a real technocrat.

Americans don't do that, right? Americans need the loudest voice in the room. Generally not. But Canadians had this moment where they could say, I got a guy who's actually not just normal, but will play a role on the world stage in fixing the damage that America has done. Problem is Canada still is a mouse. And I don't mean this in any other way.

Then it's a small economy, which, by the way, of everything it exports, two-thirds to 70% go to the United States. It's built as a country that exports to the United States. Like all the lines, the railroads, the highways are all north and south. And now it's forcing Canada into a relationship where it's going to be east and west. Things are going to go to the East Coast to go to Europe and to the West Coast to go to China. Is it now, listen, I think any time a country can make itself more resilient and diversify its product lines or its customer base, that's probably a relatively smart thing. is the hardest thing, I think, for them to comprehend this idea, and it's Trumpian and its

formulation, that Canada has been abusing, that Canada has been taking advantage, that Canada has been exploiting the poor sweet United States, we're just a little country, just trying to get by, and Canada comes in and foists its lumber on us. How dare they? It's fertilizer, it's potash, it's oil, it's water, it's electricity. What a terrible country. That's what I'm, is that one of the harder things for them to wrap their heads around, this idea that they've been exploiting the relationship?

Yes, it's very weird for Canadians. Canadians totally get that America is the bigger partner. Canadians consume American entertainment, Canadian music. You know, when I was growing up, there were rules about Canadian content, which meant because America was so influential, Canadian radio stations and TV stations had to have a certain amount of content that was made in Canada,

disproportionate, by the way. And that's how you got Braddon's Ryan Adams. It's protectionism. We, like, I think we're like 30%. I'm making the number up, but it was small. It was like you've got to play this much music from Canadians, which is how the Brian Adams

and the Celine Dion's and people like that got big. Canada's always understood it's the super junior partner. And it's loved it. It loves America. Canadians mostly go to America for Vegas. They go across the border when gas is cheaper. They love America. It's so hard for Canadians right now to be as angry as they are with Trump. But I do think they make the distinction between Donald Trump and America. And I will say to your point, yes, Donald Trump was elected

by Americans, but about a third. Are you about to let us off the hook here? About a third of Americans voted for him. About a third of Americans voted for Kamala Harris, roughly within seven million. And about a third of Americans didn't vote, who are qualified to vote. That's right. So if there's a crisis right now, and Donald Trump will tell you the crisis is non-citizens voting, the crisis is citizens not voting, not non-citizens voting. Non-citizens voting. Oh, I like that formulation. It's a tidy infinitesimal vanishing number of citizens. The disincentive if you're not a citizen to vote, which is a felony offense, is massive, right? You're going to go to jail. The terrible penalty. Yeah. Terrible. And you'll never become a citizen again.

There's no incentive. We need to create more incentives for that one-third of Americans who don't vote to vote. We should be at 100%. Like that's just, that's what it should be. What is what is the form, you know, in terms of kind of caretaking democracy, what is the percentage of participation in Canada? Is it similar to the United States? Is it greater than the United States? Are we complacent about all this in both places? Amongst the OECD countries where, meaning the developed countries, we're one of the lowest, but it's not that different. So in a good presidential election, a heated presidential election, about 60% of people will come out. Yeah, that's about us.

Right. And in a off year, like, you know, something like a midterm, about 40%. Municipal elections are usually under 20%. Same thing here. Some cities are, you know, in the low, like teens. Obviously, New York City in the last election was massive, right? It has to do with the candidate and the times. So it's the same thing.

But the consequences in other developed countries are not the same. You're not going to lose your health care if you don't vote. You're not going to, you're not going to lose your child care. The world's not going to turn upside down. Pierre Palliever and Canada sort of threatened that things would turn upside down and Canadians didn't like that. Right. Same thing in Western Europe.

When you watch that election, would Pierre have won if it had not been for Trump's really drastic language towards Canada? And by the way, even if, let's say Trudeau hadn't stepped down and he would still stand for, that might he have won anyway if Trudeau had still been the candidate and not garnered. Yeah, I think in both cases, he probably would have won. I mean, the margins weren't even close. I mean, in a Canadian election leading by 20, 30 points, that never happens. They're not as tight as American elections, but that was very unusual. So yes, he would have won. And I remember, you know, when I would speak to Canadians in the last couple of years, they kind of flirted with this

right-wing populist stuff, right? You remember the trucker protest and all that stuff? Yeah. That's weird. Well, even now they have the separate. movements that the Trump administration is trying to sort of flame, especially out in the West. And they've always kind of be there. Alberta has always sort of fancied the fact that they have more to do with the Western U.S. states than they do with Ontario and Toronto and stuff like. So I get that. Yeah. But I sort of warn my Canadian friends that don't play with this. Like in America, we're just about falling off the cliff and somebody's holding us up by the back of our belt right now, like to not follow. Don't go that close. Step back and put up guard.

so you don't get close. It's not fun. I think people think it's fun and it makes their politics exciting to be, you know, an outlier and to be weird. It's not fun. Well, it's also, it's like everything else, there's a certain energy behind the attention economy. Yeah.

And in this moment, this is an, you know, this is a reflection of, you know, Twitter or social media that it's all about outrage and hostility and tribal politics and all those other things that coalesce around it. you know, right now in Canada. Now, people might not realize this. Your experience in Canada, you're very in scons in this, your father ran for office in Canada. And, you know, you've told stories about being in the car with him

as you were, you know, getting the election results before he even got to the headquarters. But talk a little bit about your experience kind of at the grassroots level of politics in Canada. So, you know, my parents originally came from South Africa, apartheid, South Africa, and they were anti-aparctic. fighters. So they moved to Kenya, where I was born, and they got to Kenya right before Kenya became independent. So they were literally there when the British flag came down and the Kenyan

flag went up. And they could walk in the streets with people of different races at all hours. They could go to movies. They didn't have a special day that they could go to the zoo. Like, they just loved that. And they got involved in civil society there because they were welcomed. You couldn't do that in South Africa. Then they moved to Canada and they did the same thing. They got involved in committees and boards and city council and things like that. And my dad ran for office in 1981. I was 11. And what was she doing for a living at the time?

Just what was his business? They were travel agents. They were travel agents. Because my mother had worked for for KLM as a reservationist in Kenya. So she knew the travel industry. So they built a business. And I was 11 years old. It was 8 o'clock.

The polling had stopped. I was with my dad. We were driving to the campaign office. And they said the polls are closed too early to tell who's one. We can say in this particular constituency, so-and-so won, and that so-and-so was not my dad. It was the other guy. So he was the first. First guy called.

The first result called, and you guys hadn't even gotten to the headquarters yet. Yeah. I didn't know. I'm 11. I didn't know there were like exit polls and things like that, which is funny because that's what I do for MS now, right? I'm looking at the polls and the numbers. So I looked at him.

I said, I can't believe we lost. And he said, of course we lost. He said, we were never going to win. And I said, well, why'd you run? He said, because we could. He said, because we could stand for what we believed in, and more people chose the other guy. And he got to the office and he called the other guy and they had a beautiful conversation for one minute in which he conceded right there and then. I thought that's how it worked, right?

Yeah. He didn't storm the other guy's election. No, I didn't file lawsuits. He lost the election. All right. That's how he wants to play it. Years later, he ran again and he won. And my mother was a candidate for office.

And my sister was a candidate for office. I'm the loser in the family who didn't run for office. But that the country embraced us as immigrants and we embraced the country in return. And that's how it works. And that's actually how it works in America. Right. For most people, most people, most immigrants feel this country has embraced them and they wish to embrace the country back. You know, last time that we talked about this next sponsor, I mentioned an idea that I had.

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Go to Shopify.com slash TWS. That's Shopify.com slash TWS. What do you think about, you know, it's the easiest form of a kind of nationalism to blame immigrants or transit. You know, it's finding a group to do that. Recently, there was a study by the Cato Institute that talked about how immigrants bring in net tax dollars. Now, I don't know the methodology of it. I don't know if it's even controversial. But it's certainly interesting.

The Cato Institute is no liberal thing. think tank. It's a libertarian and relatively agnostic on those kinds of points. But was that as surprising? It's the one thing I don't see a lot of, which is an analysis of the actualities. There's a lot of, they come in here and they're handed $50,000 of benefits and these things. Yeah. It's the first thing I saw that really sought to place it in a mathematical context. And there are similar studies that demonstrate, for instance, that immigrants start businesses that employ more than themselves at a greater rate than those who are born in the United States. You know, Stephen Miller cites this Harvard study from a million years ago that's long been debunked that says that what immigrants do is they

lower wages for everybody. So that's the thing that you flood the zone with immigrants and they'll work for less. It's just not true. Is that completely untrue? Because I can imagine that largely untrue that like things like if you go to a right to work state, for instance, you'll be paid less than if you're in a union state for the same work. I could see how there'd be downward pressure on. on jobs that don't pay great, you know, certain farm jobs and things, when you introduce a labor force that's more easily exploited. Yes. So the example where that demonstrates what you're talking about is Norway, where everything is more expensive, right? Like the equivalent for a Big Mac is more expensive in Norway, but everything's paid for and everybody's wages are very high.

It took about a 10 or 15 year transition into that, but now everybody's used to it. So they say, hey, life's really good, but everything's paid for. I will never be in debt because of getting sick. So you do adjust for higher wages. So what we should do is have, we have a negative replacement rate in America, right, which means more people die or retire. Yes, correct. And every developed country has that. So in 1967, 68, Canada looked at the whole thing and said, you know, we can't even attract enough immigrants because they go to the UK and they go to the United States. So Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's father, came up with this concept of multiculturalism that said to immigrants, come to our country. If 25 of your people go to a particular school, we will provide language instruction at that school after school for an hour or half an hour, whatever case is.

So in other words, they said, you can come to this country, keep your culture, keep your language. And so it worked. Lots of immigrants went to Canada. Guess what? In the end, they didn't need the after school lessons. They didn't. They assimilated. They assimilated. They love hockey more than anyone else. They love the country.

Is that what assimilation is? You have to trust love for hockey more than anybody else. That's what it is. It's not the flag. It's the hockey. Do you think they could do that now? Do you think the political, you know, realities of this moment would allow something like what Trudeau proposed now? It feels radioactive. I'll tell you why. I go, I visit my parents all the time. So I went there, few weeks ago. And at the airport, in the Arrivals Hall, before you're even through customs, there's a massive electronic billboard. And it's got a picture. It's one of the banks in Canada. It's got a picture of a guy who's meant to look like a new immigrant. And it says, we have a kiosk in the Arrivals Hall. Please come to us. We'll give you an application for a

credit card and a loan, a mortgage. Right? Never see a sign like that in America. Then they've got another sign from Rogers, which is the cell phone company. Same thing saying, welcome to Canada. to make your first call, you know, from here. Right. So Canada gets it, that this is an economic imperative. You need immigration. In fact, my argument in the United States is immigration should not fall under homeland security.

It creates this impression that immigrants are a danger or some kind of a security threat. They are an economic imperative. We don't have enough children, despite J.D. Vance, wanting you to have more children to save the culture. Certain children, heritage children. He wants heritage children. Well, so Hungary did this. They had a thing that said, if you have five children, you'll never pay income tax.

The details are a little sketchy, but you'll never pay income tax. Guess what? Nobody took the offer because nobody wants five children. That's not the modern world. Two parents generally work and you can't bring up five children. So it's nonsensical. You need immigration to keep an economy like this productive. Allie, do you think it's because resource guarding is the fuel.

for a lot of kind of demagogues and populace and those kinds of things. Why does that resonate so well? There really is an idea. And listen, I'm not defending in any way the chaos of our immigration system because it is chaos. Absolutely. There was no controls really on the border. But more than that, the asylum system is broken. Nobody understands the Byzantine labyrinth of rules that decides who's a green car,

who doesn't get it. It's an absolute mess. It is a failure of our Congress that nobody has taken that. For decades. For decades. Yeah. But it has given an opportunity to demagogues and resource garters. Yeah.

So why is it, do you think, you know, the idea that there are these free riders, whether it's the so-called welfare queen or the Somali immigrants who are massively defrauding our government, Why does that resonate so much more powerfully than the reality of who's really exploiting the economy for people in working class? Why do you think that is? It's so weird how we don't really understand the fact that we've geared this system for the super wealthy. Right. We've just, it is what it is. I've got no beef with the super wealthy.

I love that you can come to America and get rich because you had some fantastic idea. and we've got free market. I get all that. But why do we, why have we not realized whose boot it is that's actually on our neck? It's not the boot of the immigrant. And it's not about getting rich. It's about creating institutional, almost like a wealth incumbency. It's about lobbyists and everything creating. That's a great way to put it. Ways that that system stays in place. That's exactly right. And somehow it's, it seems like it's a secret, even though it's out there in public. I don't know. And what confuses me is why this still works, because it's actually what Hitler did and what every demagogue has done all through history. I need to capitalize on the fact that you're feeling a little uneasy about your economic situation.

I've got someone to blame for it. And we did this. We've done it all through history. And I don't understand why this still works. It shouldn't still work. We should understand we may have inequalities in society, but there's a big inequality. You know, they talk about the K-shaped economy, where the rich are getting richer and the poor or not. I saw somebody describe it.

It's not a K. It's the jaws of an alligator. I mean, it's going like this. And that's the thing we have to, that's where our energy should be. You know, I was talking to a professor from out in Texas, Michelle Dickerson, who had written a book about the new middle class, New Deal and how to do that. And she made this really interesting point about what politicians do for people in the

middle class and lower middle classes, they get them to look horizontally. So if they look horizontally and they blame the people that are slightly below them, they never look up to see where the real barriers are being built and ensconced. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, my family's history with colonialism demonstrates that where you either look horizontally or one rung lower on the ladder or maybe even one rung higher on the ladder to say, hey, that person's got the job I want. They're my target. Right. You're not looking all the way up there to say that person's controlling the flow of money and the jobs and taxes and how this goes. And that's, you know, it's hard because you want to be able to make this

a very accessible conversation for people to have. But because of our politics, it migrates into hating the millionaires and billionaires. Your point is more valid. It's about the incumbency of wealth. It's the idea that America, immigrants think the implicit country you come to and you can make it if you work hard and you've got to make it. We're building a society that's something different. Right. Because we're building a society that's something different. Right. Because we're a society that values, you know, capital, much more than labor. It seems to be, it's valuing the movement of money. Correct. You know, a lot of people would talk about it as financialization or things of that nature. And I know that that's very much. But why do you think, Allie, that

it resonates so much even within immigrant communities. I was really surprised in this past election to see it. And maybe you've got experience in that through your parents experience, why did that message really resonate in Hispanic communities, in black communities, in communities where there is great struggle, it really resonated with them that, oh, yeah, the problem isn't the wealth and the way that the system is rigged. It really is these poorer people that are coming through. Well, because we're just living in a time of remarkable economic anxiety. you know, from COVID onward, people felt insecure.

They're not sure that they're going to be able to maintain their lifestyle, even if they're not suffering. They feel like there are one change away from suffering. Think about all the news you get, even AI. What do we hear about AI? Not how it might solve Alzheimer's or something through its brute force. It's that it's going to replace your job. And some of that's true. But the fact is that when people have even the smallest amount of economic anxiety,

you can play on that. Communities, immigrant communities, including my own, the Indian diaspora, are guilty of this, right? If we're doing well, we're a very economically successful community in Canada and the United States. So you worry about your own. Now if you're doing well, you're worrying about not losing it to taxes. Right. So you want the tax breaks to hell with the people who are a little behind you or maybe where you once were. You've made it up the ladder, so this is not my problem anymore. And we've got to start thinking a little bit more about us than me. One thing I thought has been really instructive in this whole immigration situation in the United States is how the people of Minnesota who are protesting, mostly white people, by the way,

and this applies to them, they don't talk anymore about undocumented immigrants. They talk about our neighbors. They're taking our neighbors. And I think that subtle shift is really, really important. These are our, we are all each other's neighbors. We are all each other's keeper. You could have that fierce American independence that is what makes this country different. But you're you're still each other's neighbors and keepers. And that needs to be sort of centered a little bit more. I wonder, too, if, you know, sometimes we make the mistake of making the moral argument, you know, a lot of times when you make, you know, a moral argument, it's very easy and kind

of feels righteous and it kind of elevates you and that, you know, we are all, you know, I am my brother's keeper, all these things. I wonder if we don't spend enough time actually making the arithmetic argument. argument or the competence argument or the way that politicians can make the argument. Here's where you can benefit. It's not you need to be a morally superior person and sacrifice. It's here are the financial benefits to you. Here's a system where you're going to get value. So Donald Trump says he's going to give everybody got a little bit more money in their taxes this year because of his big, bad, beautiful bill. Here's the better argument.

The new deal couldn't happen. The Hoover Dam, the highway system, all that stuff couldn't happen without an enhanced and growing middle class who earn enough money to pay enough taxes to fund these things. So when your bridge falls down in your town or your bridge doesn't get built or the roads don't get paved or the electrical grid suffers or the snow doesn't get paved properly when there's a snowstorm, it's because we hollow out the middle class because we've designed a system where the incumbency of the rich mean that they pay less. in taxes. Bottom line, they pay less in taxes. Besant will have you believe that most taxes are paid by the rich. That's because the rich have that much money. They pay a smaller proportion, but it's that much more. I don't know if you, you see these numbers all over the place. The top eight or ten richest people in America have more wealth than the bottom half of the entire entire, half of the entire across the world. The top, did you say the top eight or ten people?

Eight or ten people? Yes, have more wealth than the entire 170 million people at the bottom. Yes, correct. But that's what we have to think about. But it's not a moral argument. It's the, if you're at that bottom 50%, you're not paying much into the system. You're generally, Mitt Romney said this. He was very, he didn't, he probably shouldn't have said it. But a certain percentage, almost half of the population, are net recipients of benefits from the government. That's because they're, they're not making enough money. So the middle class getting squeezed is your bridges. It's your roads. It's your health care. It's your ambulances. It's your traffic lights. That's the basic stuff. they are also paying in. You know, I think people, you brought it up earlier about sort of the taxes and

those people aren't paying as much. But if you think about the more regressive taxes on goods and services and tariffs, right, you know, when they talk about, oh, we're raising money, but that money is coming from the people. So if you don't have much money, but you still have to pay a little bit more for all of the products you get, well, you're now paying a much higher percentage of your income. But the other point I want to make, and I want to ask you about this, is the middle class didn't just happen. Yes, correct. The middle class happened because of the social engineering of the government to create housing that was within reach for people that had steady employment, pension systems that were in reach, health care systems, where you could build a life that had those hallmarks of stability. why don't we acknowledge that that was created not through a pure profit-driven capital is king system?

Yes. Capitalism itself would never produce that. Capitalism would generally speaking want people to earn just enough to buy the products that the capital. It would produce a gilded age like it always does. Exactly right. So you don't want people poor in a purely capital system. You need them wealthy enough to buy certain things, but not wealthy enough to get. So the gap will always remain. between the owners and the workers. We built a system where people could occupy this middle space. They could have a home. They could have health care. They could be a middle power.

They could be Canada. They could be Canada. The middle class is Canada. That's exactly right. And people would be content and happy. And there was some chance that with some, if you had some innovation, a better mousetrap, you could even be rich. That was the distinction.

But at least you live, if you weren't rich and your children would do better than you. If you get rid of that, it's very hard. This is something government has to think about on a regular basis. Policies at every level that encourage the growth of the middle class. And that starts with taxation policy. And that's what that bill undid last year. It continued the undoing of this idea that the middle can continue to flourish and get bigger. It's so dangerous, John.

It's so dangerous. But it becomes very attractive to politicians because if you let the rich get richer, Donald Trump said it was a recording that leaked during his campaign to the oil people. Give me a billion dollars and I'll make sure that nothing. stands in your way. And now we see it. That's why he carries on about windmills all the time. Like he was given a wedge by a windmill when he was a kid. Like he hates windmills. It must have happened to him. I've never met anybody. There must have been one that was built off the coast of one of his golf courses and it messed up the vista. Sliced him in the head

or something. Yeah. Something terrible. Like he carries on about these things. Yeah. Because he has an incentive to, because the oil people give him money to make sure that nobody wants anything but but oil. He took off the, you know, cafe standards. These are the things we have to think about. Go back to policies that build and sustain the middle class and everybody, the wealthy still stay wealthy. The poor have a better chance and the middle class at least can think that their children will do better than they do. That system is broken in America. It really is. But, you know, and Republicans and Democrats have eaten away at that system. Absolutely. Absolutely. Since the 1980s. Yes. Because our incentive structure for winning elections, because elections are so

expensive favor the idea that I constantly need a inflow of money. Now, some people, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump have created a system where small donors actually are becoming more influential than they used to be. Small dollar donor, right? People who give 10 bucks, 15 bucks, 20 bucks. That's a better system. And I'll give Donald Trump a little credit for that because he did attract a whole bunch of people who say, I could change the system with a $25 donation. But ultimately, that's what we do need. So the way I look at it, maybe is slightly different. It's that they make a production about small donor money, not Bernie, because I think that's

sincere and all that. But the reality is, I mean, it almost ties together our conversation about voter fraud and those other kinds of issues. They're on a mission through the Save Act and the Make Elections Great Again Act and all these other things to make. it more stringent to fight against you know we're going to restrict voting and make it a lot more hoops and a lot more obstacles because out of 20 million votes five of them were undocumented people that probably made a mistake and and didn't understand it but we're going to completely ignore

the 300 million dollars that Elon Musk puts into an election we're going to completely ignore that he controls an algorithm that fetishizes his own particular skewed white victimization worldview. How do we not see the balance of power in elections through the lens of how money warps it and makes it grotesque and perverse yet somehow the real problem? I mean, in some ways, it reflects the economic conversation we just had. Yeah, yeah, you're totally right. And most other developed nations have a system. Some of them have term limits, some of them don't. Everybody thinks term limits are a big answer to our problems. It's actually election spending, right? There are 21 or 23 states who are moving forward with an attempt to have a constitutional

amendment to undo Citizens United. The bigger problem is Buckley v. V. Vallejo, which is the one that allowed these super rich people to make these donations. Which one is that, is that the one that says money is speech or is that? Buckley United was from the, I believe it was in the 70s. It was a, it's the one that allowed sort of outsized contributions through super PACs. Right. So it's, such a silly system. It continues to be our biggest problem. But I will say that neither Buckley nor citizens completely foresaw the idea that individual people would be as rich as they are now. It's just, I mean, people are richer than countries, right? The top five, six people in America are rich in the countries.

Right. So, so we don't have a system that says, wow, you can sort of fully buy an election, both with your money and these algorithms that you control, which brings us back to things that we're trying to happen under Biden, Lena Khan and the Federal Trade Commission to sort of say. She did such a nice job. Yeah. She really did. It's that control over the economy is as bad as spending directly on elections. And we see it now with the FCC.

We see it with the Brendan Carr and the media stuff that we're seeing, right? Power and money are inextricable. And we've got to build a system that protects the worker, that protects the middle-class person in America from this concentration of wealth. It's much more serious than it was even when Citizens United became, you know, a thing. This episode brought you by Ninja Lux, Caffirms. That's an espresso maker. It's bringing your favorite coffee shop into your home, and it has a cool name.

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You do on your show, by the way. And I think it's great thing you do. Every now and again. Yeah, but it's hard, right? It's hard because you may plan to. and then Trump will invade some country, and then you got to deal with that. Let me ask you, because what we're talking about, I wonder if we can apply this same thing to our media landscape. So sort of this idea that the incentive structure is all wrong.

Yes. That the financialization of our elections, the financialization of our economy, could we say there's been a financialization of our media as well? Yes, yes, absolutely. Now, I will, in fairness, if you go back to the founding of this country, media was always political. In fact, newspapers were owned by political interests. Whoever owned the pamphleteers were the Elon Musk's of their time. That's right. So that's always been the case. But yeah, the incentives are wrong. And I don't know how we solve it because really the solution is that you and me and everybody else like us

who want to maintain our freedom to say everything we want to say form some sort of. And I use this word because I don't have a better word, but I don't mean it that way. Form some sort of a collective, right? Some sort of a thing in which our funding is not dependent. Are you asking me to join a commune, a cult? Well, my grandfather was the youngest member of Gandhi's commune. So communes run through my blood. Was he really? Yeah, he was seven years old. Oh, so he actually, he was with his folks. I don't, he didn't, no, no, no, no. My great, great-grandfather sent him to live on this commune on his own. There was 70 people on the commune. He grew up. With Gandhi? With Gandhi, yeah. What?

Yeah, they were buddies. They were both from Gujarat. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? Yeah. Your great-grandfather was- He was buddies with Gandhi. That's incredible.

They were both from Gujarat in India, and they both lived in South Africa. They didn't know each other, but they both had, they were both, Gandhi was a lawyer. Right, this one, he was a lawyer and he was living in South Africa. So they both needed a bookkeeper, and they both had a Gujarati-speaking bookkeeper who, they didn't know the other one had them. this bookkeeper says, you know, you two guys should know each other. And so when Gandhi would get called to Pretoria, where my great-grandfather lived to fight with the government, he was not white. He couldn't stay at a hotel. So he stayed with my great-grandfather. And one night in 1907,

they're sitting around and Gandhi says to my great-grandfather, I'm starting this commune, as they called it, and I want your son to come and be an inmate. And my great-grandfather- They called him an inmate? No, I'm calling him an inmate because it's, you know, because it was a horrible place, right? That is not a good sales. You had no running water. You had no meat, nothing. So my great-grandfather is a businessman. And like a typical Indian diasporic businessman, he liked Gandhi a lot, but he didn't want his son getting involved with this rabble-rouser. So he said, he came up with the only excuse he could. He said, Gandhi, we are Muslims, you're a Hindu. My son is seven. Who will teach him his religion? And Gandhi says to my great-grandfather,

I will learn your religion and teach it to him. What? So my family learned, Islam from a Hindu. That may be the great. That is the most buried lead story. Yeah. I think that I have, that I have ever heard. So I like collectives, but I'm not, I, but the point is our system disincentivizes the collective of what we do, right? We're all, we all get frustrated when what happens to Colbert happens to Colbert, what happened to Kimmel, happened to kill him, but there's actually an answer because we're the content providers. We and our teams are the content providers. We don't actually need the bosses for this, particularly in 2026, when the infrastructure is nothing, right? It's the internet. And so we all in this industry have to think long term about how we can rebuild

this. We don't have to be the victims of an FCC and a temperamental government. We can actually create ourselves. And we've seen many of our colleagues do it, right, where they've done their own thing. Sure. They're one-offs. Can you imagine that power put together where everybody can still make lots of money. If the market incentives are towards, so if you think about it in terms of the algorithms and things, if the market incentives are towards outrage and not towards something sober, rather than thinking of media as a collective or something that had to follow market structures, should we think of it more as a utility? I certainly think so. In fact, part of my one option is a collective. The other one that I thought a lot about is that it's a public trust.

That is, you know, it could go either way. The point is media does not have to be dependent on wealthy people for it to exist or wealthy people funding it for it to exist. The barriers to entry are close to zero now. The barrier is all of us who work in this industry not realizing that the barriers are zero and that we can do anything. And I don't know, I could have agree with you that it's outrage, but I think the hunger is for reliability. Right? People say, whatever the media being so biased. I said, bias is not a problem. But we all have bias. I have bias. We all have bias. We've always had bias. What we need is trust. We need reliability. We need people to say, I trust you. I mean, John, I remember being

at CNN when you were on CNN and you wrecked crossfire, which was the first place that ever employed me. But you, you, you, you, no, I was long gone by the time you wrecked it. By the way, I learned that from Gandhi. I was, I was at the Osama. Right, exactly. This right-left stuff is performative. He told me that. Now, the thing is you were right then and you're still right now. The issue is how do you navigate that? We don't need the intermediary of wealthy people owning media to solve this problem.

We don't need to be at their, you know, we don't need to exist at their pleasure. It'll take a while for us all to figure that out, but I think that could be an actual solution. Well, you've certainly seen, you know, there are smaller groups that, whether they start substacks, or Patrons or the Midas guys who do the podcast network or podcasts. You're seeing a lot of things pop up. But the larger platforms, CNN, MS Now, certainly Fox News, these are generally, well, Fox News is slightly different in that. That really began as a political mission explicitly.

Yes. But it was at the behest of a billionaire. Correct. And for the other ones, now I imagine, and you don't have to necessarily get into it, but you've been into business long enough to know that, like, everybody's looking at the minute to minutes. Yes. Which is the rating sheet that they get.

And that incentive structure must absolutely skew coverage. I can't imagine that it wouldn't. Yeah. So I think there's, you know, when you look at ratings, there are a couple ways of looking at it. You can look at minute to minute ratings. But I think the better measure is the length. of tune, the amount of time people spend with you, right? So your, your length of tune is very high. People watch your story show from the first minute until you say goodbye. Sometimes. I don't know.

That's more important. That's more important than what you get a particular minute, because people are trusting you to curate the world around them. So, you know, you can have discussions about whether you're a satirist or a comedian or a news person. It's not relevant. You're curating the world around people. Right. And that's what people are trying to earn their loyalty through a particular. our audiences are okay if they really do trust you. I like to think of myself as a museum, right? Why would you ever go to a museum a second time? Because they're changing, right? You might really like it, but it's the same thing. It's like watching Top Gun eight times. But that's

not true because they change little things and you believe and trust that they will do that in your interest. They have 200,000 things on display. They have two million in the basement and they have another two million somewhere in a warehouse and that they will curate it for you. That's the important part of the news. Are you a trusted curator? not the raw numbers that you get. There are lots of people out there who get far bigger raw numbers than me and everybody in cable news combined on a given night. It's not more relevant than whether you are trustworthy. The measure of trustworthiness, which is not what ratings measure, it's not what Pulitzer's measure, it's not what all the awards that we get measure. That's what it should be.

The award should be, Ali Valsh is the most reliable journalist on television or John Stewart is the most reliable curator of information on television. We don't measure that. We should. And I think it's, first of all, I think that's a wonderful way to put it. You know, I sort of think of it as framing things, not as right and left, but as corruption versus integrity. Yes, because that's not right and left. We should, 100% of people should be against corruption. And why isn't that?

I always thought there was space in the media landscape for a news organization to go after that, with the same intensity that Fox goes after what it goes. after a kind of Roger Ales of veracity of whatever that works. And I don't mean that in the sense of, you know, and this is always something that drives me crazy about media when they say, well, we're here to call balls and strikes. No, no, you're not. Not now. Not ever. Yeah, yeah. The minute you say our top story, you are making a subjective judgment. Own it and earn it. Yeah. So there are only two things that matter in journalism. And matter. It matters for you. It matters for me. And that is that we bear witness, number one. And that's why we send reporters to things so that our people can actually say, I saw this with my own eyes. I spoke to people because our viewers and listeners and readers can't go to Gaza or Israel or Ukraine or whatever themselves. So bear witness is number one. Hold power to account as number two. That's it. That's the beginning and end of what we should be doing. Are we bearing witness? And we need resources to do that because you fly places and have resources. And are we using that information to hold?

hold power to account. And that's, if everybody just took that seriously, holding power to account is not a left, right thing. It's power. That's money or people in government, whoever it is. That's right. Making them answer difficult questions on behalf of your viewer. Do you think we've been effective, you know, I guess that's my, maybe my frustration with media is, have we been effective? You know, it feels like the chasm between democracy dies in darkness and what we actually present to the American people is really wide. Yeah. And has media reckoned with that gap?

I think it continues to reckon. I think it's on a lag. And I think it's done poorly, generally speaking. And we have all learned. I remember years ago at CNN, people used to tell me, well, you work for corporate media. And I sort of say, well, what do you mean by that? Like, why would that make me any better or worse? I've just got resources to do what I'm doing.

Now it's a, it's a word that's. stings, right? MS now is now independent, and that is actually a little different. It does it feel different. You know, the ratings are up, but tell me about, because now, this is really interesting, because when you said it before corporate media, I think what they mean by that is, again, and it gets back to the markets discussion we had earlier and immigration in some respect, it's about what is the incentive system?

Has it been financialized? Who are the shareholders? the incentive machine of markets and media, whether it's rewarding, you know, attention or hostility or outrage or short-term interest. How has that changed since you are no longer under the same corporate umbrella? Well, look, we're still a public company, so there are earnings, and we have to figure that out. But the distinction is because we don't, we're not tied to a company that has an FCC license. The range of threats that can be, you know, you know, waged against us,

they're just smaller, right? Nobody can threaten to pull a license, even at MSNBC. I mean, Trump would say it all the time. MSNBC doesn't have a license. Cable companies don't have licenses. So what does the absence of corporate cowardice do for you as an on-air personality?

So, and I say corporate cowardice in a sense of, I've been in those meetings. Yeah. Where they say, we can't really do that. Why? We have this other thing going and DeSantis sued Disney and we don't want to have that happen to us, so we don't want you to poke that.

you know, all that kind of shit. Yeah, it takes away a level of threat, right? It means the idea that we can't cover X because we will face retribution from the government goes away. It doesn't take away the commercial pressures of, hey, Velschie, people have to watch your show. But I can do that and you can do that, right? We can curate a show knowing what our viewers want and build that up ourselves. We don't have to follow some centralized corporate construct for that.

impose one on me because they say, my show seems to work pretty well. Anything you could do to make it work better would be great. And if you'd like our help with that, we'll give you that help. But for the time being, you're doing okay. Now, if my viewership starts to go away, I'm sure the bosses will have a conversation with me. But that's a normal public company discussion that you would have if you were at coach or at Walmart or wherever the case is.

And you might argue, and I'd probably be with you on this, that that probably shouldn't be the discussion, but that's what corporate America is. And for the moment, that's what we live with. But we don't live with the threat that we can't say this because the government will get involved, which, by the way, is not a thing we used to think about at all before. People of Hungary thought about that in India and Turkey and Israel and Iran and China and Russia. Americans now have to think about that. So that's the added, the added incentive layer for a corporation to move you away from things. It used to be, this thing isn't raiding. When you talk about that, you're not rating.

Now they say, you're not rating, but they might also add, and you're also drawing attention from government institutions that we don't want attention from. A, because we don't want to be sued and B, because maybe we want to have this merger that requires FCC approval. So those two things are an added weight on corporate media that did exist. Are those explicit, Allie, are those mentioned, like for us, right? Yeah. the explicit conversations will have in a room is sometimes they'll call back and go like, I don't know if they want you to say that about Paramount. I don't know if they want you to say that about Arby's, you know, or some like a sponsor

or, you know, try not to say dildo that many times. Like those were, like we would literally have those explicit conversations in the back room. what are in the programming meetings, what are the explicit concerns that arise? So they don't occur in programming meetings. They occur at the level of a segment and its script. And it is almost exclusively to do with legal exposure. Oh, so you're mostly it's always just legal. Exactly. And we welcome those discussions because I'm not a lawyer. So I like the lawyer looking at it and saying, this exposes you to something. It's generally not put forward as a condition. It's a, just want you to be clear, you're exposing yourself by saying X or Y. And obviously,

we don't tend to go into these places where we're exposing a lot of people, but that's the concern. We have a remarkable standards and practices department, but they, they don't see it as their job to curate for our viewers what happens. They see it as their job to tell you that. Where are your exposures. You're going into an area. You just need to know that you're going into this area. You're comfortable with that. So that is one of the freedoms that we we have and continue. And I will say, even at MSNBC, we had that. It's just more so now that we're, we're, we're a public company and, you know, we still, we still share some ownership with NBC. So in the editorial meetings, because I've heard this from people that, you know, work in news. And maybe this is more network and, but I think also at CNN and at MSNBC, I would

imagine, is the conversations about what segment was going to be done, whether it's through the producers, might be, that's a dead horse, you're hitting it, that's not going to draw, or, you know, those types of concerns. How much of it allows for your own editorial authority and compass? I would say it's almost complete. We'll hear, we'll see it. We'll see it in the ratings if something doesn't resonate. But to my earlier point, point, if your viewer is a type of viewer who trusts you and watches you from the beginning to end, they'll put up with something that they maybe don't think is the best segment they've ever seen. I remember, I used to be told that climate, which is something I cover a lot, doesn't

rate. So I just made it my business to make it right, just to do it in a way that causes people not to tune out. That's interesting. There are all sorts of ways to do that with any story. I was also told a few years back, not as an admonition, just as a, you know, this whole democracy thing that you're into, it's fine, but people, you know, not sure. Not sure it's always going to, not sure it's going to land, you know. So. This whole democracy thing. But that was nobody telling me not to do it. They were just saying, if you want to be really big, you may not want to lean that far into it. I have full support of my network in doing this democracy thing that I do because it's become a central argument. Now, I will say as an economics

reporter, John, I do understand that when you pull the lever in the ballot box or you cast your ballot, economics still generally rates higher for almost everybody than rights. But you know what I'm saying? You put the two together and that should inform your vote. Folks, today's episode is sponsored by Incogni. Thousands of companies are collecting and trading your personal data. Your personal data, let that sink in and you know nothing about it. Scammers are using this information to craft convincing phishing phishing emails, which truly every old person

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Because I think that's kind of an interesting place to take this as because you are so expert in kind of economic reporting and the economics of things. You know, we always talk about pricing in risk. Yeah. Because of the economics of news, have they priced in the risk of what can happen to a democracy that allows itself to be ruled by the passions of news as opposed to the foundations of it?

And have we made that mistake? I don't think we've priced in that risk. And I think part of that is that Americans are really lucky to have not understood. understood what slipping into the abyss looks like. If you come from a country where you've just recently been out of the abyss, Brazil is a good example. Why did they prosecute their former president? Because they understood, they had the risk in recent memory of what happens when a country goes wrong. My parents, as triple immigrants and me as a double immigrant, we know what that looks like. I think Americans don't understand the relationship between a bad media and

corruption in government and democracy as clearly as they should. Americans, believe that this democracy will endure no matter what. I think we're starting to see real evidence, but sometimes, honestly, people have had to be shot in the head before we've seen this. But we're starting to see it. And your politics, along the political spectrum, start to melt away when you realize, I don't want any part of this. Because once you start going down this road, it's really bad. But I don't think people see it as their responsibility to fix the media, nor should they. right? It's up to us to say, are we doing the right thing for this moment? And if we're not, do we adjust ourselves to be more relevant? Remember, for all the viewership I get, and it's pretty

good, it's 340 million people in this country. Most of them are not watching me or you. And so we're competing for everybody's attention, not between each other, but for everything else that people are doing. It's a bright, sunny day in New York. I'm competing with people who'd rather be outside than watch my show. So we have to. think about this. Well, not in two feet of snow. I would say that in the spring. Right now, you're pretty good standing with people with a little blanket on there. But it does, it sort of wraps around to the conversation about collectives and people working together because, you know, when you're in a system that's financialized or maximizes just shareholder

value, you know, in those kinds of things. I think those systems are less resilient. Yes, correct. I think those systems are more fragile. Yeah. Because the incentives don't, don't, even with companies, let's say you're not in the media, right? If your incentives are just a shareholder, you're not going to perform as well as if you include your workers, your customers, your earth, your country, your neighborhood, and the earth. You're not pricing in all the externalities that should be of a main concern. You're focused on short-term growth.

And I can't help. and maybe this is an overreach metaphorically, but I can't help but think media is suffering the same difficulty that our economy is writ large because of that. Yeah, because we are, the report card is quarterly earnings. It's not necessarily how happy your staff is and how reliable you are as a news organization.

I've maintained for many, many years that all companies should think about all of those things. And sometimes you see it happens. So when Indiana had its trans bill many years ago, companies reacted to that because their employees wanted them to. And in a world where unemployment is under 5%, you have to be careful that you're not going to lose workers because they don't believe in you and they don't trust you. So we started to think about workers. We had a pretty good union year a couple of years ago where unions had their voices heard. We are starting to think about the earth. We are starting to think about the communities in which we live, but not enough, not enough, right?

Corporate America is actually more trusted than government or any other institution. People are begging for them to take a lead. And yet, what do we see? We see companies making deals with ice and, you know, all sorts of things like that. I think there's a real opportunity for corporate America to say, we've got it better than anyone else in the world does. We make more money. We do better. We've got a great workforce.

We've got all the inventions. We still have immigration. let's be on the right side of history. A lot of people are making the wrong decision on that. And I think within the media, it gets back to, you know, you talked about it earlier. You said it's about what you earn with your audience. And I wonder if in media, they've squandered some of that based on those incentives. So for instance, we'll go back to like, you know, there's always that rush of like,

now we've got Trump and the Mueller report. And it's, it's. color time and all these things and the hype machine. Right. That generates that, whether it was for action in Iraq or accountability through these special counsels, that it raises an expectation of its audience. Yes. Yeah, it's a dopamine rush.

Right. And that there will be consequence. Yes. Yeah. And the more you run on that hamster wheel or gerbil wheel, I don't know who runs on the wheel. You know, my rodent work is not great. I believe it's a hamster, but I imagine get any rodent. I appreciate that.

Most of them I would think need to lose a couple of pounds. Except squirrels. They couldn't pay attention. Thank you. I wonder if that begins to numb your audience to consequence. And is that where the trust has been lost, that not only is it about holding to account, but it's about tempering their expectations. expectation. Yeah. And I think that we can present ourselves differently. I think you do, for instance.

You, the narrative, you're kind of like the funny professor, right? You're, it's actually a- That is the worst thing I've ever been called. But it's a bit of a course, right? Like your, your viewer could get a continuing education credit for listening to you all the time, because you do learn something out of it, but you put a little dressing around the whole thing. Little josh. And I think that's okay. You can put a little juge, but you've got to tell the important stories. Well, you've got to have contact. You've got to be very careful. Yeah. It can't all be the world's on fire all the time because then nobody thinks there's a fire. It can't all be breaking news because then nothing is breaking news. It can't all be about this is the thing that's going to take Trump down because actually your goal needs to be more important and more sustaining than taking Trump down. It needs to be fixing our society as it relates to incentives in media, as it relates to poverty, as it relates to health care. These are not actually terribly hard fixes. These are all things. that the world can do. Given the technology that we have, we can solve all these problems. We can't, there's a real danger in associating everything with Trump, because Trump will go away

and you'll still have all these problems, and you'll still have this movement of 35% of Americans who trust nothing and want to tear it all down. We have to fix the system, and that means people understanding the system and understanding their role and their agency. That's really interesting. I like that. And that's what is. You know why a third of Americans don't vote? A third of Americans don't vote because they don't trust any of them. And I understand why. Our goal should be to cause them to trust the system, to say the system will work in your interest in these ways. And that, I understand it. You can't convince somebody who, who's screwed by everybody to vote. And so we have to think about the system, but it's unsexy. So we've got to make it interesting.

And is there a market for helping people understand what the infrastructure and what the civics are and what the system is because they seem almost uninterested in. You know, even within just this most recent tariff decision on the Supreme Court, which is incredibly consequential. And, you know, it sort of displays that gap between how time moves in a democracy, constitutional republic and how time moves in an authoritarian system. The Supreme Court takes eight months. They're going over the brief. They've got a nuance. We're going to put out a thing. We're going to grab, here's the three dissenting opinions. Here's a other and they finally put together this nuanced uh uh dissertation on how executive overreach worked

in terms of these tariffs and uh two minutes later trump is like all right i'll just make it 15 percent on everybody and you're like yeah yeah it's it's that that difference that is really difficult for the media because i found all their questions were about you know i just kept seeing people be like so are you going to say hello to the justices at the State of the Union. Right. Right. And you're like, a question that must never be asked.

Why do you give a shit? Yes. Why would you even bring that up? Yes. And that's right. Again, holding power to account, right? If you took your job seriously as holding power to account, that question would never occur to you to ask.

The issue here, and part of this is that if you can take the time to get away from the outrage and to explain to people what they need to do and you can trust that at least two-thirds of American, when provided with the right information, would at least have an opportunity to make a good decision. That's where this goes, right? I am going to trust you, my viewer. You don't have to absorb my outrage. I've got opinions like everybody else does. You don't have to absorb my opinions. I will just allow you to understand what's going on and you'll come to your own conclusions. And I trust, I still have a great deal of trust that when given proper information, people will make sound decisions. But what's so interesting, I think, about what you're saying,

And I think what's maybe missing from the media conversation is the education piece. Yes. But if you say that, it's like nobody wants, you say civics or you say education, that's like Sunday school, right? Nobody wants it. But the thing that you can provide is that, the education piece. I would sign up. If John Stewart said you get a certificate, if you can prove that you watched all these shows, you get some kind of a I went to John Stewart school.

I put that on my resume. I really don't know what that. I don't see that. You walk into somebody's office and they've got that framed up on the wall. But imagine if you actually put it on a resume because an employer would ask you, what on earth is a John Stewart continuing education certificate? And you'd say, I watch it every week because I want to understand the context of the stories in the media, because the media is too loud and too busy and it's a five alarm fire all the time. But does that get to the collective aspect of this then? Is the idea of a news organization, the one thing that I will say about the right wing media machine, it is an organism. And each part of the organism works together to create the health of the entire organism. You've got the, you know, Hannity's the endoplasmic reticulum and ingram is the mitochondria. And they're all working together on a cellular level. Yeah. Towards a specific goal, I don't see the same level of coordination. And even within that system,

should those 24-hour networks be designed for that very purpose, not to promote a particular, like you say, political ideology, but to promote that contextualizing. Contextualization, reliability, truthfulness. It's about specialization as opposed to every show being a microcosm of the same thing. Yes. It's a very loose federation, maybe better than a collective. I'm not talking about this being about convincing people ideologically through outrage. I'm talking about making people better at making decisions for themselves because of context. So in other words, if we think about it in terms of an aperture, even though we've got more news

than we've ever had before, if the aperture is narrow and everybody is focused through that same narrowness, we don't see the larger picture that would have more efficacy for how we might want to help fix this system. It's about having an immune response to these things. That's correct. Yeah. And that's, That makes our job not outrage machines, but we are contextualizers. We prove that we are reliable. We are explainers. And you have to trust in a democracy that the democracy is up to the people. So the failure of democracy right now is that people don't have good enough information. Are there discussions within these organizations of how the shows can work together to be force amplifiers or to paint broader pictures or

Is it, like you say, is it fiefdoms? Well, it's not that, but I will say, I think we benefit at MS now from the idea that if you watch us through the course of the evening, Chris Hayes or Rachel or Lawrence, they approach, or Jen Saki, they approach the same things differently. And so I think you get, I think that's the, that is where capitalism actually works, where you tell people, here's the goal, you decide how you're going to get to that goal. And if the goal is lots of viewers, so that lots of people watch our ads, so that our revenue goes up. Fine. How are you going to do it that way? And I think that might be better than a centralized

command, which is what Fox had and what CNN had under Jeff Zucker. And it worked for CNN under Jeff Zucker. And it worked for Fox under Roger Ailes. But I think we've always had a slightly different philosophy back when it was MSNBC and MS now that we don't want Chris Hayes to be like Rachel. We don't want Jen Zaki to be like Lawrence. We don't want me to be like any of them. But you're really not actually. Like that, I will say this. You present a very different. I consider your show much more essayistic. It is. In a good way. I mean that. I I mean that I take it as a compliment. Yeah. And I have to be careful that I don't indulge the, you know, I don't I don't indulge myself too much and make the audience ever think I'm listening to

an essay. No, no, no, I understand. But, but yeah, I approach it differently. And it works. Nobody's told me not to do that. In fact, they, they like it. So I think that's the point that that's the beauty of this, this freedom. We get to choose the way we're going to do it. But if you asked us all, we would say the goal is to have a more informed audience so that we have a better informed democracy. And viewing yourselves through the lens of trying to maintain the audiences trust that what they're being presented isn't being presented to them to push their emotional buttons, but to create. Yeah, I'm not worried about the viewer knowing what my opinions are on things, because I have opinions and they should know that.

And I can lean into that. But my job is not to convince you of what your opinion should be. It should just be to tell you the information you need to know. Right. So it's not in the sense of, you know, as we sort of extended the metaphor of financialization and how economics. And I was just thinking of it as you were talking of, you know, the government helped create the middle class by, you know, making programs that made homeownership more

accessible by creating a GI, but by doing all these things that helped there. and I wonder if that's the 21st century project is to create the middle powers of news. Yes, but it won't come from the government, nor should it probably. Right. So people who have power and influence in the media today need to be thinking about this. We need to have summits and sort of say, how do we achieve that goal? And how do you think AI, you know, do you believe AI, I happen to think while AI is going, to have, I think, pretty devastating consequences, especially for, you know, what you would consider

to be the professional class and those kinds of things. The only thing that could probably help unravel it is AI. You know, if you can engineer something bad, you could probably reverse engineer it. And I think AI is going to be a powerful tool in unraveling the manipulation that we're all experiencing through these algorithms. It would be amazing. That would be a great use. Like, there are a lot of great uses for AI, including the solving of diseases

that just require brute force engineering that AI can do. But that would be a great one to you. But I thought social media would be that, right? I was an early adopter thinking, no one will ever be able to lie again because the crowd will correct them. I mean, how wrong I was.

So I do think that that's a good, I was talking to the head of the Teamsters Union the other day, and he said, for once, a massive change in technology is not going to hit us first. meaning, you know, truck drivers. He says, it's going to hit you guys before it hits us. No, man. Listen, Teamsters are going to be the last guy standing.

He said, until they figure out a way to deliver something with a robot, he said, it'll come. But your jobs are going to go first. Right, right, right. Well, listen, Ali Velci, I very much appreciate you spending the time with us you got today. Or no, we're taping this Tuesday. So tonight is the state of the union. This will come out tomorrow.

I'm going to speculate very quickly on the state of the union. I think halfway through it, he will be eaten by a bear. Now, I don't know if that's going to happen. But I'm taking a stand right now. He's delivering it. He happened to invite a bear to the state of the union to make a point about, you know, something.

And the bear ultimately ended up eating him and half of Congress. Anything could happen. That's what I'm saying. Is there anything in particular that you're, you know, is this pro forma tonight? Is there anything, you know, that you're particularly, looking to clock?

What's your game? Yeah, it's a, you know, when Pam Bondi was before the house talking about Epstein, and they asked a very direct question about, you know, who's been investigated. And she said, the Dow is above 50,000 and people are, have more money. This is what he goes to all the time. And the idea that metrics are not, the state of the union is not its economic metrics. But he's going to lean into how great it is truthfully or otherwise. Some things are true.

The Dow is up. But how that affects everyday people is not, It's not what he says it is, but he's going to lean into how well we are doing and how the Democrats are all lying about it. You know what I find interesting about kind of the Trump phenomenon? His style is so suited for running for office and not so suited for governing. Ill-suited. Yeah. You know, his hyperbole, his, this is terrible.

It's never been this bad. I can't believe it. I could fix this. Yeah. You know, they're eating cats. Yeah. That's right. Because when you're running for something,

yeah. You don't need to be able to quantify reality. Yeah. But when you're in charge of it, well, then the distance between your words and reality become consequential. It is the zero accountability administration. Yes. And hopefully that changes.

But young man, thank you for joining us. Allie Velshi, host Velshi, Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. on MS Now, I urge you to listen to it. It's a great listen on the weekends and also co-host happening with Belchian Rule on MS Now's YouTube. Good to see you, my friend. Thank you for having me. Please. Valshi.

Yes. Do you guys, you know, I listen on the weekends when I'm doing my gardening. But he really does present a nice kind of essay. He's not doing what those other shows are doing. Yeah. Yeah, like he said, they all have their own style. Right. But I think he does something.

He's not the other shows, I think, follow the circadian rhythms of social media to some extent through different styles. But they're all presenting a different version of that same kind of news speed. Mm-hmm. Like allocating 30 seconds. for the first story type of thing? Yes. And it's the first story that was at the top of Twitter and jumped through and did all that.

I feel like he's not in that game. No, if anything, I remember seeing, what's the bridge that Trump is threatening between Canada and the U.S.? He was saying that. Oh, the Gordy Howe or something like that? Yeah, he'll take a threat and instead of saying Trump has threatened this,

he'll actually go to that. bridge as a topic and see how it actually would affect people if the threat went through. And I think that kind of differentiates him from a lot of the news out there. I think that's a perfect point. And it does it in a way that, you know, and he'll tell you the history of that bridge. So you'll understand the context of is this unusual how it's being done. I have found that Rachel does that too, though. Like, I know she's on the network lesson less these days, but I always found that her first act, she really kind of zooms out really big and sort of hides the ball even with where she's going. You're like, I'm learning a lot about the 1950s right now. What's going on?

And then suddenly she sort of lands the plane. That's its own method. Like, wait for me to connect the dots. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my problem is she works, what, one day a week? Yes, exactly. What the fuck?

What is she doing? Well, she's working weekends. It's that type of a schedule, John. Do you know anyone? So I'm talking about you. You say, Rachel, you can't go in there on a Tuesday on a Wednesday? You're just going to come in there? What are you some kind of old man who's afraid to leave his house?

Do you think they mandate those glasses on MSNBC? Oh, no, MS Now. That's hilarious. MS now. Well, everybody's on like the thicker they are, the more I think that they're recording us. Well, I thought they were meta glasses. Right? No, they're Miss Now glasses.

Yeah. Did you guys see this is completely off topic? when meta went to, I guess they went to court. And they all wore their meta glasses. And the judge is like, you can't record. What kind of fucking, do I want me to hold you in contempt? You stop recording right now, you idiots. That's so dystopia.

And I hate that. What they say, but they're so cool. But you don't understand. We're early adopters. Aye, aye, y'all. There was a video that went viral a few months ago where a woman on the subway just took a guy's meta glasses all. broke them in half. And then he's recording her on his phone.

And he's like, this girl just broke my glasses. And she's just dead eye staring at him. She's the new Bernice gets. She's the new hero of the people on the subway. That's my vigilante. Yes, the vigilante that's going around breaking people's recording glasses. The wonders of the subway. Exactly.

Brittany, what are the people thinking today? All righty. John, any predictions for Trump's State of the Union? I mentioned this to belshin. I know. I think he's going to get eaten by a bear. Now, I know that that has yet to happen. I don't know what the odds are right now on him being eaten by a bear, but they're not nothing.

And there could be a bear. I think, like, I will be stunned if it's not exactly what we all think it will be an overly long. That was the one promise he made. He said, it's going to be long. Did he really promise that already? Yes, he said it's going to be long because we have a lot to talk about and look for the polymarket bet on exactly the minute it's going to take. I mean, I honestly don't even know if I can bear to listen to it.

I just don't. It's become so self-evidently detached from any form of reality that I understand or experience. It's actually angering to have it just be, you know, so covered and sanitized and washed. What's the point of it at this? Like, what's the point? No, it's, that's, it becomes an exercise in like a theatrical presentation. It's like going to see cats where. but nobody's going to sing.

It's just like, why are we all dressed up in leotards then? Face paint. I just can't handle it. I think it's so funny that the U.S. men's hockey team gets to go as a prize to the state of the union. Good on the women for turning it down. Yeah. I just like, is there any worse way to bask in the gold than to suffer through two hours of his rambling? Yeah.

Maybe that's the new, like, we're going to Disneyland. Like, you just won a gold medal in the Olympics. What's going to happen now? We're going to a bicameral legislative session where people are going to discuss some of the programs that are going to become, oh, that sounds very exciting. Enjoy it, buddy. Bring a beer.

Right. And then you're going to probably like drink beer out of a cup, out of the Stanley Cup. What else they got? John, on a list of 18 potential Democrat nominees. How many? 18. Oh, dear God.

You were listed at 13. Do you think you should have been higher or lower? I think I should have been on a different list. That's what I think. I think somebody has been making the wrong list. I thought it wouldn't be nice to be like young actors to watch. How about this? Zaddies.

Silver foxes that still, you know, that's the list. You want to be on the list with like John Slattery. Like you want to be on that list. Oh, that's a good one. The fatty list. Yeah. Everything's a list. Were there really 18 candidates?

What's that on? It was a... Just like speculative... Nate Silver did it. A New York Times opinion. Yeah. Nate Silver did a listing or ranking. You know, Newsome was one.

AOC was two. Newsome. Went through the whole thing. But you were 13. Newsome. Newsom's been training for this. This is his Olympics. He's been training for this his whole life.

Do you guys remember when we interviewed him for the show? And it was about prison reform. And I sat down with them. And the first thing I said, I go like, pretty handsome, right? I just want to tell you something. Look at me. Yeah, this shit doesn't last forever. Just understand, like, this is coming for you.

And I looked at his eyes. And I saw genuine hurt. I think he was genuinely like, that's how, what? I'm going to end up like, no, that can't be. No, he's been sleeping in like a cryogenic chamber to put this off. Yeah. Right. I felt like I was giving him like a little bit of a, you know, Christmas Carol looking to the future.

Like, I am the ghost of Christmas future. He got his LA doctors on the phone immediately after that. He just, right, as soon as he went in, he went with his team, it goes, that cannot happen. That cannot happen. What else? What else? We have one more for you. All right.

John, why do you hate punch the monkey? Oh, man. Look at Jitla. All right. For those you who are listening at home, Jillian's face, I think I just broke Gillian. I don't, I don't hate punch the monkey. I don't hate punch the monkey. But I do enjoy sometimes trolling my wife.

I love that that was an audience. Punching down. Yes. Yeah. But let me tell you something. And I say this with all due respect. The free ride for punch is over. Oh, shit.

He, you know, no, the thing was, so he obviously, look, it's, those videos are awful and they're heartbreaking. And what would someone who is dead inside? What would be the worst thing they could say about it, which is maybe the monkeys know something about punch, we don't. Maybe punch is racist. We don't. In monkey world, maybe they can.

tried to befriend Punch and then Punch talk shit behind their backs and they're like, that's it. I'm done. My only point was, who are we to impose our anthropomorphic and human values on the wisdom of Punch's tribe? If, you know, is his mom, the elders and the other, are they all wrong? His mom. Yeah. I can't do it.

It's too bad. That's it. No, no, no, no, no. You're asking the hard-hitting questions. Thank you. His own mother. No, no one has the gut stat. What I'm saying is, let's be skeptical here.

Let's not just jump on the punch is the hero. We're all going to find Punch's old tweets in a day or two. Oh, no. See, look what I've just done. I've turned Gillian around. You broke Jillian. She's a skeptic now. We started out.

she was all in on punch and now she's thinking well let's you know what let's go let's take a look back and see it's fact check this shall we never check the socials never check the socials i swear to god there's been almost nothing i've ever done on the show where i felt an immediate where the like they i they gasped they thoughtably i had the photo of jump up and i wasn't supposed to do it right just i had to stop because I've been doing it all weekend. Oh. I've been doing it all weekend with Tracy. I kept saying all weekend.

I go, I just, honey, I'm just saying this. What do we really know about punch? What do we really know? Aren't we, you know, aren't we substituting our lived experience for his? So, yeah. So I'm, yeah, I'm backing off the punch. He's actually great. Although apparently he's doing much better.

Now everybody likes him again. Apparently he's hanging out. People are grooming them. Oh, thank God. He just needed a little attention. Yeah. I'll tell you who the big winner of Punch being re-accepted into the tribe is. That fucking stuffed monkey he's dragging around.

She gets a break. Thank God, God. As I said on the show, like, when Punch hits puberty, that's no longer a comfort toy. He's wife in that bad girl. Like, that's, that puppets getting wiped. That's all I'm saying. Listen, great job, as always. Brittany, how do they stay in touch with us?

Twitter. For these scintillating punch updates. They love it. Twitter, we are weekly show pod, Instagram, threads, TikTok, Blue Sky. We weekly show podcast. And you can like, subscribe and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with John Stewart. Fantastic.

And thanks again. Lead producer Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mehmedevic, producer, Jillian Spear, video editor and engineer, Rob Vitoa, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, and our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Thank you guys so much. We'll be back next week to discuss the chain of succession after Trump is eaten by a bear.

It's going to happen. All right. See you next week. Boy. The weekly show with John Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Productions. Casts.