The Problem With Jon Stewart - Trump 2024 The Patriotism Paradox

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

With less than a week until the election, Americans face a stark choice about their country's future. While Trump's supporters wave flags from the Revolutionary War — a war fought against a king —Trump seeks to expand presidential authority and claim immunity from wrongdoing. This week, we're joined by Mona Charen, Policy Editor at The Bulwark and host of "Beg to Differ" podcast, and Harvard Professor Emeritus Laurence H. Tribe, to explore Trump's shallow patriotism and his disregard for the very Constitution he could once again swear to preserve, protect and defend. 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 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 – Sam Reid Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Researcher & Associate Producer – Gillian Spear Music by Hansdle Hsu — This podcast is brought to you by: ZipRecruiter Try it for free at this exclusive web address: ziprecruiter.com/ZipWeekly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody. Welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is John Stewart. We have less than one week to the election. And I think I speak for everybody when I say, I really hope that that did not kill you in the microphone. I tried very much not to not to do that close enough to the microphone that would cause any of you pain. I don't know what's going to happen. I am doing the thing that I swore I was not going to do, which is neurotically clicking on every single possible. this is how this map could go on this is how in this map i'm i'm looking up local news in hazleton pennsylvania i'm losing my fucking mind uh but you know what it's i'm not going to fall into the trap it's one day we're gonna we it's we have to work at this every day no matter what happens that's i'm just going to keep telling myself it's not it's not just about one day and uh but everybody out there i feel like the country is is lit up people are going to get out and vote they're going to knock on doors, they're going to do all the things they can possibly to, to protect this thing. And it's been, it's been a boy, it's a wild closing moment. And I got to tell you, you know,

seeing that rally that Trump did in Madison Square Garden, now I've spent a lot of time in Madison Square Garden since I was a kid, you know, seeing the Knicks, seeing the Rangers. And I got to be honest, I got to tell you, almost every time I'm in that building, somebody, brings up the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. I mean, it's just, it just always happens that way. You just, you know, you're cheering for your team and then somebody will go, hey, what if we interned a giant group of people, many of them Americans, because I've ginned up fear about them.

You know, so that's, so it wasn't unusual for me to see that on the floor of the garden. God. Man, I'm just going to get to. I wanted to get into a little bit today, this idea, it's just a strange thing to watch the flags flying and the don't tread on me and the patriotism. And then Trump gets up there and he just clearly shreds the idea that he has any love or understanding of the Constitution of the United States of America. And we're going to have two guests that are going to come on and discuss it. And actually, oddly enough, and we don't do this very often, at kind of a real dichotomy

of political views, Mona Sharon, who is the policy editor of the Bullwark. And she's a conservative conservative comments. He's been that for a long time. And Lawrence Tribe, who's just, you know, a legal lion and as I'm sure you'll be able to tell, liberal. He's liberal. But we're going to talk a little bit about just how in the hell we got to this place where the symbols and icons of the Revolutionary War are being used to prop up a guy who clearly, as he begged the Supreme Court to give him absolute immunity, would like to be king. And we'll get into that right now. So to get right to it with less than a week to go to the election, we're delighted to have our guests with us. Mona Charon, policy editor at the Bullwark and host a beg to differ podcast, and Lawrence H tribe, Harvard University professor emeritus.

By the way, the H, and I didn't realize this, Larry, stands for Harvard. I didn't know that your middle name. My parents were very far-sighted. It's unbelievable. The premonition they must have had. I want to thank you both for being here. The question that I want to talk about is there's something that has somewhat baffled me about, well, a few things that have baffled me about this MAGA movement.

But the main thing is it is steeped in the iconography of patriotism, of the revolution. It's we the people. It's on the buses. It's all about fealty to the Constitution and reverence for the founding fathers. And yet they are supporting it. individual who seems to, if this were the revolution, I mean, they'd be Tories. He wants absolute immunity for the president. It seems to fly in the face of everything that they feel is the foundation of their movement. And I'm not saying, oh, don't support Donald Trump or don't support

Mag or do whatever you want. That's America. You vote for who you're going to vote for. But don't couch it in constitutional admiration. So I want to get your thoughts on that. And Larry, I'll start with you and then we'll go to Mona. Larry, what do you think? Well, it does seem to me kind of obviously hypocritical. The Constitution, to the extent it represented anything or represented a rejection of a petty tyrant, rejection of rule over the people rather than rule by. the people, but that's nothing new. I mean, throughout our history, the iconography of constitutionalism and the trappings of patriotism have always provided a kind of patina of legitimacy. We share a language in which we claim to have certain ideals. Each side, I think, believes

the other side is abusing that language. I don't myself have any doubt. doubt which side is really guilty of the abuse, but I don't expect people to believe me just because I say so. You're a professor emeritus. I think we have to believe. I think the law is we have to believe you. The rules. Because you say so. I'm always good. I think that's the rules-based order that we've been talking about. Mona, you famously, you know, on the conservative side, Is this something that, as Larry said, you've seen before? Is this a new development on that side? What do you think is going on?

Okay. So first of all, I want to thank you for inviting me on. There are only a few days until the election. My anxiety level is so high. And it is so good to be with someone who can make me laugh at this moment. Thank you for the invitation. Oh, you mean me? I thought you were talking about Larry.

Okay. Yeah. No, I'm delighted to be able to do that. Mona, first of all, let me say, I so appreciate the anxiety. that everybody is feeling. It's a constant. What's going to happen? We don't know.

The thing that I always keep saying is we are almost in a Pavlovian response to this one day as the day. And the thing I always say to people is it could be a day that goes your way, a day that doesn't go your way. But it is not one day. The work that you do, the work that Larry does, the work that everybody tries to do is it's day to day. I try to tell people like, don't get so. wrapped up in that day. Just remember, you got to keep fighting no matter what. That is absolutely true. Yeah. It's also good life advice, never to get too high or too low, no matter what fate sends your way. Right, right, the roller coaster, exactly. Yes, exactly. All right. So let's talk, to answer your first question,

I want to talk a little bit about the right, and then I want to talk about the left. So, please. Regarding the right, you know, we just saw this vulgar festival at the Madison Square Garden. which, you know, put some of us in mind of another rally at Madison Square Garden that happened in... 1939. 1939 that was sponsored by the German-American Bund, which was an American Nazi organization. And it had a lot of Nazi iconography. There were swastikos, but the big portrait at the front of the hall was a two-story high image of George Washington. Right.

Because if you're going to have an American fashion, You're going to have to draw upon American iconography, American history, American symbols. Oh, that's interesting. And so that was the most glaring example of how you can distort American history for obviously anti-patriotic ends, but claiming patriotism all the while. And that is, I think, what we're seeing also to, you know, these are not American Nazis, but they are certainly fascist. adjacent, the MAGA movement, and they too invoke patriotism for something that is anti-patriotic, because, as you say, and as Professor Tribe said, they don't respect the Constitution. They want to bury it. Trump himself has said that the Constitution should be shredded

in order to put him back in office. This was in 2022, et cetera. I just want to ask real quick, do you think, is that then a cynical manipulation? because I would say that there is a sincere belief amongst many of the people that follow it, that they are following in the footsteps of George Washington. They don't see either the hypocrisy. They see it as foundational. I wonder, is it a cynical manipulation from those at the top designing this stuff? Do they say for this movement to take place, we have to have it steeped in some kind of

patriotic or constitutional hierarchy, even as we're. saying, we're going to, as you said at the rally, 1798 Alien Enemies Act, we're just going to intern people. Yeah. So whether they're cynical or not, with all due respect, I'd rather not get into that. Right. You know, then you have to go down the road of how much history does Trump really know? It doesn't matter.

I don't think it's a lot. Yeah. It doesn't matter. The fact is it is out there to be exploited and now I want to turn to the left. Yes. because I think the left has made a mistake in this country, which they are now in the business of correcting, in my judgment, of being suspicious of patriotism, of finding patriotic talk, cringe-inducing, more comfortable as critics. I'm a big consumer of NPR. And every single day,

it is this, you know, marginalized group or that marginalized group. And this sin that was committed by the United States, you know, 50, 100 years ago and that crime against this or that group, almost never. In fact, one morning I was listening and it was, they were talking about a program to help the Inuit people in Canada that was run by the federal government and how successful it was. And I thought, is this NPR? I mean, this is a positive story about something that was done by the United States. I don't know what I'm listening to. So I think the left is figuring out, or at least the Kamala Harris campaign has very smartly recognized that it's a better bet to be patriotic, to say you are in favor of the American flag, not to let the rights steal that from you, and to celebrate American exceptionalism, American virtues, as well as obviously recognizing.

are flaws. I'm not saying we should all be chauvinists or jingoistic, but I do think the left needs to recognize the importance and the power of patriotism in American politics. That's such an interesting point because I think, you know, and Larry, I'll ask you about it. Sure. You know, my sense of patriotism, I guess, is so different from that. You know, I actually view the criticism of the United States and its actions as the highest or of patriotism. So it's interesting to hear you say, I don't, I don't view it as a repudiation, I guess, of the Constitution or of the founding. I view it as the struggle to live up to what is clearly something that we weren't able to live up to and that that criticism for those groups

is crucial to the journey of being able to separate nationalism from patriotism or love of from clear-eyed vision of its flaws and its benefits. But Larry, what's your thought on that, the criticism of the left for that? Well, first of all, I agree very much with your way of describing patriotism, at least the way I have felt it. I feel that I love my country most when I am taking advantage of the freedom it provides to join in the enterprise of ever improving it. I came to this country when I was not quite six years old.

My parents were Russian. Oh, so you can't be president. We just broke some news. I didn't even know he was running. I'm not old enough. No, I came to the country as a Russian, Jewish immigrant. I have loved the country ever since I got here. one of my favorite possessions is an American flag that my father, because he had become an American citizen before being interned by the Japanese in Shanghai where I was born, my father hid it in the bottom, the false bottom of a trunk, knowing that if it were discovered, he would be tortured, perhaps killed.

When he died, my mom gave me that flag. It means a lot to me personally. It's a symbol of what I love. But when people started burning the flag and others, and I was as offended as anyone, when others said, oh, they should be punished for burning the flag, you guys have it backwards. What they are doing is expressing,

in the strongest way they can, their opposition at the time to the Vietnam War. Let me say also that, although I agree with Mona when she says it is a strategic mistake as well as a conceptual error to equate genuine Americanism with some kind of chauvinism, that's a mistake. But it's also a mistake to talk about the left or the right. As a monolith. As a monolith. I mean, there are undoubtedly some people. the Maga movement who are scheming and know perfectly well how they're manipulating

symbols in order to sort of play to people's grievances. There are others who are taken in. There are people on the left across the spectrum. The less we lump people together, either by race, by ethnicity, by religion, by political party by a particular point on the ideological spectrum, the more open we are to an ever-improving union. And that's what I so love. I mean, I'm so grateful to the country for... It's not static. The whole thing, when Barack Obama was a student of mine and I was so lucky to have him... You taught him? Oh, yeah. That's where he learned all those communist values.

Yeah, right, where they come. But when he was in my class, he kept emphasizing a more perfect union. He was talking about that even back then. Even back then. He was really the only first year law student that I can remember who was so impressive to me at the time. Before he learned anything from me, my research assistant, we wrote some articles together. And it was because of his belief that it was a project that was, never finished, was very much like Lincoln, a more perfect union, the better angels of our nature.

That's what I value. And I've got a nephew with whom I constantly argue, he's become an expatriate. He lives in Vietnam part of the time, most of the time, because he emphasized. He's abandoned the experiment. He's done all these terrible things, Native Americans, slavery. True, but that's not a reason to abandon this great human. That's right. And not the whole story. Mona, I want to ask you, because this actually really is, it's a fascinating discussion because it gets to kind of a visceral and emotional truth, right?

Right. As opposed to a, you know, kind of a constitutional truth, which is the thing that everybody tries to divine. So the emotional truth is it really depends on who is doing the criticizing, how that criticism is viewed within the public. I could make the case that nobody has criticized America or been more angry at it than Donald Trump. Right. You know, he is calling it a garbage can. And his solution is, which by the way, again, seemingly against the constitutional

principles is the only solution is he as the Lord and Savior. But I want to ask you, when you hear the criticism on NPR from a group that might be described as marginalized, does that hit your ear differently than he? hearing a criticism from a group in a rust belt, a white blue collar town, and they're criticizing America for its policies, what would be the difference of that? And how does that hit differently? Yeah. So it doesn't hit me differently. And I do agree that one of the almost unique strengths of this country is our capacity for self-criticism, our willingness to look honestly at our own history and our flaws and move toward a better future, constantly having the idea that we're improving

things and more perfect union, right? And so, you know, I get what you're asking, which is, you know, that, you know, people are much more tolerant of criticism from their own side. They don't see that as unpatriotic. Correct. When it comes from the other side, they tend to. Well, what's interesting is criticism from the right is actually not like the left, I don't think, views the rights criticism as unpatriotic. I think it only... I'm not so sure. Oh, really? Okay. I mean, I loved it, frankly, when Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania said about Trump, he said, stop shit-talking America. Right. So I do think there's been pushback to that.

They've noticed that this is the kind of rhetoric that the MAGA people are using. And they have, they've responded very well. Okay, we'll be right back. Okay, we are back in. But look, you know, so while, yes, it is a strength of ours to be able to be self-critical, I just think there does come a point where it goes too far. Now, of course, the MAGA people, I reject their entire criticism of the United States because I think it's completely unfounded. You know, their view is that the United States is terrible because we are importing criminal

immigrants and because, you know, we, our cities are hellholes and because, yeah, our crime is through the, none of that is true. So I don't accept their criticisms. I do accept some criticisms from the left, you know, absolutely. We have a history of slavery and discrimination. We haven't gotten over all of that. But, but I do think to return to the earlier point that the left can take it too far also. And so, you know, when you were saying you think it's the highest form of patriotism to criticize your country, or just ask, you know, I don't know if you're married, but, you know, if your spouse, if your spouse was constantly pointing out everything you do wrong, all your flaws, every day, just a constant litany of the things you've done wrong today, the things you did wrong years ago, you know, et cetera. And then you say, why are you always criticizing me, you must not love me. And the response is, this is the highest form of love. Okay. Can I tell you something? What a great analogy, because it's about a relationship, right? It's about building a relationship. And Mona, we're going to get into whatever

relationship issues you're having because that analogy, I don't know where that came from. But all right, I'll accept it. It seems to me, apart from the very good substantive points that Mona makes, there is an asymmetry of sorts, and that is, I think it's fundamentally different when you are trying to erase the past, and when you are trying to say something meaningful about it, erasing history, erasing fact, moving into an unreal world of alternative fact, that feels to me to be fundamentally wrong, regardless of the purpose or orientation. that it reflects. I mean, we're not ever going to make any kind of progress as a society if we don't have

some shared reality, some shared conviction, but some things are true and others are not, not limited to the truths of mathematics or something. I mean, we may not know how to prove that napalming babies is wrong or that splitting families apart cruelly is wrong, but we know it. We know it as deeply as we know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But then to Mona's point, you know, criticism has to be leveled kind of fairly across the board. But I want to get back to quickly the relationship analogy and then move into what that idea is about our shared reality. In the relationship analogy, I think on the right, the difficulty that I have with the way you describe it.

And I think you're right, it's exhausting at times. but one of the differences is in a relationship, if I were to get a criticism and immediately say, I've never done that, and I'm going to make it so that you don't love me unless you tell me I'm great and I'm going to deny that it ever happened. And I'm going to tell you that you're playing the victim and your gasoline. And I would suggest that on the right, that is kind of what has happened. I mean, you look at Florida and they say you can't teach the 1619 curriculum, which hates America. It doesn't hate America. It's explaining how we got here with our relationship to the African American community.

So while the point is correct about like, yeah, a relationship would get tiresome. I'm just saying what plays into that is not just the left's criticism. It's the right's ability to gaslight, to say, to deflect and to never admit that there are communities who have suffered disproportionately. Yeah. So can I just respond to something Larry said? Please. I think it's important.

So he made the point that we have to be able to have a shared reality, which I 100% agree with. But then the examples that he gave, that you gave Larry, those were moral arguments about whether something is immoral or not immoral. And I think before we even get to that point, we have to deal with the problem of just complete gaslighting and disinformation. The fact is that the message of MAGA is things like immigrants are committing disproportionate amounts of crime in this country. You're not safe because of all these criminal immigrants. And it's just false. There are immigrants who commit crimes,

but all the data show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. And you can see why that would be. People who come here, especially if they're here illegally, for the most part, want to keep their noses clean, stay out of trouble. And that is borne out by the data. But we, in our current polarized moment, that one of the biggest problems we face as a society is trying to break through these silos of misinformation and deal with reality so that then we can have a debate. After we've established what the facts are, Then we can debate what the right thing to do is. But how do we go about establishing with the facts?

The trouble is when I talk to people and I try to find them who say, no, you're wrong. Crime is at an all-time high. In fact, more crimes are committed, serious crimes by immigrants. And I say, where do you get that idea? And they say, well, and then they point to some silo, and I point to my silo. And I say, mine has empirical evidence behind it. They say no. In the end, we are debating the sources of authority.

We don't have direct firsthand knowledge ourselves of what's going on on the streets. And so each of us starts with some assumptions about what is a trustworthy source of information. And it's very hard to crack beneath that surface when authority is questioned, when elites, for good reason, are regarded as sometimes suspect. Right. With skepticism, certainly. Yeah. All right, I'm going to, I'm going to broach both of your areas of expertise then, because I think together we have the solution. So Larry, obviously, constitutional law, the profession of law, Mona, you've done fabulous journalism in these various areas. So here's maybe the answer. Who litigates the parameters of our shared reality? And I use the word litigate purposefully because to a large extent our court system is the one place where reality

has standards of evidence, has things that hold to. Now, you can be cynical about the court system and the way that it functions and all that. But at its core is a series of principles that helps you litigate, not speculate, which is what our media tends to do, speculate into the future. What will this mean for 2028, blah, blah, blah. What if our media relentlessly litigated those parameters of our reality? And isn't that something that could earn the kind of authority and trust that you're talking about? Mona, what do you think of something like that? Well, this is the great challenge of the next several years, I think, because we are floundering at the moment in this new media environment where there are so many sources of information, and there are so few gatekeepers now that are trusted.

And so people choose their own adventure and choose what to believe and getting people to agree on certain, you know, to trust certain authorities. One of the things that I think has been the most damaging thing about Trump, which is why one of the reasons that I opposed him right from the get-go is that one of his missions is to undermine. find faith in all institutions that could possibly damage him. So whether it's the intelligence agencies, the press, the military, the courts, and the election system. And so when people lose faith in those, look, those institutions are not perfect, obviously. And they're not, they make mistakes. But what we have to manage to have a conversation about in this country is people say, I don't trust institutions, but they do and they have to. They would not get up out of bed in the morning if they didn't, right?

You look at the letter grade on a restaurant. You walk in there and say, if that thing's got a C, I'm not sitting and eating there. But if it's got an A, I believe that I won't get sick. They open the tap to drink their water first thing in the morning. They trust the institutions that the water is safe to drink. They get on an airplane. You know, I mean, all of these things require trust and justifiably. But trust is built up for over experience. Larry, I'll ask you. So let's talk about election denial. Okay,

2020 was rigged. Anybody who represents Donald Trump can go on any cable news network or on Twitter or on Facebook or whatever and make the case it was rigged. It was this. The cyber ninjas say this. All the votes were taken. Where does it fall apart? Where does that reality fall apart? In court, when they tried to litigate it, it fell apart. Don't we have to set upon a project of litigating these realities? You know, Mona made a great point. Like, those institutions aren't perfect, but there are some institutions that earn your trust. Right. Over time, through your experience, don't we have to undertake that project? I think we very much do. And because of the courts have become so radically and conspicuously politicized in many instances, we're having a much harder

time doing that. I mean, there have been times throughout American history when the Supreme Court has veered very far to one direction or another, usually to the right. You know, the decision in Dred Scott and Plessy, Korematsu, Shelby County. All right, now you're like, Plessy and Ferguson, I was with you. I'm sorry. She went into Korematsu and Shelby County, I was lost. Well, the main point is voting rights have often fared badly in the Supreme Court.

Equality is fared badly. But the idea that the court at least followed a method of it looking at precedent, paying attention to facts, rule of evidence, that tended to hold, even though people would often disagree with where the court came out. I think it came out much too often, much too repressively and regressively, but that's a matter of judgment. Now we have judges who basically say, yes, for 50 years we've agreed that a woman shouldn't have control over her own body, but now we say no. Why? What's changed? We have the votes. The idea and the dissenting justices in Dobbs made it clear. The idea that it's just a matter of counting up the votes and that there is no method to the madness, that undermines an important function of the judiciary. And it's a function that we have to rebuild.

It can't be rebuilt overnight. Or it has lost its credibility for good reason. We will be right back. Okay, we are back in. And Mona, in your mind, what are the guardrails anymore then? What are the things that tether us? Well, can I, can I, before getting to the Guard Rails, can I respond to that? Please, please. I think people can differ as to whether Dobbs was rightly decided or Roe v. Wade was good law. But I think it's important to keep in mind, leaving that aside for a second, it's important to keep in mind that of all the institutions in our society, all of whom were stressed during the Trump presidency, the one institution that I think held up best was the courts. I agree.

You had every single one of those cases, with the exception of half of one that went against Trump, judges that Trump had appointed wrote searing opinion saying, you know, you can't just come into this courtroom with nothing. You know, facts matter here. And the law matters and arguments matter. And that was a reassuring moment for the strength of institutions. and frankly, when so many others had failed the test, certainly the entire Republican Party,

with a few notable exceptions. And so I think that we need to build on that. We need to remind people that the courts actually performed very well when put to the test. I'm not sure how it would be if Trump is reelect, God forbid, Trump is reelected. I think we may find ourselves with a lot of Eileen Cannons, And judges will no longer feel emboldened to do the right thing. They will think, well, the voters chose this. I think Mona is exactly right.

I think the judiciary for all its flaws held up better than other institutions in 2020. I'm hopeful, cautiously hopeful, cautiously optimistic, that that will still be true, but it's not a given. Just this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court in a crazy case from Virginia, where Governor Yonkin asked the court to cooperate with the suppression of certain votes because of the so-called danger that none of the business is we're voting. It's on a suspicion of a person not being documented. Isn't that if you have a suspicion of it, you can remove that person from the voter rolls? What I think the court did today indicates, not that it's going to go badly this time necessarily, but if it won't, it will not be for want of trying. There are six justices on the U.S. Supreme Court that given the flimsyest excuse might look to find another Bush v. Gore opportunity, and I worry about that.

I think the trajectory is not all encouraging. things looked better in 2020. Right. You know, then they look to me now with the Eileen cannons populating the country and feeling their oats more fully. Right. Well, I think Mona's point, too, if they've got that victory, they might think, oh, this is the direction that we want to go. And I think my point was we take that positive part of how the courts had earned that authority, and we try to apply that methodology into these other systems that we have to help rebuild.

build that kind of trust. And then getting back to our kind of original premise, if the guy at the top can pick and choose his constitutional pleasures, he loves the Fifth Amendment. We've seen that being used quite frequently. But I've seen the right fetishizing free speech. Free speech is under attack in this country. Trump is the only one who's out there saying I'm going to remove licenses from news organizations that I don't like.

DeSantis is the only one out there saying, I'm going to make sure that teachers don't get a chance to teach the way they like. A guy in Oklahoma on the right is saying you've got to have Bibles in the school and you've got to do it. It seems to me that Trump Bibles. Trump, by the way, the $150 Trump Bible that's somehow like also a 3D hologram. I don't even understand what any of it is. But the point being, it does seem to be a choose your own adventure. And the only underlying principle is, does this help Trump?

But I still believe Trump is merely a symptom of. a government that's having trouble being responsive to people's needs. Right. And a symptom of an undercurrent of hatred and mistrust and misogyny and racism that has run throughout our history, which is not to say that we're not a great country. We are because we can face those truths and help to overcome them. But it is to say that Trump is not a new phenomenon and he is simply a symptom. I think he's more than a symptom.

I think he's both cause and symptom because he's had a capacity to expand, it's an overuse phrase, but to widen the Overton window of what is acceptable. And he's given a permission structure for people's worst instincts to come out. And it is, you know, it's hard to picture somebody like Ron DeSantis who has. has lots of terrible instincts, including shutting down free speech or punishing us a huge corporation that gets on the wrong side of him. Right. That's, by the way, the antithetical to the conservative values that I used to talk about

for years as a conservative columnist. The whole point was you don't want an overweening state using state power against private parties, even a big private party like Disney. But anyway, but it is hard to imagine somebody like DeSantis, you know, creating a mob that would storm the Capitol on his behalf. You said something earlier that I thought was really interesting, which is Trump has gone after and delegitimized any institution or organization that could hurt him. That strikes me as the genesis of Roger Ailes Project.

You know, when he was in the Nixon White House and he said, I'm going to create a news network so that they can't ever do that to Nixon or any of us ever again. And it's been a 50-year project of delegitimizing any think tank, any university, any news organization that may ultimately, and the irony of Roger Ailes was his ethos was, you cannot trust editorial authority anywhere while exercising almost iron-fisted editorial authority. So is this really, though, just a talented demagogue who came along when the field was seeded, I guess is my point. Yeah, I don't think it's either or. I think it is both. It's both. You're right. The ground was prepared. You had the Rush Limbaugh phenomenon. I mean, there were many things that were going on that prepared the ground for Trump. But he is, I think, uniquely poisonous. Larry, the courts are the slowest moving ships probably in the constitutional, you know, executive,

legislative, and judicial, because those appointments are lifelong, it's the slowest moving one to shift around. Are we in a 50 to 60 year cycle now? No. That is moving it in the, in the deregulatory and delegitimizing direction? Well, I think it's too early to say, obviously. You know, the court has done things very recently that undermine the possibility of meaningful regulation by basically saying unless Congress specifies in advance prophetically exactly what an agency can do, it's going to be up to us, the courts, to decide how to interpret the powers of the regulatory state. Whether that, in the end, makes the regulatory state more powerful, ironically, is impossible. to say, but it does seem to me pretty clear that the courts, despite the slowness with which the wheels of justice supposedly move, are capable of moving at lightning speed when they want to. The Nixon-Tapes case was decided almost overnight. The Pentagon Papers

case was decided very quickly. By the way, those cases would be decided very differently today. I'm convinced. No doubt they would. Whereas the The current court deliberately slowwalked the issues about whether Trump was guilty of violating all kinds of important criminal statutes and trying overturn the election. They slow walked that to the point where he'll never be held accountable unless he loses this election. So they can move at lightning speed if they want and not otherwise. that's the greatest and least visible power of the courts is the procedural power beneath the

surface of the iceberg. And this gets us back to our original point, which is when the courts have a fealty to the Constitution, when the Congress has a fealty to the Constitution, as opposed to one man or one party, we see a much healthier system. The system is checks and balances. The founders, they thought it's going to be a fight between the legislative, judicial and executive, not between political parties. But as political parties control those areas, what are the checks and balances that we have left? What are they? John, they realized that for all

the checks and balances, character was going to be determinative of them. They said a demagogue might arise, charismatic demagogue with no fealty to the Constitution, no fealty to principle, but a clear willingness to bend power to his own ends. And it's almost as though they were describing Donald Trump in advance. Right. Mona, what do you think in terms of, you know, on a more conservative viewpoint where you might look at and have some sympathy towards lessening government regulation or moving some things?

Where do you see the checks and balances? I mean, the court has basically said now, corruption kind of doesn't exist unless it's a, explicit quid pro quo, money is free speech, corporations or people. What are the checks and balances now in this in this weather system? So I do agree with Larry that it does that our system to some degree depends upon character and that is something that has to be instilled from childhood. And it has been slipping in our in our culture. Are we nostalgic though? We're the presidents that came before us, were they really men of great character? It strikes me that... Not all of them. Not all of them. That's what I was going to say. It's, it strikes me that many of them were not,

even the ones we revere. We had, you know, we had Andrew Johnson, who was a, I'm not going to use an epithet, but he was a horrible human being. But, no, we've had, we've had our share of bad men. But, so we're not, so I think you were referring to this, John, when you mentioned that the way the founders thought the branches were going to check one another didn't turn out to be right. They thought their own, that like the Congress's institutional concerns would Trump party and they didn't. So Madison got that wrong. Oh, well. But that was.

Yeah, Madison. But they also built in others. The federal system. The fact that we have distributed. power to the states and the states and the federal government share power. It's sometimes been out of fashion, but when you look at how different states are protecting rights that other states refuse to protect, you have to say, you know, it's not ideal. So, for example, I mean, it's not ideal that a woman who lives in Alabama has to travel to get an abortion because her state...

And in many cases, not possible for that woman to travel. But that is certainly true. But it would be worse if there were one law for the whole country and she had no, and there were no states to go to. So the federal system does provide another set of checks and balances. But in the end, and what we've been discussing is, I think, that none of this architecture can work. You know, institutions are just people. And none of this can work without an agreed set of facts.

And that's our biggest challenge going forward is getting over this siloing, this poisonous partisanship where people just choose not to believe things that they find uncongenial. And the more that we, and I have this with members of my own family, where I have arguments with them. And I say, where are you getting your information? And it's, unfortunately, it's Fox. And it's the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which I used to love. And those are the mainstream areas of misinformation. Correct. It's underneath that is a wild west of misinformation.

Exactly. Exactly. And look, there were other periods in American history where we had really irresponsible journalism. We had yellow journalism at the turn between the 19th and the 20th century, responsible, arguably for one of our wars. and yet we did find a way to rise above that. I mean, there came a point where newspapers felt like they needed more prestige, and so they established prizes, the Pulitzer Prize. They established editorial boards that were going to be more responsible. They created the American Society of Newspaper Editors that was going to impose certain standards.

These things, there are precedents. Maybe we'll get meaningful algorithms. reform and maybe that will change the way that things go. Yeah. But Larry, you were going to jump in and I'll let you take us out on a hopeful note, a positive note, Larry Tribe. Come on, Larry, you can do this. Well, first of all, I think what's hopeful is that Mona and I, despite our very broad policy disagreements over the years, can agree that the country needs seriously to focus on

finding a shared set of factual premises that we can agree on. I'm hopeful that even though there is no algorithm for getting there, with the chat GPT or anything else, I'm hopeful that throughout our history we have overcome remarkable challenges. I mean, we did defeat Hitler and Mussolini. We did eliminate slavery, though not completely. we've made enormous progress. And when I look at the hopeful sounds that were struck in the ellipse by what I think is the next president of the United States the other night, I'm nothing other than hopeful.

I think we're going to have some bumpy times ahead. But I look forward to being right there at the ramparts. And I agree with what Mona said at the very beginning. Whatever happens, we can't give up. I mean, even in the horrific possibility that Trump comes back to power, and I just don't believe it'll happen. Even then for us to throw in the towel and say, well, it's all over, we'll never have another election. That would be a terrible mistake. Oh, absolutely.

Tim Snyder has made the powerful point. You don't obey the dictator in advance. Exactly. It's the first of his 20 lessons from tyranny in the 20th century. You don't give up in advance. You fight as hard as you can. On the beaches, on the ramparts, on the landing grounds. I so appreciate you guys being here.

It's a reminder that, you know, as they say, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. But it doesn't bend that way by itself. There are individuals out there who must, on a day-to-day basis, through great labor and great insight, bend it. towards justice. And I thank you both for being a part of that. Mona Sharon, Larry Tribe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for joining. What a fantastic conversation.

Thank you. Great pleasure. Thank you. Look at that. Look at that. The elder statesman of liberalism and conservatism standing together in wretched disgust of the Republican candidate for president. and the hopes that we as the nation. Did you guys think it was, like, I felt like what I was doing is like, we still have institutions that can stop this, right? There are still guardrails, like, even if this happens.

Like, I think I was almost begging them. You were begging to feel a little bit better. Right? And they're like fewer and fewer. What am I not seeing in the system that, because I really did feel like, I thought they'd be more bullish on the courts, to be honest with you. I thought, I thought Larry was like, yeah, that's over. I think Mona was still a little with it.

Well, there's been such like a partisan project to instill these partisan judges at every step of the legal institution. So I don't know how much confidence we can have in anything anymore. How are you guys handling? Are you going through your towns counting signs? Yeah. I mean, Long Islander. Right. So you're not, there's nothing to count other than Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Yeah. My town is, I've got a surprising amount of Harris Walls out here, which. I am surprised about because I am in, you know, I'm in, I'm in Trump country. And Tracy and I are still playing the Trump or insurrectionist game where we see.

How's that going? Oh, you don't play that game? What is this game? Oh, Trump are insurrectionist. No, you, so we'll go by and you'll be like, outside their house will be like Trump vans and like a little thing. And you'll be like, Trumper. And then it'll be, you know, F-150 with like giant Trump flags flying out the

side of it and a don't tread on me Gadsden flag and like I have a gun and I vote and we're like insurrectionist. So you have to judge the level of commitment to the move. That's fun. Well, it's a fun game. As you lead up to the election, there's not a whole lot else. You have to find joy somewhere. You have to find joy somewhere. Brittany, do the listeners have any thoughts on the other? Any, are they? Yeah. We have some good ones this week. All right. What do we got? What do we got? We have a theme. if you can't tell. This listener said, this will be both the second time I'll be voting and the second time I've been told this will be the most important election of your life. How many of your voting

experiences have felt this important, if at all? Boy, that's such a great question. I actually think now that the more we are inundated in a media environment like Twitter thing, that it heightens it in the way that, look, they have a stake in the urgency of this. And that is not to suggest that it's not important, but they're all pretty fucking important in truth. You know, think about Bush Gore and what a different world we might live in if that thing had gone a different way. I mean, any of these, any, you can Monday morning quarterback the entire universe and, you know, we can always, oh, if it had only gone this way, we'd all have flying cars by now.

But like, you really don't, you don't have it. The only people that that really see the future are the writers of the Simpsons. I don't, but I have great sympathy for someone who was just starting on their voting journey and is already being told that the future of the world is in their hands in that, in that booth. But yeah, hang in there. Keep voting. Well, actually, this is kind of a follow-up, this question, because 20 years ago, we were in the thick of George W.'s reelection campaign.

And this person wants to know, how would you compare that to the potential re-election of Trump in 2024? Well, I think at that time, so it's sort of at that time, we did think, oh, this is crazy. You know, we were coming off of, I think, eight years of Clinton and there was a certain, you know, that's when when Clinton came in, although Reagan was controversial to, you know what, it's always been a part of it. There's always been a kind of apocalyptic undercurrent about everything that has gone on. It may be, I think Trump might be one of the first people to really live up to it. like and i think and i would say january six is the demarcation point for that feeling where you're just like oh that was a line that i didn't think would ever get fucking crossed and he just walked he he walked across it so in the moment i think you're always feeling the import of it but you always

thought these are people of a same piece that policies you don't agree with two right wing maybe uh more interventionist, less interventionist. He's the first guy I can remember who was like, oh, I'm going to do a completely different system of government. And I'm going to step over certain guardrails of constitutional propriety that like means, yeah, we're not, we're not in the same ballpark anymore. So this one, yeah. But January, for me, January 6th, other than the, you know, like, yeah, he's rough and, like I care less about how he acts as a person like as an asshole. I think he's just not competent. I don't think he has the attention span to be competent.

But January 6 changed even my calculation of the damage this cat can do. And it keeps changing, it feels like. Yes. The goalposts will always be moving. That's right. I do believe that is correct. But hang in there, viewers. I wonder if next week all the listener questions would be like,

How do you order something where you can drink your own urine in the forest and survive on mushroom soup? What's your go-to survival pack? What's your go-to go-bag to get out of town? This one is what are your election night self-care rituals? Hey, I'll be working. And I can tell you my, you know, I don't know if there's self-care rituals, but I'm assuming it's going to be if I'm being indulgent, pizza and iced mocha-lates. It's not so much self-care as I need caffeine, sugar, and then something to absorb it.

Comfort food is self-care. Boom! That's actually not even comfort food. Like, it makes me feel like shit. It feels like a treat, though. It is a treat. Yeah. Well, fabulous.

Listen, guys, you've all done such a great job. in putting this show together. I hope the listeners understand that. I get to show up at. Brittany will send me a text at 1055 and go, we're ready for you. But what that means is they've ceded the ground and made everything and made it foolproof,

me being the fool. And I just thank you guys for all the just ridiculously good work you've done leading up to the election. And we're going to keep it going. We're going to loosen it up, I'm sure, after the election and get into all those great juicy topics that we talked about. But thanks for getting us there with such thorough preparation. Just fantastic.

Well, thank you for making us laugh along the way. It's been very stressful. It's very stressful. Brittany, if they want to get a hold of us, how do they do it? Please. Twitter, we are weekly show pod, Instagram threads, and TikTok, we are weekly show podcast. And please like and subscribe our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with John Stewart. Boom. Lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mimmedevick, video editor and engineer,

Sam Reed, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce. I don't want to forget Rob Vitola, who is off on paternity leave right now. He'll be running back. Research and associate producer Jillian Speer and the executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie Gray. Once again, thanks so much for your great work, guys, and we will see you. Oh, God, this sounds so Hamilton. I'll see you on the other side of the war. All right. Bye-bye. The weekly show with John Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Productions. Casts.