The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart - The News You’re Not Getting (and Why) with Amy Goodman

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

As consolidation, layoffs, and deference to power continue to hollow out the corporate media, Jon is joined by Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of “Democracy Now!” and subject of the new documentary "STEAL THIS STORY, PLEASE!" Together, they examine which stories get told and why, discuss the bargain the media makes in trading truth for access, and explore the power ordinary people still possess to organize and fight back — even as attacks on our democracy intensify. Plus, Jon talks Fetterman, Trump nicknames and favorite emojis! This episode is brought to you by: GROUND NEWS - Go to https://groundnews.com/stewart to see all sides of every story. Subscribe for 40% off the Vantage Subscription only for a limited time through this link https://groundnews.com/stewart RIDGE WALLET - Upgrade your wallet today! Get 10% Off @Ridge with code TWS at https://www.Ridge.com/TWS#Ridgepod QUINCE - Head to https://Quince.com/TWS for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. FAST GROWING TREES - Go to https://fastgrowingtrees.com/tws and use code TWS to get 20% off your first purchase. 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

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show. My name is John Stewart, and it is our weekly get-together. Today's May 5th. May the 5th be with you. Yeah, that's probably not going to work. Tomorrow will be the day that this comes out. So what is that going to be May 6th? Who knows where we're going to be? We're coming apart at the seams, ladies and gentlemen. We're apparently involved in a ceasefire that involves bombing other countries and them attacking our boats. Nothing has any. meaning anymore. It's slowly unraveling and slipping away from us to the point where a literal king has to show up in our Congress and go, what the fuck is the matter with you people? Obviously, that is not the tone of voice that he took because he's a king. I believe what he said was, what the fuck is the matter with you? Something along those lines. But he had to remind them, remember, your whole thing was to defeat us so that you could have freedom and function through the consent to the governed, and we're slowly unraveling that. And the guardrails that are put in place are nowhere to be found, including the fourth estate.

And that's why I'm so excited to be talking to somebody who actually has been on the ramparts of that fight for low these past 30 years and does such a public good and a service and her courage and bravery and reliance. are just wonderful examples to set for the next generation of people who want to come out and tell real stories about what's really going on in the world. So Amy Goodman, the fabulous Amy Goodman, ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct pleasure and honor today to welcome to the program, Amy Goodman, who is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now and has just a fabulous film out that is, I think, a wonderful, tribute but also insight into the incredible work that Amy has done throughout all these years.

It's called Steal This Story Please. It's in the theaters now across the country to find a theater. Just visit stealthisstory.org.org. Always.org. Amy, it's always.org with you. It's not dot com. You're not a corporate individual. You're a dot-org individual.

That's right. And I'm not calm either. But I do want to say it. Not at all. Not at all. But I do want to say that. It's not my film. Yep, it's about democracy now, the 30 years. But the directors, Carl Deal and T.L.S.N. are a big deal. They're Oscar nominated for their film on Hurricane Katrina,

Trouble the Water. Tea just won three Emmys for the Jains, which is about the underground abortion network in Chicago in the 60s. They were Michael Moore's producers years ago. They did citizen. Coke. So they're they're amazing and they decided to do this film. So what, you know, to have two Oscar-nominated stalkers in your life? No. What could be wrong? You deserve more. And, you know, it's very interesting because in that moment, I think we've established the difference between Amy Goodman and John Stewart. I give information and then Amy gives the correct information. And that in many ways sums up the careers. I have to tell you, Amy, you know, I am a just long-time admirer of what you do.

Whenever my frustrations over, you know, what we consider mainstream news and the criticisms I have, it always sort of, it comes back to, I mean, look at Amy Goodman. Look what Amy Goodman does. Why can't they do that? And it strikes me that it's because the axis that you work under, and you tell me if this is even mildly accurate, they seem to focus on right-left. You seem to focus on power, no power, voice, no voice. And is that what makes it, is that what grounds it and makes the work so essential? I mean, that's what democracy now is all about, is to go to where. the silence is. And it's often not silent, you know. I mean, it's raucous, it's rowdy, people are

organizing. We're really about covering movements because movements are what make history, or covering the people closest to the story. I mean, we don't bring you the same pundits that you see on every network show who know so little about so much explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. But the people who are at the heart of the story, as my colleague, Nermain Sheikh says, the co-host of Democracy Now in Steal the Story, please, you know, the media is this frame and democracy now widens that frame because usually the media really erases so many voices. And we take the people outside the frame, bring them in, and not only bring them in, but we center them. And you know, John, those people are not a fringe minority. I mean, I really do think those who care about war and peace, those who care about the climate catastrophe, those who care about the immigrant crackdown about reproductive rights, those who care about inequality are not a fringe minority, not even a silent majority. But the silenced majority, silenced by the corporate media,

which is why we have to take it back. And it's incredible how, you know, you bring up such a, I think an interesting point about there is a prototype or a boilerplate that modern media follows. And I understand television has to be producible. But where it's, you know, we give a brief, a bit of information, and then the rest of the time is filled out by people

who don't really have firsthand experience or witness experience. your work and Democracy Now's work feels like you get the information, not the analysis, that so much of media now is just easily produced shallow analysis. But the information is what's actually crucial and necessary to expose these stories. Well, you know, they took the motto of Democracy Now, the directors steal this story, please, because I consider an exclusive a failure. Like if no one picks it up, that's really a problem.

We want it to reverberate out because who are we covering? I mean, in the film, you have our coverage of the standoff at Standing Rock, right? Where indigenous people, Standing Rock Sioux and North Dakota were joined by indigenous people from Latin America, First Nations, from Canada, and then many non-Native allies. They thought maybe a couple dozen people would come to help them fight the Dakota Access Pipeline, but thousands came. So we were even late to the story. We were covering it from New York. That's where we broadcast democracy now from.

But we only went out there in Labor Day of 2016. Now, that is a really important year because that's when Trump first ran, right? He president, Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton. in the presidential debates, not only didn't the moderators bring up this epic gathering, but they didn't bring up climate change. And that's why people were there. They were really scared that the pipeline, which would go under the extremely long Missouri River, could bust, could break, and could hurt the water supply of millions downstream.

So we followed one day when they were protesting bulldozers coming on to their sacred burial site, six bulldozers. They stood in front of them, these earth crushing machines, girls, women, boys, men. And then the machines pulled back. And then the DAPL, the Code Access Pipeline security guards, release dogs on the protesters. And we filmed a dog with its mouth and nose covered in blood. Yeah, yeah. We released that video online. Yeah.

And within 24 hours, there were 14 million views. It really showed, you know, when I go into the networks, when I'm invited into CNN, MSNBC, which is now MS now, I would say to the host, why don't you cover climate change more? And they'd say the executives upstairs, they say that, you know, eyes will roll, that they won't get enough eyeballs. But this gave the lie. Any executive would droll for that number of views. And then the networks one after another pick this story up. President Obama, I think, was in Laos for some historic trip and he held a democracy forum with students. And one of them said, hey, what about that video of the dogs biting the protesters? Wow. And I heard that when he came back to Washington, he saw the video and it wasn't lost on the first African American president what it meant to sick dogs on protesters.

I mean, steal this story. Please take the story. And people don't see these stories. It really is a tree falls in the forest. And if nobody is there to hear it, they don't. But you are wandering the forest recording these trees falling. There's a great moment in the film. And I say great meaning illustrative, not great in that it was awful. You're in Indonesia. East Seymour. East Seymour. and American weapons are being used by the army to slaughter protesters. And you're there. You're filming it. And I think they said in the film, this had been going on for 17 years or something along those lines. Indonesia invaded East Timor December 7, 1975. 90% of the weapons they used were from the United States.

The army was trained, financed, and armed by the United States. And, you know, isn't it amazing that the entire American population, probably most people never heard of, maybe they heard of Baltimore, but not East Timor. Yeah. Barely that. And yet we were connected to them by the barrel of a gun. So I went there to East Timor in November of 1991 with my colleague Alan Nairn, who was writing for the New Yorker. And on this day, November 12, 1991, the people of East Timor were protesting the killing of yet another young person, East Timor. He had been killed on the steps of the church.

Everyone was taking refuge in the Catholic churches of Timor because for the first time, the UN had sent a delegation that would investigate the human rights situation. They were going to send so everyone was dropping out of school and work and going into the churches so they'd be protected to speak. Then we later learned at the behest of the U.S. the U.N. delegation didn't come. And so on this day, thousands of Timorese came out to the church for communion. The priests held it under the trees because there were so many. And then they marched to the cemetery. And we followed them. And this is unheard of at the time an occupied Timor when there was no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of protest.

They marched. And they marched to the cemetery where so many young. people were buried. And that's when we saw the Indonesian army armed with USM 16s marching up. Alan and I always hid our equipment when we were talking to people because if they were talking to journalists, they could be arrested, killed, disappeared. Now I took out my tape recorder. I slung it over my shoulder. I held up my microphone like a flag. Alan put the camera above his head and we walked to the front of the crowd. We knew the Indonesian army had committed many maskers in the past, but never in front of Western journalists. Maybe we could head off this attack.

They marched up 10 to 12 abreast. They came around the corner. People couldn't escape because there were walls of the cemetery and either side of the road. They marched around the corner without hesitation, without provocation, without warning, they swept past us and they just opened fire on the crowd, ultimately killing over 270 Timorese on that day. A group of them surrounded us. They were shouting Australia, Australia. They wanted to know if we were from Australia, which is like two or three hundred miles away.

And we understood what that meant. When Indonesia first invaded, there was a group of Australian journalists with Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC, and they line them up against a house, and they executed them. and the Australian government hardly protested the killing of their journalists. We believe because years later, Indonesia and Australia would divide up the oil spoils and the Timor Gap.

So we wanted to make clear we were not from Australia. And as they beat me to the ground, Alan threw himself on top of me to protect me. And they beat him with the guns as well. And until they used them like bats, the USM 16s, until they fractured his skull. as we lay there in the ground, they then put the guns to our heads, and we just kept saying, America, I threw my passport at them. It said United States of America, America, America. Finally, they pulled the guns from our heads. We believe because we were from the same country their weapons were from, they would have to pay a price for killing us that they never had to pay for killing the Timorese.

And we understood at that moment, in order to stop this killing, we had to get out of the country, to report it to the outside world because only outside pressure would stop this. Folks, I know things seem a little grim right now. You got the MS now on in the background 24 hours a day and you got your Apple news open and you're constantly flipping around and doing all these different things. But I'm telling you, man, there is a new project on news that is here to save us. It's this website nap. Ground news.

They take every article about the same news. story from all the outlets all over the world and they put them in one place and they tell you where it's coming from they give you it's like what is it like the ingredients you know what i mean like you might think to yourself like yeah i'm out what is chips a hoy how bad can it be and then you look at the ingredients and you're like raccoon anus uh no that's what graf oh it's really not that's probably not the correct compliment to say ground news tells you what part of your news is raccoon anus That is probably not the log line that they want to go to at the board meetings. But that is what they do.

They tell you where these stories are coming from. The Nobel Peace Center has said that Ground News is an excellent way to stay informed. It's a hell of a service that they provide. Go to groundnews.com slash Stewart. Subscribe for 40% off the unlimited access vantage subscription. Discount available only for a limited time. that's ground news.com slash steward or scan the QR code on the screen what you do so well is you connect the dots between into these areas that americans are not particularly paying attention to the nexus

of corporate power and military might and all these different things there's another and i hate to walk you through some of the events of the film but i think it lays out a good foundation for kind of some of the things we'll talk about later but again another example of you on the ground is in Nigeria, I believe, and Chevron, which sends helicopters of Nigerian soldiers to shoot people. And you, and I don't know where you get the wherewithal to do it, just go right up to the Nigerian Chevron building and go, hey, I'm an American. May I come in? Well, you know, I was so inspired. This was years ago by this incredible Nigerian writer and activist named Ken Sarawiwa. He was Agoni from Agony land in the Niger Delta. And he threw his lot in with the Nigerian people. And he knew with his prestige he could go outside the country and tell the world, Nigeria is Africa's most populous country. and Chevron and Shell were operating in the Niger Delta,

disempowering so many Nigerians to give power to the rest of the world. And he came into our studio in New York at WBAI. And I didn't think we had time. They just said, he's here. And I said, oh, my God, our show is booked. And they said, he's here for one day. Okay, two minutes. And he came on.

And he talked about how these large multinational corporations depend on. brutal dictatorships in order to suppress the population. And that's what he described. And I said, well, what about you? Where does this leave you? And he said, I am a marked man. And he went back to Nigeria and he was ultimately executed with eight other activists. He had been taking on Shell Corporation. But we decided, after Ken was killed, I decided I had to go to investigate the situation. in the Niger Delta. And so I looked, along with my colleague Jeremy Scahill, who worked at Democracy Now at the time now, found a drop site news. Did great war reporting as well. Yeah. We went to investigate what was happening in the Niger Delta, and we found that Chevron had

flown in the Nigerian military. The people in that area described, they said, we recognized the Chevron helicopters. The mobile police were called the kill and go. That's the kill and go. And they were protesting. The Nigerian military moved in and they killed two of the young men. They critically wounded a third and they arrested others. And so, you know, I said we have to go to Chevron headquarters and ask them about this. And that's when we went to the headquarters to speak to the chief spokesperson. Mind blowing.

They have it on tape. It's unbelievable in its honesty. And it's outright. He is just forthcoming and direct. Oh, yeah, no, Chevron. Yeah, no, we hired the helicopters and we sent the military. The guy just lays it out. And I said exactly who authorized it.

I said, who authorized it? He said that would be Chevron's management. Shevrons management. I mean, it's a shocking example of, and it gets to the broader question, when I think about what my kind of ideal of journalistic integrity or efficacy is, it's that. And why is it, you know, you say when you go to these places into corporate environments or CNN or MS now or all these different places, they always say to you, hey, man, I really wish we could do that. And you're like, you're fucking reporters.

Like, you not only can you do it, you have more resources than Amy Goodman will ever have. You can do it. You're on 24 hours a day. But I do, I want to say when it comes to, I don't even call them mainstream, by the way, because, you know, I really do think that those who care about all of these issues from climate change to corporate power to war are mainstream. I think that's the mainstream. But I think a lot of good people go into the corporate networks because they think they have a broad platform where they can report important issues. But they are the first ones now. And, you know, we just celebrated 30 years of democracy now. But they, you know, early on, they would say, give us a break. Now those very same reporters who may not be working for the networks or, for example, for the Washington Post, where Jeff Bezos's paper, who just laid off a third of the newsroom, hundreds of reporters, they're saying you can't

say this loud enough. And I just want to say, we had this 30th anniversary. And Oh my God, John, I wish you were there. You know, I don't leave the house, right? You know, I don't leave the house, Amy. I just want to point that out. I would have gone. You're just like a hologram. You don't really exist.

Pretty much a hologram. That's pretty true. Well, we were at Riverside Church, this historic place where Dr. King gave his speech, April 4th, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated in Memphis, the speech against the Vietnam War. And at the time, the corporate media, I have the Life magazine issue that castigated him. He said the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence on earth. And they said he did a disservice to his cause, his country, his people.

They said his speech read like a script out of Radio Hanoi. And he just doubled down because he connected militarism, racism, and materialism. And he just kept at it. So we went to this church. 2,000 people packed in. Oh, we actually had it February 23rd, but then there was that one day snowmageddon.

Yes. And we had to cancel it. 2,000 people. So one thing that can stop Amy Goodman is 18 inches of snow. Can't get uptown. It was the fear that someone would slip who came to see us.

So March 23rd, oh, Juan Gonzalez flew in from Chicago. We've done Democracy Now together for 30 years. The great journalist who used to be at the Daily News, he had that DN. Yeah. And then they had this D& Democracy Now. He did some great 9-11 stuff, Juan Gonzalez. Oh, you know, John.

You know because of the great work you did. But he is, he was spectacular. And doing it for a paper that was like, hey, I think this might get us in trouble. As soon he was behind, at first he was on the front page, talking about the benzene, the chemicals. And you're the first one to know about it. Then he slowly was moved to behind the refrigerator ads. His editor was fired. Oh, wow.

But still, he kept at it. And Juan's done such great work right back to, you know, he was one of the founders of the young lords, like the equivalent of the Puerto Rican Black Panthers. Oh, wow. And in New York City, he talked about, and he said in the film, steal the story, please, how they understood very quickly,

they have to frame their own now. They had like hijacked ambulances and tuberculosis testing trucks to come up to Spanish Harlem and places where they were really needed. But they had to tell their story. And the network newscasters, you know, on ABC, NBC, CBS, they said it is amazing how they make downtown white New York tremble. But what they're doing, they have such popularity. but they had a newspaper called Palante ever forward. And, you know, those reporters became some of the leading reporter. Those young lords became some of the leading reporters in New York.

But so Juan flew in and he talked about the importance of independent media. Then hooray for the riffraff, a great group sang their song Palante, like for the newspaper. And then Michael Stipe of R.E.M., he sang, Nermin Sheikh gave her speech. Patty Smith sang Peaceable Kingdom. And LaDavis spoke, Mosab Abu Toha, the great Palestinian poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for his essays in the New Yorker, read his poem under the rubble. And then I was trying to figure out how do we end this 30 years as we move into the next century of democracy. Now, I see someone in the audience, the boss, Bruce Frankston. Get the fuck out.

Come on. And he came up and he sang the streets of Minneapolis. And then altogether the musicians sang Patty's iconic. People have the power. And that's really the theme of democracy now over the last years. Yes, President Trump, any U.S. president, occupies the most powerful office on Earth. But there is a force more powerful. And it is people everywhere in the streets,

talking around the water cooler, organizing in their workplaces or being fired or laid off from them. That force involved with social change, you know, if you build a foundation, you never know when that magic moment comes, but if you build that foundation, you will help to direct the future to make history. And those are the movements we cover. But Amy, the people have to be armed with information, with the information that the dots have to be connected. And, you know, the one thing that they always say, and it's such a strange formulation of what journalism should be, they always say, well, you're not a journalist, Amy, you're an activist. And I don't understand how any journalist were, and by the way, I think it's because

they think activism is a partisan endeavor. But activism in the search. of anti-corruption or in the service of justice or in the service of amplification of voices that don't get to go is exactly what then what is journal journalism is not narration it's not a security camera in a 7-Eleven that's just capturing images what you've infused and what democracy now always did so well is you infused the passion and the activism for justice not Part is, there's a great scene in the film. Bill Clinton calls into your program. It's the election 2000, was it?

Yeah. And it's Election Day. And so Amy gets a chance. Bill Clinton calls, he's just calling a bunch of people. You know, he's calls in Democracy Now. It's just another constituency. She lays out some of the best incisive questions to the point where like Bill Clinton, you don't see him because he's on the phone, but you can imagine that Clinton-esque almost, you know,

the cartoon that Plimpton might draw of Clinton, of just his face getting read like, you're being rude, young lady. Stop asking me these questions. It's such a great moment that it absolutely, I think, illuminates what happens when independent activist anti-corruption media meets power. I mean, we were just doing our job as journalists

to hold those empowered account. Right. He called into WBAI, where Democracy Now is based. He was calling dozens of radio stations to get out the vote. And, of course, when they called, it was like minutes before the show started. And they said, you know, the White House calling. And I thought they said the white horse was calling,

which is this historic tavern, right, in the village. Right, right, where Dylan Thomas drank himself to do that. They got a little plaque up. Right in there, right in his little booth. And so they said, they said the white horse, and I said, the president would like to speak to you. I said the president of what? And they said, the president of the United States. I said, oh, my God, the White House, not the white horse, but he's calling.

And I thought, even still, I thought this was a fake call, but it did give them the internal number. I said, whatever, if he wants to call. Yes, yes. He didn't call during democracy now, that hour. And so it was election day. We were going out to get coffee because we'd be there all night. Who knew that we'd have to be there for five weeks? All month.

Right, exactly. But the next show, as we're walking out, the Nueva Alternativea, the Latino music show, Gonzalo screams, Amy, get in here. The president of the United States is on the phone because he called into the station. So I ran in, and me and Gonzalo did this interview with his producer and my two producers. And, you know, people wait for their, journalists wait for their whole lives to speak with the president of the United States. we had all of zero time to prepare for this interview. And I said, I understand you're calling people to get out the vote.

And he said something. And I said, well, people are wondering, why should they vote? How does their power compare to corporations? And then I asked him about taking the Democratic Party to the right. To the right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he got upset. Boy, he didn't cut the welfare by half. And we've got the highest employment.

And he just went. and she really got heated. A part you don't see in the film, I asked him about whether he would be granting clemency to Leonard Peltier, who was a Native American leader who'd been in jail for decades. He said he was weighing it. Well, 25 years later, Biden, in his last minutes in office, released Leonard Peltier.

And I just went to the Native American reservation where he is in North Dakota. But I also asked him about sanctions about against Iraq. killing so many people. And he got so frustrated. He said, I find you hostile, combative, or at times disrespect. I said, I'm just asking you critical question. I asked about Israel, Palestine. Finally, he said he had to go. And that was fine. And I went into the office and the White House called me. And not the White House, the White House. And they said, you know, they were weighing banning me from the White House. And I said, what are you talking about? He called me. I didn't call him. And then they said, we told you he had a few minutes. You kept him on the phone for over

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That second scene where the White House calls you and castigates you is the part that I found so fascinating, because it speaks to the bargain that journalists and news organizations have made with power. That access is only granted conditionally. And those conditions negate the entire power of what good journalism is. Right. And I call it the access of evil. Right. We all know about the access of evil. Yes, the access of evil. That's right. The access of evil. Trading truth for access is not worth it. The questions you're going to ask for that access, those softball questions. I mean, you saw a few years after the massacre. I was at the White House questioning

Mike McCurry, Clinton's spokesperson. And it was at a time when amazingly, for the first time, Congress was cutting off, had cut off military training aid to Indonesia. I've been coughing since 9-11, too. No, I know. I know. I know. I know the point. You are, you know it well.

You better be on the program. Are you on the program, Amy? There's a drug a program. I'm looking at it. Yeah. Get on that program. But on massacre. So I asked Mike McCurry, you know, he was talking about its president,

Clinton's 21st wedding anniversary with his bride. The reporters were asking about golf clubs that he used. And so I said, is he really going to be restoring military aid to Indonesia? And he wouldn't quite answer my question. And when I really pursued it, I said, some are saying that it's like this was at the time, this was what, 1995, 1996, giving weapons to Saddam Hussein. And he's And Mercury said, we don't see it that way. We see it as serving the national interest, which is just astonishing. What, killing a third of the population of East Timor, one of the great genocides of the late 20th century. And when I was pushing that, he said the turnip is dry.

And all the reporters, many of the reporters in the room giggled and laughed with him. And it's that kind of not only trading truth for access, but it's a kind of peer pressure. And this is not worth it. I mean, politicians need journalists, more than journalists need politicians. Our job is to do our job. It's not to win a popularity contest. There's a reason why the freedom of the press is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment, because ultimately it's about the public's right to know. And we can't have a meaningful democracy unless people have information. But what we have, Amy, is the theater of a democracy. It's a show. I, you know, I can't tell how often I watch these, you know, the daily press briefing where they put on a

play for the American audience. And Caroline Levitt or whoever is in that position, whether it was Mike McCurry in those days or everything, comes out and lies pretty much the whole time. And the journalists sit there and they've been cast, I guess, as the peanut gallery. And a Occasionally, they'll get off a good question, but you're right. They don't cooperate with each other. They're all combating each other for a certain access or trying to make their name. And this theater of the absurd as though that press briefing is illumination in any form. It's not. Well, you know, remember when Newt Gingrich was House Speaker, he would hold a day, he established this sort of this, well, he would hold a press briefing every day. And he would. He got extremely frustrated with my questions. According to a big piece in The Washington Post, he ended it because of my questions. Oh, really?

But I did. They do capture, this wasn't a press briefing, but they do capture the moment I had with Newt Gingrich. It was at the Republican Convention. And his mom had just done an interview with Connie Chung, where she said that Newt, her son, had called the First Lady bitch. That was Hillary Clinton. And so I went up to Newt Gingrich. I mean, his words matter.

He's House Speaker. And I said, Mr. Speaker, will you apologize to American women for calling the First Lady a bitch? And he said something like, I never said what you said, I said. And I said, are you calling your mother a liar then? Okay. And that's when he went, no, she's a bitch. She's not a liar. Oh, God.

She's getting me in trouble. But, you know, it's our job to ask the questions. But it doesn't get done or it's scripted. And so it gives you the illusion of information. And that, I really do think that's the difference. And I'm wondering what you, how does it get captured? Why does it get captured? Because like you said, a lot of them are really good people.

A lot of them are committed. How does it end up as this Kabuki theater? Well, I mean, I think, and I think you should ask some of them, but I think they know how to rise in the corporate media ladder. And when you start saying, I want to go cover that protest, you keep getting sidelined. And you say, well, I went to the White House press briefing, but they wouldn't call on me. This isn't good for them. And so instead, you ask a question that will allow you to ask a question the next day. But, I mean, for us, then you just have to be outside.

Look at the Pentagon reporters. They did something interesting when they were told recently by Secretary Higsef that they had to sign an oath that they would not release classified information without the Pentagon's approval. Interestingly, across the political spectrum, a lot of them said no. So they were outside the Pentagon then. And then in that case, that's where they need to be. A judge just ruled not once but twice that that demand is unconstitutional. you have AP refusing to say Gulf of America. They say Gulf of Mexico.

I thought they could compromise. They could say Gulf of America. If you'd say it with the accent, it's halfway. It's a meeting halfway. Amy, it's a fine solution. How do we unravel that symbiotic relationship where Washington is this nexus now? of corporate power. It's kind of a self-propagating machine. Like, as you see, they deregulate, let's say, tech and create trillions of dollars of wealth that flow towards these five

individuals that we, the gods that will decide our future. And then those individuals will filter back into the political system tens and hundreds of millions of dollars to keep those people ensconced in power, and the media around it is also feeding out of the same trough. It's this... I mean, they're owned by the same. They're all by the same. Right. You've got Washington Post owned by the billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. And what does he do?

He pays $40 million for the Melania documentary and apparently another $35 million to push it. But that's $40 million, giving it to Trump. Right. At the same time, he is slicing the newsroom by hundreds of reporters. I think both are currying favor. And now, apparently, Amazon is talking about reviving the apprentice, and it'll be Donald Trump, Jr., who will be the star of that. And they own the press, and that's why these corporate mergers are such an enormous problem with the Ellisons, with you have them owning Paramount Sky. skydance. Sure. They just bought us and now they want to buy CNN. Warner Brothers Discovery,

CNN and HBO. That's right. CNN, HBO, all those things. But how do you, if there is a media industrial complex, and I think there is, where it's kind of this revolving door where everybody's eating out of the same trough, independent media is the answer. Yet, why does it? Why does independent media grow in that same way? Like, what grows is this sort of podcast universe like this, where we're just analyzing things. But they're not doing the work that you guys do, which is information gathering. We have a model of listener, viewer, reader support. We started, what, 30 years ago on nine Pacifica radio and community stations. We thought we'd end after the election. It was the only daily election show in public broadcasting in 96.

But there was such a demand for it after that we continued. So more and more stations picked us up, some NPR stations as well. Then 9-11 happened. We were at that firehouse, downtown community television. You were right in the thick of it. And one TV station in New York, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Public Access had a link to that community media center. They started broadcasting us as emergency broadcast.

and public access TV stations around the country started asking for the show, then PBS stations, then NPR stations, and now we're at about 1,500 public radio and television stations around the country and around the world. By the way, public access is also under assault right now. But even NPR and PBS backed away from you guys for certain stories, fearing the loss of funding. And for us, we had such a strong global supporter base from 30 years ago. You have to understand, we couldn't afford anything. And the intertubes, it was right around the time of the intertubes coming into being, right?

So, DemocracyNow.org, it was before the word podcast. And we put up the MP3 and radio stations, that's how they could take it for free. The other networks could pay to have satellites to put it out. We couldn't. But because we put it on at DemocracyNow.org, then people would transcribe it immediately, someone in Mexico, someone in Montana, someone in Michigan, segment one, two, and three. Our transcription coordinator put it all together every day. The transcription will be there right away. To this day, most shows don't put their transcript up. And then network reporters, interestingly,

would take those transcripts to the White House, to the Pentagon, to the State Department, and it would be based on their questions, real people closest to the story, not the no-nothing pundits. And that's what we call trickle up journalism. But it grew so fast because of that, we put total information online. Do you think it's your training, Amy, in, you know, there's a different aesthetic when you're dealing with radio news. You know, your background in radio before because it's an interesting transition that you guys made from radio and BAI and all those things to television. But you never lost, you know, a lot of television focuses on it's a visual medium. And unless we have tape, you guys always seem to have remembered your aesthetic from radio.

And it's a different way of telling stories. You're absolutely right. I mean, and it's a more imaginative media. Yes. And so we were on that, and I was before Democracy Now on that. Well, let me just tell the story of Pacifica, which is amazing. 1949, founded by a war resistor named Lou Hill, who came out of the detention camps. In Berkeley, California, they established KPFA in 1949. Oh, I didn't know that was done literally from someone who had been interned in World War II.

Yes. And then KPFK in Los Angeles, 1959, went on the air. My station WBAI 1960, WPFW in Washington, 1977. But the fourth station was KPFT in Houston in the Petro Metro. It goes on the air in the spring of 1970. Within weeks, it's blown up by the Ku Klux Klan. They strap dynamite to the base of the transmitter. KPFT rebuilds themselves quickly, and in a few weeks they go back on.

and the Klan straps 15 times the dynamite to the base of the transmitter. And right in the middle of Arlo Guthrie singing Alice's Restaurant, which I thought was a good song. They blew it up again. It's a good song. It's just very long. And that's probably what happened. So then it takes months for KPFT to rebuild.

And in January of 1971, Arlo comes back to Houston to finish his song on the air. Yes, it might have taken a long time. And KPFT is back on their feet. I can't remember if it was the Grand Dragon or the Exalted Cyclops, because I often confuse their titles. It's very hard to tell them apart sometimes because you've got to look at the hoods. It's like one of them has like a Rehnquist hood that has like little bars on it or something. But he said it was his proudest act.

That's because he understood how dangerous Pacific is, how dangerous independent media is. Dangerous because it allows people to speak for themselves. And when you hear a Palestinian child or an Israeli grandmother, when you hear an Iranian uncle or aunt in Afghanistan, like that Iranian uncle might remind you of your uncle and you might not like your uncle, but it makes you much less likely to want to destroy him. You cannot caricature or stereotype him anymore.

And that is what fuels the hate groups. I think the media can be the greatest force for peace on earth. Instead, all too often, it is wielded as a weapon of war, which is why we have to take the media back. Yes. And manufacturing consent to create a narrative because that's more interesting. I always felt that that was part of what happened in Iraq is there is a certain within the corporate media environment that is wars more interesting than not war. And it's a good story. And it's a buildup.

And they almost create the kind of, I'm not saying they create the war. But they do create a kind of lubricant for the war that allows it to, uh, uh, they take. some of the friction out of the tube. I mean, absolutely. In a time of war, the media tends to circle the wagons around the White House. Look at what President Trump said this past weekend. He said, if you question the war, I think he said, if you say that the U.S. is losing the war or not winning the war, that is treason. Hexeth called them the Pharisees.

I mean, he went biblical. that if you were to question their decisions, you're literally against God. Forget about even America. And this is such an enormous problem. I mean, when you look at Iraq, I mean, what did Iraq have to do with 9-11? Of course not.

But there are commonalities from Timor to Iraq to Venezuela to Iran. Three letters. Oil. And, you know, I'm not saying it's the only reason, but they understood this with Iraq. Remember, didn't they call originally the invasion of the U.S. called the invasion of Iraq Operation Iraqi Liberation. Yeah. And they realized that the acronym was oil.

So they changed it to Operation Freedom. They couldn't do that. They understood it. Even they knew that was too far that they would do that. Am, have you ever felt like that? that stories that you had done had been utilized for the wrong purposes, were there, were there any situations where you felt like you walked into a situation and regretted

putting something out there? Does, in independent, what are the safeguards that independent media has on things like that? I mean, it's a good question. I think of times if someone is taken hostage, if someone in, in different countries, the family doesn't want to put out word right away.

I may hear about it and they're terrified that they'll be killed right away. I, in most cases, would not defy that if someone felt that someone's life was at stake at that moment. I mean, it's just though so important to hear people describe their own experience. and if they can to have someone closest. I was just thinking about a woman name. At the end of Steel the Story, Please, I mean, T.N. Carl did an incredible job, but they continued to add to the film until now, and now it's out all over the country. A woman in Minneapolis.

I mean, the people of Minneapolis have taught us so much. That's people across the political spectrum because it's about community. And about not capitulating in advance to things. And, you know, if an immigrant family is afraid to go out and buy groceries, people would buy groceries for them, afraid to take their kid to school, walk their kid to school. But I was thinking of Alia Rahman. She is an autistic, disabled woman who is on her way to the doctor. Immigration agents stop her, smash her window as she shouts to them, as they drag her out of the car, cutting her seatbelt. I'm disabled.

I'm disabled. they say too effing late, except they use the full word like President Trump does. So they drag her out. They injure her seriously. She's taken to the Whipple detention center. She doesn't know what's happened. When she gets out, we interview her. And then Ilhan Omar, the congress member from Minneapolis, invites her to the state of the union address. You know, they can each get a guest. Ilhan Omar, the only Somali refugee congresswoman who President Trump calls garbage. He goes a whole Somali community in Minneapolis. No, he's denigrated the entire community. Oh, my God. So she goes to the state of the union, Alia Raman. She's a U.S. citizen, and I hate to even qualify this by saying she's a U.S. citizen, as if if you're not a U.S. citizen, you can be dragged out.

You can be treated however they want to treat you. Right, exactly. So she goes, and she's in the gallery where all of the guests are, and she's between some police chief and some mayor of two different towns that others had invited. And she's there, and she's sitting. President Trump's giving that longest speech ever of a state of the union. And the Republicans are standing, applauding, making noise sitting. And, you know, if it was a Democratic president, it would have been the other way.

Democrats would have been standing. Up and down, standing, roaring, sitting down, applauding. And then he starts to denigrate the people of Minneapolis. And she stands up in quiet witness. She stands there. She has a cane. She stands there. Security takes her out.

They take her down. Once she's already injured from Minneapolis, we had invited her on the next day, not knowing any of this, we wanted to ask what's it like to be there at State of the Union after this happened to you in Minneapolis. She is taken to jail. She gets out at 4 in the morning. She comes on democracy now and she says, I am wearing the same clothes that I wore to the State of the Union because I was arrested. I was taken down. It was like a supervisor had to say to the agents who, took her out, what are you doing?

Right. And she came on democracy now. And it's so important, though. It's, Amy, it's so, and it's, and Minneapolis is a great example of that because what you see is, they lie about things that happen. And so if you don't have witness, if people don't have the courage like this woman to stand up, or the footage like they had in the case of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, this is what they lie about when we have witnesses and cameras.

Imagine what they lie about when we don't have that. Exactly. And so, Alia, they have that video. And then here, because she told her own story and much now, New York Times takes it, Washington Post, the networks take it. That's the idea of steal this story. Please, please. Folks, I don't know if you know the Met Gala.

was on. I didn't go, but I could have gone because do I want to say an icon in that world? Yes, I don't think. I don't think anyone, myself, Billy Porter, you know, the designers, they crave to drape me in the newest fashions. I'm considered the poor man's Heidi Klum. And that's where Quince comes in. Our friends of Quince are back to help fashion plates like myself and like my audience. Upgrade your summer wardrobe. You know, I can't always wear couture, if that's what they call like, hot couture. Hot couture.

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash T-W-S for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash T-W-S. You know, there's something in the film that I thought was so poignant. You travel back to a place, a town where I believe it was either your grandmother or your great-grandmother was from. It was Rivna, Ukraine, where my grandmother was born. Now, there's a mass grave there where the Nazis had come in. Your grandmother had gotten out because of the pogroms a little bit earlier. And you stand by the stone that they have commemorating this mass slaughter of tens of thousands of people.

Right. And you say a silent, or you sing a prayer. And it's incredibly moving about the dehumanization of the Jewish people during that time. And then immediately you refer it back to Gaza. And I thought that to juxtaposing those two things so beautifully encapsulated how this dehumanization continues today and that these slaughters are not justified wherever they may go, it was that never again anywhere. Never again for anyone anywhere.

Right. But there's an art to that narration to remind people that the suffering that you believe your people are going through is also what other people are going through. And you cannot cut their humanity off. Well, you know, John, when I grew up in Hebrew school, I was always obsessed with almost. Why would non-Jews help us, help Jews during World War II? Why would they hide away a family in a barn or in an attic or help someone? Because they're putting their own lives at risk.

And I was always amazed. They're called the righteous. And I was stunned by what they did and the enormous risk they took. And you look today at what is happening in Palestine. And, you know, I went to cover at the end of this film. They show the covering of Grand Central. You know, a thousand mainly Jews come out on Shabbas on Friday night, and they shut down Grand Central saying never again for anyone anywhere.

And their T-shirt said Jews say no. And we're interviewing them. That's the important thing. I mean, the networks, how far they'll go, they might show a protest, but go and interview the people. But they don't do that. What they'll do is they'll use that framing, especially on the cable networks, to frame it as anti-Semitic radicals were there. Meanwhile, you're on the ground with them, and they're all Jewish. I mean, we're not, what we're saying is the Netanyahu government and the Zionists who are saying, no, this has all been.

given us by God, and that's what we're going to do. Like, that's what they're rejecting. Right. It's Fox News, and they were saying, the level of anti-Semitism is unconscionable. It shocks the conscience, and they're showing the same protest. And it's you, they're not contradicted because they don't talk to anyone. And then you see this 81-year-old CUNY, Jewish CUNY professor with her high waters, like her pants up to wherever above her ankles. saying to the police, take me, take me.

And you see the children of Holocaust survivors who are older women now saying, never again holding up their handcuffed hands. And you see a young, obscure state legislator who is there, who I entered in the name of Zoran Mandani. Right? Who says, I am here in solidarity with the Jewish community.

And I had asked him, this wasn't included in the film, Are you getting arrested today? But he had told me he couldn't because he had just gotten arrested like a week or two before. And that could lead him to prison. So he was there supporting people. And amazing. Think of what has happened with Zeran Mamdani from that to speaking up right now as mayor of New York City. But to see, you know, Amy, as the cycles continue to repeat themselves,

Does it cause you? Is it disheartening? You know, so much of what you were doing early on as you were drawing that line between corporate power, American money, the violence being done to people in other places in our names for our fuel and all those things. And then you draw the line today, American dollars being used with weapons to kill people that have, we have no beef,

where that have nothing to do with us for fuel. and all these other things. And it's, you know, look, the show that I do, like, there's a certain impotence to it. That is, it can be cathartic, but it's impotent. And that's a frustration that I deal with. But I wonder when you're doing it in a manner that is really you're embedded in it with those voiceless people. And I wonder, what does that do to you emotionally? First of all, you're underestimating to say the least, your own power, because humor means so much.

And obviously, President Trump pays attention to say the least. A little too much. But, you know, after I come off the show every day, I suffer from PTSD, post-traumatic show disorder. It is a lot to take in. But think about what it is for the people. whether we're talking about Iran. I mean, I just want to say when we were talking about Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and gutted the newsroom staff, almost the whole Middle East division. We had on a Washington Post reporter right at that time a few weeks ago who did an analysis of the first day of the U.S. Israeli strike on Iran.

In southern Iran, Minab, the girls' school, the primary girls' school. She did an analysis. You know, it looks like it was a U.S. Tomahawk missile, hit the school, 100.7,000. 75 people dead about a dozen teachers and mainly little girls going to school. And this Washington Post reporter was in our studio doing this incredible analysis of it, but she didn't work for the Washington Post anymore because she had just been laid off. Now, she still did that. And people now, everywhere, are still doing things. And the media, I couldn't have predicted social media how it rose up over these years.

Um, we always went to, we never expected people would come to us. We go to where everyone is and we put out the news on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, whatever. And I don't think we can predict with the shuddering of newspapers, the gutting of them, the networks consolidating or disappearing. Who knows if HBO documentaries, those documentaries like Tia's the Jains will still be there. if it's taken over by Trump allies. Who knows? But new entities emerge. And if we can just be a model for what that new entity can be, in the rest of the world, they know state media and they know private media, but they don't know listener, viewer, reader-supported media. And that's what we want to be a model of. And the hunger for independent voices, you know, I'm traveling the country with the film, talk doing the Q&As after. We were just, and we do fundraisers for either NPR stations, for PBS stations. We just did Howard University's PBS, WHUT, WPFW, Pacifica Radio, WEEAA at Morgan State. These have been amazing. And in Baltimore, when we got there at the movie

theater, it's called the Charles in Baltimore. Big sign, the devil wears product. And I, you know, Devil Wars Prada too. Yeah. And then over on the side, it said, steal the story, please. So as we pulled up, I mean, the place was packed to the gills. And I go, oh, my God, it's going to be empty and everyone's going to the Devil Wars Prada. So anyway, I go in and everyone's saying, oh, my gosh, we loved much now. I said, really?

So all these folks who are going to the Devil Worse Prada and they go, what are you talking about? We're going to steal this story. And then I looked on the screen and it said, steal the story sold out. But they were still selling plenty of tickets. to the devil rest braada. Wow. Yes, there is a hunger for independent media.

I see the media is a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day. War and peace, life and death. Like how you grew up. It really, in many ways it's a reflection

of the Shabbas table. You're sitting around with your mom and dad who sound like incredible people and your brother. Incredible. And sort of... Three brothers. And practicing...

I was thinking to the one who ran David's Press, who ran... Yes, Dave's Press. He writes books with me. He's a great journalist in Vermont. But it really... It's grounded in a kind of a familial, warmth and love of criticism, discussion, openness, honesty.

And even after we have vicious fights, We still love each other. But it's, and you've, you've, you've taken that aesthetic and infused it into this really incredible media entity. Well, to, yeah, I mean, that is the power of the voices. I mean, they, I bask in their glow. But just to say with that image, seeing it as this huge kitchen table where we debate the key issues. Anything less than that is a disservice to the servicemen and women of this country because

they can't have these public debates on military bases about whether they're sent to kill or be killed. Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society. I couldn't agree more. And I think the moral foundation of what you do has to be infused into news organizations where it's corporate or not. And I think the people in those organizations have more power than they believe that they do. And they have to start taking that back. You know, as you look at the future of independent media and, you know, sort of democracy stands as kind of a linchpin of it and a real guiding force for people and a light, is there a future for it that is, you know, benefactor driven? Is there a a Bezos, but for independence, that carries it through?

I think it comes out of community. And the support has to come from the community. It's always got to come out of community, right? I mean, because ultimately, look, I mean, Bezos buys the Washington Post. No one knew what he would do with it. But during that time, they developed that slogan, democracy dies in darkness, which is true. But look, it's very dark at the Washington Post right now.

I was going to say, and they're the, ones who had the dimmer switch and they're the ones that we're pulling it. Amy, I just want to thank you for spending the time with us. I'm such an admirer and the work that you've done over all these years is just, it's legendary. And so we so appreciate you and all the people that are behind the scenes that works a heart, although I have to say you do more with less than any organization of your ilk that I have ever seen in my life. Well, my colleagues are my inspiration. Yeah, it's fantastic. So Amy Goodman, host an executive producer of Democracy Now, and the movie is, steal this story. Please go to steal this story.org and find out where it's

playing and go check it out because it's incredibly moving and incredibly inspiring. And I appreciate you. So thank you for talking to us. Thank you so much. Hope to see folks at the movie theater. Absolutely. See you soon. You know what I hate, ladies and gentlemen, almost more than anything. it's slow growing trees. Come on, tree. I don't have all day. I don't have all epoch. Era, age.

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Use TWS to save today. Offer is valid for limited time. Terms and Conditions Supply. Amy Gutman. I loved that. So good. She's so good. You know what's crazy, though, is when you realize the amount of work that they're doing, like, three of them.

Literally, I was shocked by that in the documentary. Stunned! Yeah. There's a great one of, like, a documentary that she's putting together. And she's literally editing herself while she's on the air. She's slicing the tape. That's amazing. I saw that storyline on, like, the first episode of Newsroom.

And I was like, that would never happen. And then I see it in this dog actually happening. I'm like, oh, shit. Yeah, it's amazing. She is next level. I just, I am fan-girling from a journalist perspective. She really gave journalists, like me, the courage and the permission to avoid the pressures that the industry puts on people. And we've talked about some of those, like, you know, trying to write the clickbadiest article so that you can get a bonus.

Yeah, yeah. achieve internet glory with the sexiest of war stories, let's say. But I don't know. She really stands out as someone who reports the story that she doesn't see and wants told. And a little, like, interesting side is that I was a former national security reporter. And I would write stories that I knew would not get clicks. And one of them, like 10 years ago, was about how the American Psychological Association voted to ban its members from participating in national security interrogations after what we know.

And it went fine. Like I got this great story that didn't see elsewhere. And then it vanished. And then a little bit later in her 20th anniversary book, it was cited. And she had a whole section about people and the power that they have. And so I just think it kind of brings it full circle of I as a journalist have power. these individuals have power and together you have even more power to create the reality you want to live in. That's awesome.

Lauren, that's beautiful. Yeah. Can I ask you a question about that? Because it does, I would imagine that most young people, and when I say young people, I'm talking about Jillie and Lauren and Brittany. Most young people go into that business because it's a calling, because they feel an obligation. They're drawn to issues of justice. drawn to things. In your mind, when you were there, how does that get beaten out of them or stolen from them? I mean, I touched on this, but I've worked at places that have bonus structures,

that if you get a baseline salary of peanuts, and then if you achieve a certain level of clicks on certain stories, you can get bonuses. So literally some people's livelihood is tied up with writing the sexiest story possible. But on like a grander scale, I mean, people know that in order to get a bigger platform, you have to be known. And the ways of doing that are writing sexy stories and getting them in front of people. But yeah, she shows that everything is possible. And cozying up to the powers that be the control. It's access.

Exactly. Access to power, access to corporation. Yeah, the incentive structure is just fucked all the way down. It's like it's not just the journalists that have the wrong incentive structure. It's the entities that they work for that do. Right. Top, top down. And it meets us to where we are now.

That's right. That's right. Oh, yeah. Journalists, I mean, are at the bottom of the, like, power structure. It definitely comes from the top. And, I mean, there's a pressure on editors to get these structured a certain way so that they have success. And it goes all the way up. There was a point in the documentary that I loved so much, which is they were at the Republican National Convention in 2008.

And there's all these protests outside. I think Amy got arrested. That was, yeah, yeah, she got arrested. Yeah. And they interview Katie Couric. Yes. And she asks, are you going to be covering the journalists outside getting arrested? And she goes, you know, I've seen that.

And I would love to, but we have all these speeches. And she said, she literally says that we have all these things that they want us to show. And you're like, who wants you to show? All these speeches that they want us to show. They? Yeah. You're not a cameraman. You're a journalist.

Like, you have some agency in this. I love that little line. Like, she's like, I'm aware of it as if that matters. And no shade to Katie. Like, I'm sure it's not just her. No. No, it's everybody. But you know, in their hearts, you know that they got into this business to do the right thing, to tell the right story.

And I honestly believe, like, they could do it. They could overturn. I don't think that the incentive system is, I think you could make a profitable news business out of what democracy now does, using them as your touchstone, not BuzzFeed or whatever the fuck people use. I think it takes a leap of faith. It just takes a lot of bravery. Bravery, right.

But you saw, she was in East Timor. She's in like, oh, my God. She's putting herself in literal harm's way. And, you know, it's like the exact opposite. Like, when she said an exclusive is a failure. Bars. Like, that's just the exact opposite. of this like save it for the book culture that we're seeing right now where everything comes out a year and a half later and they want it all to themselves right word uh well it was fantastic brittany what do the what do the kids want to know from us all righty uh first up john do you think fetterman is going to flip to the republicans fetterman uh i think the the republican caucus is uh if i know correctly uh no hoodies allowed

Suddenly they're okay with his hoodie. Yeah, no, I think the Republican Cogas is like a country club. I think there might be a dress code. I think he got to wear at least like a polo shirt. So I don't think. I mean, to be fair to Federman, like, I don't know how he would be a Republican. Like he goes along with them on, I guess, Israel, which I really don't understand. And maybe there's like a couple of, you know, he'll throw a bum.

But as a Republican, I don't understand where he would fit in unless he just wants like to be in a better office or get a better committee role. But like, he's not a Republican. Do you see what he said about Platner? No, what do you say? Like, the Republicans love Platner? The Republicans love Platner? Yeah, he said that.

What does that mean? I just love how all of these Democrats are like pointing the finger like, no, you're going to be a Republican. You're going to be a Republican. No, he's going to be a Republican. I think he should just draw the two strings on the hoodie and just pull it down. Shut the fuck up for just a little while. But he will wear a suit when Netanyahu comes to town. Right.

He's like, I'll dress up for him. He's got a very peculiar set of, he's got great empathy oftentimes for marginalized groups. Yet in that situation truly is just, I'm not looking at anything else but Netanyahu. It's such an odd dichotomy from how he is with almost everything else. I can't follow his logic. No, but I will say this. He is the senator I most dressed like. Honestly, probably save. I'm dressed like him now. You don't know that. I'm hoodyless, but pretty much everything else is straight fetterman right now, to be honest with you.

I've been fettermaning it since probably like ninth grade. Before him, maybe. Yeah, something like that. What else? What else? John, why do you think the Democrats never found a good nickname for Trump? How about Dummy Don? Dushidon or Trumpity Dumpity? Yeah, that's probably why, because none of those are any. I had one form years ago, fuckface font clownstick, which I used when he and I were in a Twitter war together.

Well, he was in a Twitter war. I didn't have Twitter. And he went after me one night because my real last name is Leibowitz. And so he felt that I was hiding that I'm Jewish, which if, you know, I don't know where else you would see this face other than like a poster for fiddler on the roof. Like I, you could, whatever my name is, it's pretty obvious. And I talk about it all the time about growing up Jews.

So I, I want, he said, you know, you know his name is John Leewood. So he's an imposter and why run from your heritage? And so I tweeted back at him, Donald Trump's real name is fuck face von clownstick. Why would you run? And so suddenly he's getting bombarded. and like 12 hours later he just tweets out. Everybody thinks fuckface von Klanczek is so funny. And they're all tweeting it at me.

It's not original. It's not funny. And then like we didn't hear anything else about it until like two weeks later at three in the morning. He just tweets out, John Stuart Leeuowitz is a pussy. And that's it. That was the end of the fight. Wait, was he president during this time? Or was this?

He was not. He was in his, he was in his I do videos from my office era. Okay. Not to put it into Swifty in terms, but he was in that era. And I just thought, well, this is insane that this guy is. Not presidential. Not, I mean, forget about presidential, running a large conglomerate. Like, real estate thing, like you're up at three in the morning just randomly calling people pussies.

Was that the last time that you guys interacted? Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, we've interacted a couple of times in. person before all that. I had him on the daily show at which point. And by the way, like his predilection for lying is not new. It is how he conducts his business.

Like he was on the show. He's like, The Apprentice is the number one show in America. And I was like, it's actually, I think, 32nd. Like it was on the down swing. So I'm like, I don't think that's true. And he's like, number one. You're like, oh. Sure.

It reminds me, have you ever seen the footage of, Mike Wallace interviewing Roy Cohn, who was Trump's lawyer and confidant and mentor. For those who don't know, Roy Cone was the, he worked with Joe McCarthy on the House and Americans Committee. Like, truly the epitome of a bad person. Like, it's a person with ill intent who learns the ways of the legal sense. system so that he can weaponize it against good human beings. And he was Trump's guy. Like, you don't hire Roy Cohn if you feel like, I'd like my business to be above

board. Like he's a guy. But it's such an interesting interview. Mike Wallace is saying, Roy Cone is sick at this time and he's dying. He has AIDS. And Mike Wallace says, forgive me, you know, but the rumors around that you are, you know, back in the day then they referred to it as you are a whole. homosexual. That's how they would, you know, on television. Like now he would just go,

rumor is you're fabulous. Is that true? That's not how it goes on. So rumors you're homosexual and that you have AIDS. No, what? No, I don't have AIDS. You can call my doctors. We called your doctors and they can't talk to us unless you say they can. Are you saying we can call them? I don't have AIDS. I have a liver cancer. It's different. They just give you the same drug. drugs as AIDS. That's what I'm not gay. I'm not, you know, Mike says, you know, people think there might be a moment where you come out of the closet. Come out of the closet for what? I'm not a homosexual and I don't have AIDS. And like, this just goes on. And Mike Wallace is being very respectful, but somewhat insistent. And it goes on and on and on. And then the coda of it is Roy Cohn, a gay man,

has died of AIDS. But it was such an interesting exercise in, and you almost felt like in the moment, Roy Cohn believed it. Hmm. And maybe that's the secret of it. Maybe that's the Costanza of it all. Yeah. It's not a lie if you believe it. Yeah.

I think Trump believes his own lies to some extent. I do. Is that the dynamic? I don't know. I feel like with the Tucker Carlson interview that just happened and he was saying like that man just does not know much information, like probably sounds good enough to him to believe without enough context. But there's another guy who, how would Tucker know?

There's another guy who's literally asked in the thing. You said he might be the Antichrist. I never said that. Never said it. Here it is. It's written here. That never came out of my mouth. Here's the video.

I never said, I never said that because I don't know what the antichrist is. Like, they are, it is a grifter subculture. And they're all a part of it. And Tucker's move is just the latest shift of the grift. That's all this is. There's no epiphany. It's just,

Oh, that fucking ship is sinking. And the media doesn't hold them accountable. They'll move on to the next thing. And the New York Times does a profile of Tucker over the weekend. Right. Like, oh, this is an interesting transformation. No, it's not. And why is he transforming?

Because he knows. And has he transformed? Because he's an opportunistic asshole. Wow. Buzha-gaboom. Now, there's a nickname that'll stick. All right. What's the last one?

What's the last one? Last one. John, what's your favorite emoji? Oh. Uh, the, the emoji is, uh, not, we're not talking about a giffy. No. Or gif. Well, what's your favorite gif?

Yeah, do you have one of those? Uh, generally it's the, uh, there was a baby at a hockey game who was like, and like super intense. And I'll hit, I'll hit that one a lot. Uh-huh. Uh, or no, yeah, it's a little girl and she's holding like, she looks like she's eating some cotton candy and it's like. Sugar rush.

Suddenly just dopamine and she's just like, I will fucking kill all of you. I like that one. I like SpongeBob coming out of the shirt. Oh, I've gotten that one. Have I said that to you? That's a big one. Anything with the dog.

Of course. But what's the emoji? We have a guess. I don't do many of them, to be quite honest. Poop is always big. I like, I'll slap a poop. on something depending. I don't do a lot or a poop or this face.

Oh, the grimace. Grimmis, grimace, grimmis guy. We were going to go, our polymarket was thumbs up. Because any time, you know what? You're right. Anytime he said John a thing, it's like, do you want to do 11 a.m. or 12 p.m.? And he's like, just thumbs up. Yes.

Busted. Yes, that is, that is correct. You're absolutely right. generally they're not their yes they're not their questions and I'm just like yes what's what's what's your jillian what's your emoji go to oh I like the um I like the one eye close and then your tongue out like that's that that's that's crazy pants yeah or just like she's having a good time oh all right drunk what's your what's your go to so in this administration I've been using a lot of the upside down smile and a lot of the melty smiley yes the melty smile is a good one too and the and the head

explosion head oh yeah that's a good a good alt as well i do explosion head sometimes prittany um i do a lot of like the eyes like looking to the side oh the two like that's yeah yeah yeah because i'm always like what's the tea or like eyes have you ever found yourselves in a conversation where like in person somebody says something and you go and you will actually do because of the emoji, you will do the face in real life. I do the grimace a lot. Yes. I think so. I think I do that too. And because of the Chrissy Teigen Giff where she's like, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I just adopted that face because of that. But know that in conversation, I don't ever use in real life the poop emoji. That I don't do. But your dog does. That's really his go-to. That is

always along there. Guys, fantastic program. So nice to catch up and talk to Amy Goodman and you guys are lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamadwick, producer Jillian Speer, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, and our executive producer is Chris McShane

and Katie Gray. We will join you guys again next week. The weekly show with John Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Productions.