- 3 months ago
The comedian talks about the suppression of political speech at Paramount and in America, and how he plans to respond to it.
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00:00From Comedy Central, it's the all-new, government-approved Daily Show, with your patriotically obedient host, Jon Stewart.
00:21So we're coming to you tonight from a real shithole, the crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City.
00:38It is a tremendous disaster, like no one's ever seen before.
00:45Someone's National Guard should invade this place, am I right?
00:51Hello.
00:54Hello.
00:55Jon Stewart.
00:56How are you?
00:58Isn't this lovely?
01:03He's standing.
01:04Standing.
01:05How are you?
01:06I am so pleased to have Jon Stewart here.
01:10Me too.
01:12Jon.
01:13I'm delighted.
01:16This is a man of New Jersey.
01:18Can I hear it for people?
01:21That's it?
01:22That's it?
01:23That's it?
01:24That's the appropriate level of respect.
01:27Few cheers, couple of boos, most people indifferent.
01:31I understand.
01:32I've lived there.
01:33I want to begin by reminding you of what happened not long ago when Jimmy Kimmel was tossed off the air.
01:43You had to come up with a response to something very serious.
01:48And I want to know if you, and by the way, you weren't alone.
01:52Colbert also did, John Oliver also.
01:54Sure.
01:55Was there any sense of coordination or conversation in how you would do this?
01:58No, we don't even, I don't even have their numbers.
02:00I don't know.
02:01No.
02:02No, we do have a text chain that goes along.
02:04I think everybody, look, we all understand it's a luxury.
02:09None of us are owed a platform or any of those things.
02:11But we also understand that it's a meaningful luxury and that there is a certain amount of strength of a society that is able to withstand the smallest of ridicule.
02:24And when that goes away, when the leadership becomes, you know, the last time that that happened was, I have a friend who did a show very similar to mine in Egypt, and he was exiled.
02:33And in America, we sort of assumed that satire was settled law.
02:39And to find out that it, along with Dobbs, were going to be revisiting what we considered stare decisis, you know, I think it rattled everyone to some extent.
02:52But it also presented great opportunity.
02:55And so I don't know that we've had as much fun as we did that Thursday morning coming up with all the stupid little shit that you see with, I mean, including like gold pictures and red ties.
03:10And, you know, it, it gave us some purpose.
03:14That being said, like, I want to be clear, I don't, the victims of this administration are not the comedians.
03:20Like, we are a visible manifestation of certain things, but the victims are the victims, are the people that are struggling to have any voice and are being forcibly removed from streets by, you know, hooded agents.
03:37You know, those are the victims of this administration.
03:39You, you say that he, that, that this is not the issue, but I, I, look, I, I remember when Putin came to power in 2000.
03:49Sure.
03:50The first thing he did was take a program that was a satirical program about politics called Kukli puppets off the air.
04:00And people said, oh, I took the puppets off the air.
04:02Within a couple of weeks, the news was off the air.
04:06Isn't it possible that this assault, however kind of herky-jerky and back and forth it might be, is tantamount to something else?
04:15When seven million people show up in America on a weekend for anything, I mean, honestly, anything, you know something's going on.
04:24And, and this is, they are attempting to graft, I think, an alien culture onto this country.
04:34We're not Russia and their history of autocracy or dictatorship or those things.
04:42That doesn't mean we're not going to be in some kind of soft autocracy where news is controlled, but we have a lot of different avenues and suppression creates opportunity.
04:55And, and a populace that is thirsty for inspiration and leadership and morality and integrity and lack of corruption, that's fertile ground for that opportunity.
05:10So, like, as bad as this is, and it's fucking bad.
05:15Like, I knew it would be bad.
05:17I did not, it was, I think it was going to be, like, flesh-eating dick cancer bad.
05:22Like, I, that's, that's an, I.
05:25Yeah, you know how bad it is?
05:27David Ellison just bought Paramount.
05:29That's my new boss.
05:31Yes!
05:32And not only does he, forgive me, own your enterprise, he could also affect it.
05:39And he just hired Barry West to run CBS News.
05:42So tell me what this, tell me what this means.
05:45Well, I wish you would mention that before I went into the dick cancer bed.
05:51This is not happenstance.
05:53This is, this began with Richard Vigory doing a, a, a mail-in to try and get people to be conservative.
06:00This began with people buying AM radio stations and converting them to conservative talk radio.
06:04This began with Roger Ailes and the Nixon White House going, we will never allow this to happen to a Republican politician again.
06:12All of the institutions by which I mean education and media and news and academia and all those things that we relied on as a solid tent post by which to build a decent society on, they were like, yeah, no.
06:30No.
06:31And they built a parallel universe of think tanks and education and media.
06:39And so that they could at some point just flip a switch and move us over onto that track.
06:45Because what, what do these institutions have?
06:48They are, they are the reference point for our decisions.
06:52What do you do?
06:53You quote, well, there's a study done by, and you use data and scientific method and other things to try and make as informed a decision as you can.
07:02But if you're a political movement that believes that investing those institutions with authority is against your movement, the best thing you can do is build organizations that either tear down the credibility of those institutions or you build your own.
07:22But with respect, John, this is, this is, this is, this is markedly different.
07:27It's one thing to, it's one thing to have the Brookings Institution that was kind of liberal and then you have the rise of the American Enterprise Institute.
07:35It's one thing to have a liberal newspaper and then a conservative newspaper, fine, fine.
07:40In fact, all the better in some ways.
07:43Mm-hmm.
07:44But this is, what's going on now is different.
07:47And with respect, you're gonna face it potentially with Paramount and The Daily Show.
07:54Sure.
07:55What do you do?
07:56You, you don't compromise on what you do and you do it till they tell you to leave.
08:01Mm-hmm.
08:02That's all you can do.
08:03That's, that's all you can do.
08:05So, I think the line that you gave before was, I'm not giving in, I'm not going anywhere, I think.
08:14I'm, I'm neurotic still.
08:17I'm not, you know.
08:18But you, your contract comes up in December.
08:21You're gonna sign another one?
08:22Uh, I mean, I, I, we're, we're, we're working on, on staying.
08:27Look, the, the other thing to remember is it's not as clear cut as all that.
08:31Uh, the business-
08:32In other words, if it's up to you, you're staying.
08:34Oh, yeah, sure.
08:35Okay.
08:36Yeah, yeah, yeah.
08:37Yeah.
08:38Okay.
08:39It's up to me, I understand.
08:40How do you think CBS News will be affected?
08:43Does evening news even matter at this point in the-
08:46I don't know.
08:47In the media sphere that we live in?
08:48We, we are conject, we are projecting things that, that we do not know.
08:52The ecosystem has changed.
08:53The monetization of it has changed.
08:55I will tell you this, it is a different ethos.
08:57But one thing we have to remember, and this is the hardest truth for us to get at, is
09:01that the institutions that we spoke about earlier have problems.
09:05They do.
09:06And if we don't address those problems in a forthright way, then those institutions become
09:11vulnerable to this kind of assault.
09:14Credibility is not something that was just taken.
09:17It was also lost.
09:19And that is a part of this equation that has to be considered.
09:24And the Democrats have to consider that as well.
09:27There's a reason Donald Trump came to power.
09:30And that is that in the general populist mind, government no longer serves the interests
09:36of the people it purports to represent.
09:38That's a broad-based, deep feeling.
09:41And that helps.
09:42When someone comes along and goes, the system is rigged.
09:45And people go, yeah, it is rigged.
09:47Now, he's a good diagnostician.
09:49I don't particularly care for his remedy.
09:52Tell me why you think Trump won.
09:54Because of that.
09:55Because of the dissatisfaction of an analog system in a digital world.
10:00The distance between how you feel about the world and the world has never been larger.
10:05You know, we are victims of the circadian rhythms of social media.
10:10And social media is incentivized to what?
10:13Not connect us.
10:14And I've seen the Facebook commercial.
10:16And yes, it's true.
10:17If you do like a certain kind of cat, there will be other people that like that certain
10:21kind of cat.
10:22And you will connect with each other.
10:24But the purpose of social media is to keep you on its platform.
10:27That's it.
10:28They want you on that platform.
10:30They want you on there as long as they could possibly have you.
10:33And the way that they have rigged our brains to figure it out is that outrage and anger
10:39and hate and hostility are much stronger drivers of engagement than anything else.
10:46Now, on the flip side of that, we have a political system designed in the 18, what?
10:541789.
10:55It's designed as an analog.
10:58What is the Senate?
10:59It's the cooling saucer of democracy.
11:04And what's Twitter?
11:06The thing that makes you want to rip people's eyes out.
11:08And you put those together and it's not a good mix.
11:12And so he was able to harness the anger and catastrophizing of that as a way of taking
11:20over that other thing that we have.
11:22And you didn't find Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a good remedy for that in the election?
11:30That was cool.
11:31It's a set up line.
11:32I thought they were great.
11:35Look what's going on with Mandani.
11:38You know, you finally got a guy in New York City who is getting people to vote in the affirmative
11:44for his positions, who is inspiring people and giving a certain amount of leadership.
11:49And what is the general status quo of the Democratic Party do with that?
11:54This guy is a communist.
11:57Like they go along with the caricature of this man.
12:02Look, we're in a bad situation, but it's not just Trump.
12:07It's the passivity of the Democratic Party to stick with a status quo that most people felt was not working.
12:19In January, about a week after Trump was inaugurated, you did a monologue on The Daily Show.
12:28God knows it was critical of Trump, but you didn't go after him so much as you went after a lot of his critics,
12:34or at least the more hypocritical and pearl-clutching ones.
12:38You seem to be saying that instead of crying wolf, calling him a fascist for every executive order was to his benefit.
12:47I agree.
12:48Do you think you underestimated how bad this would get?
12:52No.
12:53I stand by it because in that moment, that's how I felt.
12:56What I'm saying is the seeds of this destruction were not sown this year.
13:03They were sown by Citizens United.
13:06They were sown by Corporations Are People.
13:09They were sown by a Democratic Party that thinks it's okay for their Senate to be an assisted living facility.
13:19Like, respectfully, like, I mean, I could kick the shit out of the Senate.
13:33I don't mean this cynically.
13:34I mean this idealistically.
13:36I mean this as, like, we better get real about this very fast.
13:40And it's coming from a perspective of having worked with our government to try and get certain things done.
13:47I was stunned by certain Republicans that would tweet out, never forget the heroes of 9-11, versus how they would vote for their medical care.
13:57But I was also stunned by the Democratic Party leadership's passivity and being told over and over again, no, no, no, you have to go through regular order.
14:09When we have this congressional hearing, I don't want you to be confrontational.
14:14You have to be nice.
14:15And then what we hopefully will get to do is put the first responders and the victims of 9-11, we'll be able to put their health care into the transportation bill.
14:24Unless Mitch McConnell thinks he wants to trade that for the import-export tax that he really wants on petroleum.
14:30And I would go, that's crazy.
14:35And so this is coming from a place of, I've lived with this.
14:39Well, we're in the middle of a government shutdown.
14:41Right.
14:42Which is a different attitude this time than it was the last time.
14:45That's right.
14:46Does that make Chuck Schumer any braver now than he was before?
14:49No.
14:50And you can tell about, like, what Chuck Schumer's been told is, you're losing.
14:54And people like your glasses to be higher up on your nose.
14:57And so, what I'm telling you is, here's what they're doing with us now.
15:04The strategy is authenticity.
15:08And suddenly, people in Congress are cursing.
15:13Oh, and it seems so natural.
15:16When Chuck Schumer curses, this is a shitty bill.
15:23I'm telling, like, I'm over it all, man.
15:30I'm over it all.
15:32And I understand why people wanted to blow it up and why it's so vulnerable to being taken over by a charismatic person that says, I understand how this is done.
15:43Like, even the shutdown, which I'm glad that they stood up for something, but I still think the ACA is playing the Republican in the corporate game.
15:54It's basically just subsidies to insurance companies when what we need is health care.
15:58And the ACA doesn't give you health care.
16:00It gives you subsidies to get a coupon that maybe you can take to someone that then they'll give it to you and then they'll still be a deductible.
16:1040% of people in this country go without things like food because of their medical debt.
16:15And so, like, when the Democrats announce that they got the pharmaceutical companies to, out of the grace of their heart, allow us to negotiate the price on 10 different medicines, only 10.
16:29And that's a victory when we're subsidizing these motherfuckers by billions of dollars a year. No, no more. I'm done with it.
16:40We grew up in New Jersey, but I grew up with another comedian, Bill Maher.
16:44I used to play basketball in a driveway with him, and he was a local celebrity.
16:49You know, there's nothing better than playing basketball with short juice, I have to tell you.
16:54Yeah, you can post up on them.
16:57We used to have a game at Gary Shandling's house.
17:04Literally, we were like, I think Al Franken might be Pete Maravich.
17:10Kevin Nealon would come by and everybody would just be like, what? No!
17:16You can't do that!
17:20Yeah. And Bill Maher is the comic political voice of the notion that the biggest problem the Democrats have is wokeism.
17:33How do you respond to Bill's approach to the world?
17:37I don't know if that's just Bill's. I mean, I...
17:39It's shorthand for it, but I...
17:41Wokeism is not something that enters your analysis of things for the most part.
17:46No. There is a real pressure that people feel on issues that they don't quite understand, where they don't want to offend, and it can have a censorious effect on discourse. I've seen it.
18:02And the left certainly has their...
18:07Like, when someone says to me, like, pregnant people, I do go, well, it's... I understand, but, like, come on.
18:15But it doesn't make you crazy.
18:16Like, yeah, you'd be better to be, like, pregnant women and Dave. Like, you don't have to, you know what I mean? Like, you don't have to do the whole thing. So, yeah, that gets a little out of control.
18:27But the idea that that has the same effect on the world as, like, a rich country that isn't able to give its people healthcare, that's where I take exception.
18:42The one thing I would give him is the most politically effective, so-called most politically effective advertisement for the Trump campaign was the one about trans people. You know, she is for them, he is for you.
18:57That was extremely effective, unfortunately.
18:58Right, but the answer to that commercial is simple as well.
19:01Like, yes, Donald Trump is for you if you are a convicted sex trafficker who should get transferred to a less bad prison because you're not going to name him.
19:15Donald Trump is for you if you have a jet that you will give him. And then, or Donald Trump is for you if you give billions to his campaign.
19:26And so he will allow you to bypass tariffs and not small businesses. Like, my problem is they don't know how to fight that effectively.
19:35They do not realize the game they are playing, I don't think, in my mind.
19:40How do you mean?
19:41There is a relentlessness and of bad faith to the social media algorithm.
19:49It's, I'm trying to think like, okay, here's a different analogy.
19:53If you go to a restaurant and the food is delicious, it's because they probably like add a little extra butter or they throw a little salt in there, a little umami in there.
20:05Maybe they throw a little sugar in the marinara, you know what I mean?
20:08And like, and you eat it and you're like, wow, that's decadent and beautiful and I would like to come back here.
20:13But it's still within the realm of what we understand as the earthly tricks we play on each other.
20:21But there are guys in lab coats who work for craft who are figuring out how to take the gland of like a beaver's anus and turn it into strawberry flavoring.
20:33And then there's a bunch of other dudes that are checking the consistency of it and they're designing it to get past the prehistoric reptilian wiring of your brain.
20:49So that you no longer understand that two bags of chips and a quart of ice cream might not be good for you in the long run.
20:58And social media is that what we do is we communicate and we sometimes use hyperbole and we sometimes use puns and satire and like totally an all pen parody to convey something and it's cheating a little bit.
21:12But social media is ultra processed speech in the same way that Doritos are food.
21:25It's designed to bypass the parts of your brain that keep you off it, that keep you from diving into those holes, from radicalizing yourself.
21:37That's what you're up against.
21:40They are designing these things in the lab to bypass our ability to collaborate and cooperate.
21:48When did these guys get so bad?
21:51You remember years and years ago.
21:53They've always sucked.
21:54Ah.
21:55No, but wait a minute.
21:56We believed or half believed that these guys, because they wore jeans and sneakers and they were kind of cool and said things like,
22:06don't be evil and so on and so forth.
22:10Isn't that something someone evil would say?
22:15It's like Peter Thiel.
22:16Peter Thiel is always going on about Satan.
22:19Satan, it could be amongst us.
22:21It could be Greta Thunberg.
22:22And you'd be like, or it could be a guy who runs a company called Palantir.
22:27But wait a minute, you're forgetting the early part of these guys' career.
22:31Mark Zuckerberg is going to make it possible.
22:34Sergey Brin was going to make it possible.
22:35If you're sitting in the desert somewhere where you didn't have access to a library, now you could read Shakespeare on your phone.
22:42And this was amazing.
22:43And he was, everybody was going to be connected.
22:45And this would democratize the press.
22:47Yes.
22:48And they believed it.
22:49And a large part of us believed it.
22:53No.
22:54They all want to be the next guy.
22:56They all just want to be the next must.
22:58They want to be the next person.
23:00Look, we suffer from the same thing in that we're people.
23:04Like, everything that we have that's great can be weaponized against us.
23:08Like, nuclear power is the, you know, as Oppenheimer once famously said,
23:14what could go wrong?
23:17John, you've been on Rogan a couple of times?
23:20Yes.
23:21What did you think of that experience, being on Joe Rogan?
23:23I enjoyed being on Rogan.
23:24I think he's an interesting interviewer.
23:26There are right-wing, weaponized commentators whose sole purpose is to manipulate things to the benefit of the Bannon Project or the Project 2025.
23:39Rogan's not that guy.
23:41What is that guy?
23:42How would you describe him?
23:43That guy is a curious comic who fell into this thing that got fucking enormous.
23:48Maybe doesn't, has opinions all over the political spectrum, but has tendencies that people on the left does not fit the aesthetic.
24:00He's a hunter.
24:01In fairness, he's had people on who are kind of Nazi curious.
24:04That's not good.
24:06I mean, I've interviewed Kissinger, like, and he was carpet bomb curious.
24:11Like, I don't know what to say.
24:13Like, it's very easy to castigate those where we're like, but he had an opinion a few years back that's, you know, corrosive.
24:22But the difference is, when he was carpet bomb curious, you didn't say, oh, yeah, that's awesome.
24:28And what happens with Rogan sometimes is he'll hear somebody that's on the dangerous end of the spectrum, and he'll just kind of soak it in.
24:37And so, and this is, I think this is a great point, and it's, who's ever job who thinks that that information is dangerous, to fight, to get their point of view out there, to counter what they think is misinformation.
24:51You can't just deputize people to say, he should have known better, and he should have prosecuted that point.
24:58The reality is, John, is that it might be my job, or the New York Times job, or even your job, but I don't have the audience that Joe Rogan does.
25:05Then get it.
25:06Yeah, go get it.
25:07Then find people who do, then go on, then go on that show.
25:10Then do those things.
25:11Like, that is, it's not acceptable to just say, well, I don't like what he does.
25:18Then do it better, beat them at their own game.
25:21It's not enough to just complain that that guy got a platform, and don't platform that guy.
25:27There's no one in this world right now that isn't platformed.
25:30And my biggest frustration, honestly, with a lot of scientists, is they all go, RFK, oh, he's so fucked up, that's terrible information.
25:38Oh, okay, what's the information?
25:42Nothing.
25:43Where are they?
25:44Get out there.
25:45Fight.
25:46I, you know.
25:47I got in trouble.
25:48I gave an interview to a German magazine.
25:50I said I would interview Hitler.
25:52And I thought that was kind of non-controversial.
25:55Is there anybody that you wouldn't interview?
25:58It depends on what the expectation is, also, for the interview.
26:02Because, remember, a lot of what we're doing right now is we're falling into that trap that an interview, a good interview, will solve the problem.
26:12I've been on the side of the good interview.
26:14I've been on the side.
26:15I interviewed Donald Rumsfeld.
26:17I lost more sleep over that interview than he did over the entire fucking war.
26:24And you know what he did afterwards?
26:26He wrote me a note saying, that was fun.
26:29Yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:31Do you have any idea how that still hurts?
26:34He wrote, that was fun.
26:36I bet if we had known each other when we were younger, we would have been friends.
26:40Ooh.
26:41Ooh.
26:42John, what did you think of the recent, the business of comedians going to Riyadh and being paid a lot of money?
26:49What did you think of that?
26:50I don't touch other people's money.
26:52And, you know, it's hard, man.
26:58I want to fix my house.
26:59I want to operate with integrity.
27:01But I don't want to gatekeep, like I'm not, I don't go to the tree of hilarity and get visited by the fathers of, and I think a lot of comics who came out and really shit on those guys, like I know a couple of them and I know them actually to be like garbage humans.
27:17So, I would have preferred if they would have just come out though and said, it's money, and not like, it's a way to start a conversation.
27:25Like, would you have started the conversation for $2,500?
27:28Well, then that's, you know, that's the difference.
27:30Look, I worked for Apple.
27:32Like, there's a lot of people who believe that Apple is exploitative in a way that's horrific.
27:36You know, we all have our lines that we are willing to cross.
27:40Like, we get into a problem when we're unforgiving in any way.
27:46We offer no grace.
27:47And that doesn't mean that I don't have lines that I draw that if people cross it, I won't do.
27:53But I do try to not be so rigid in the way that I think society has become.
27:59And if it goes back to that point...
28:00Do you know where the lines are ahead of time?
28:02No.
28:03Because, I mean, as we started the conversation, you're facing a complicated situation at Paramount.
28:08Sure.
28:09And you know what you won't do, but if you see something else happening in the company, do you know where those lines are?
28:15Like with the news?
28:16Yeah.
28:17They've already done things that I'm upset about, but then if I had integrity, maybe I would stand up and go, I'm out.
28:25Or maybe the integrity thing to do would be to stay in it and keep fighting in the foxhole.
28:30Like, I love a good argument.
28:32I love differing points of view in all facets of things.
28:39But I also love grace.
28:42I've got people in my family that are to the right of Attila the Hun.
28:45And when people tell me, like, how can you platform that person on your show?
28:50I go, I platform my uncle every fucking Thanksgiving.
28:54And by the way, I love him.
28:58He's a three-dimensional human being who has qualities that I really admire.
29:03Things about him.
29:04And we've lost that.
29:06We've lost the ability to love people because we litmus test at every point, in every single moment.
29:17John, you've always struck me as an idealist, an American idealist.
29:21And I remember around 9-11, you said the view from your place was the towers.
29:28And then you said, now I have a view of the Statue of Liberty.
29:33And...
29:34It was a terrific terrace.
29:36You know...
29:39And that was a really idealistic thing to say about America in many ways, small and large.
29:45I believe it.
29:46You still do.
29:47Absolutely.
29:49Absolutely.
29:50We...
29:51This is...
29:52And how can you not believe it?
29:54Because...
29:55Think of the amazing people that you see every day.
29:58Think of the quiet activism of living pleasantly.
30:01There's more good than bad.
30:04I always will believe that.
30:05I always will believe that the odds are in our favor.
30:10Always.
30:11You mentioned idealists in the Democratic Party and figures who are just not up to the task.
30:18Mm-hmm.
30:19You mentioned Mamdani for one.
30:20Who do you see on a national level who has promise as a national leader that you could get behind?
30:29You have 20 minutes.
30:31You.
30:36Somebody just said you.
30:38I thought for the rest.
30:39Oh.
30:44Have we...
30:45Have we really gotten to that point?
30:48I do understand...
30:49You know what is interesting?
30:51That's also a function of frustration.
30:54A cry of...
30:55A cry of desperation.
30:56You know what it is?
30:57Because...
30:58I'm other.
31:00I'm none of the above.
31:02Years ago...
31:05I won a poll that was most trusted newsman in America.
31:08The poll was, like...
31:10It might have been Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Rather, Diane Sawyer, and me.
31:18And I was...
31:19I'm none of the above.
31:20Like, but...
31:21A dildo rolled in glitter could have won that poll.
31:24I have never, in the audiences that come into the show, seen them so thirsty for leadership.
31:34And so, the none of the above...
31:36The Democratic Party is ripe for what happened to the Republican Party in 2016.
31:40The right...
31:41But hopefully, it will be somebody who uses that power for good.
31:45And not for self-aggrandizement, and not for their own, you know, gratification.
31:51As somebody...
31:52I think this was...
31:53I think Elaine once said to Jerry on this show, that...
31:56As someone on the fringe of the humor community...
32:01Do you think Donald Trump is funny?
32:03Funny ha-ha?
32:04I think he has a performer's cadence.
32:16And it would be funnier if he didn't also control the army.
32:21But what's the gift?
32:22Because it's not nothing.
32:24There is something that works for him with an audience.
32:28Yeah.
32:29What has he got?
32:30He knows how to channel the frustrations of an audience.
32:34He knows how to read a room.
32:36He knows what the room is feeling, and he can articulate it back to them.
32:40And they understand it.
32:41There is an undeniable connection between him and his audience to the point where the normal
32:51rules of engagement don't apply.
32:53And the Democrats, unfortunately, continue to be Wile E. Coyote in the Acme, and they think...
33:00They always think they got him.
33:02Oh, if he's convicted of 34 felony counts, there's no way he'll win.
33:07Oh, we got him now.
33:09He just got indicted on...
33:10And every time, Donald Trump just walks in and goes, meep, meep, pew.
33:15So then what catches the roadrunner?
33:18What puts an end to this?
33:20What catches the roadrunner is to offer something other than not him.
33:26Is to offer something that's not just the negative.
33:29It's not just negative space.
33:31We are stuck in a pattern where the Democratic Party has bought into an agenda over 40 years
33:38that also bought into supply-side economics and the general neoliberal vision of how things go,
33:45and that the only way workers are ever going to get anything is you just got to unionize better.
33:49Just poor people need better lobbyists.
33:51You know, they need a coherent vision.
33:54For whatever you think of Donald Trump, he presents to his audience a coherent vision.
33:58It's not one that I want to live in.
33:59It's not one that I think makes America great.
34:01It's not one that I think is even endemic to how America ever really was.
34:05So this is a question from the audience.
34:07John and David, you've both been sounding the alarm about the state of American democracy since 2016.
34:12After nearly a decade of saying the sky is falling, do you think that people are hearing you at all?
34:19Why even write that as a question?
34:25Why don't I just...
34:26Dear David and John, why don't you just die?
34:29Why do you even get up in the morning?
34:35The thought occurs to me.
34:37All day long with the democracy this and that.
34:41You got an answer?
34:46It doesn't matter.
34:48I control what I can control.
34:50It doesn't matter if people...
34:52People can say like, do you think what you do is effective?
34:55I have no fucking idea.
34:57I just do what I have to do.
35:00It's...
35:01If you don't develop a barometer for morality or integrity for yourself,
35:06and let that inform how you live, then you're at the whim of what you think other people view you as.
35:14And I have no control over that.
35:16I have no control over how people view you.
35:18Do you think by going into other forms, podcasts in particular, you've reached different audiences?
35:25Do you think that you're reaching them in a different way?
35:29I don't know.
35:30That's the thing about communication is you don't...
35:33I don't know.
35:34I don't know.
35:35The only people I talk to live in my house.
35:38Do you get what I mean?
35:39Like people say like, what's it like to be on TV?
35:40And you're like, it's like not being on TV.
35:42It's you can see me, but I can't see you.
35:45I don't know how I affect you.
35:47Like you just don't know.
35:49I wish I knew.
35:51Believe.
35:52Or maybe I don't.
35:53Like it could...
35:54It actually could be hurting.
35:56Like I don't know.
35:57What's it been like for you to think and talk about what's been happening in
36:04Gaza for the last two years?
36:05How have you been affected by that?
36:06Super fun at Passover.
36:07Yeah.
36:08It's a really fraught and complicated emotional issue, obviously, for a lot of Jews.
36:17And again, I try to speak as best I can, in my opinion, as honestly as I can.
36:27And if that means upsetting certain people...
36:32I'm always open to the conversation.
36:35But I have very strong opinions about the horror of what I see over there.
36:42On all sides.
36:43I'm on Team Human.
36:45And I don't think that...
36:48Look, I grew up, man, as David.
36:54We were all David.
36:56Not Remnick, obviously, but biblical.
37:00And I think feeling like David became Goliath was a hard thing to counsel for myself.
37:11And a lot of people disagree.
37:12And I know, listen, you bring this up and immediately, you know,
37:15you're ignoring in 1954 the fucking thing.
37:18Like, I really don't...
37:19Like, I get it.
37:20But I'm...
37:22Like, right now, there's death and sadness and starvation and horror.
37:28And I just don't...
37:30I don't think it's...
37:33I don't think it's human.
37:35And I don't know what happened.
37:37And I don't know how we can do that.
37:39And it's a failure of the world.
37:40And it's a failure of humanity.
37:42And it's the saddest thing that I can think.
37:45And by the way, the same shit's going on in Sudan and in the Congo
37:49and in all kinds of other places that don't have access to the kinds of information
37:53and light that we see.
37:55And it's articulated with us.
37:57And it's going on in Ukraine.
37:58And like, you know, we're...
38:02This is it.
38:03Like, this is all we got.
38:05And if we can't figure this out, it's mind-boggling.
38:08This being life on Earth.
38:10Right.
38:11Yeah.
38:12You hate to get, but like, when you get to be older, you do start thinking like,
38:16oh, I'm gonna...
38:17Like, I won't be here, but...
38:19Do you...
38:20Your kids are in their late teens, 20s.
38:23That I know about.
38:25Yeah.
38:26Oh, no, you're right.
38:31That is right, actually.
38:33Those are the...
38:34Do they watch you on TV?
38:36Uh, no.
38:38They don't even watch me in the house.
38:41They don't...
38:42Do you have any idea how hard it is to get them to look at you?
38:45It's very hard.
38:46But when they're...
38:47I assume if they were in this room, and I know, you know, my kids in this room would
38:52say, half of this conversation is irrelevant because they're not watching cable TV.
38:56Sure.
38:57They're not necessarily reading magazine with 10,000 word profiles and gag cartoons.
39:02You and I operate a blockbuster kiosk inside of Tower Records.
39:07There's no question.
39:10There's...
39:11Yeah.
39:12We are...
39:13We are...
39:14We are definitely like...
39:15We're the guys out there who are like, extra, extra!
39:21Um, so yeah, no, they live in a completely different universe.
39:24And it gives me hope, and I don't know how you feel about this, but like, in the way that
39:29social media is, like, poison to me, right, I'm hoping that they're... that the human spirit
39:36and the ability to sort of adapt and inure yourself to the new technology, that it won't
39:44affect them in the same way that I think it affects me, that it won't be as corrosive.
39:50I don't know that that's what it'll be, but I hope that.
39:53Final question.
39:55Sagittarius.
39:56You're prescient, you're prescient.
40:02The Mets.
40:04Um, what accounts for your love for the Mets?
40:08I'm a loser.
40:11And losers love to lose.
40:16Uh, my family is from Brooklyn.
40:21And the Bronx.
40:23And so, my mother's side of the family were Yankee fans.
40:26My father's side of the family were...
40:28That was my wife.
40:30She... but... so what happened was, when the Dodgers left to go to LA, you weren't allowed
40:41to flip your allegiance, you just had to wait.
40:43And so when the Mets came, that was the... so it was really a birthright more than it was.
40:48Well, as a Yankee fan, I wish you all the luck in the world.
40:51John Stewart, thank you.
40:53Thank you for this.
40:54That was lovely.
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