This episode of The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart follows the strong Democratic showing in the midterm elections, which Jon Stewart and guest Sarah Longwell describe as a decisive rebuke of the MAGA movement. Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and author of How to Eat an Elephant, draws on hundreds of focus groups with voters to explain why she thinks Trump's politics failed this cycle.
The conversation covers how voters think about the economy and immigration, the debate over the Democratic Party's direction, and how a lasting pro-democracy coalition might be built. Jon also answers listener questions about Chuck Schumer, Elon Musk and some unhung photos.
In this episode Jon Stewart, Sarah Longwell
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Weekly Show Podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. On this Wednesday morning, November 4th, you may hear in my voice a slight rasp, a slight hoarseness, but also an inflection of, uh, some would call it enthusiasm, uh, excitement. Uh, I don't know if, uh, you've been paying attention. There was an election last night, the midterm elections, and I'm left with a feeling, uh, as I watched the results up until, I want to say, 3:00 in the morning, something along those lines.
Uh, but it fills me with, it's a hard-to-describe feeling, one that is a little bit alien to me within these times. I believe it's referred to as hope, or that might be its ancient name. You know, the Egyptians referred to it as hope. Uh, what an exciting feeling of opportunity. What an exciting, uh, repudiation of cruelty and shittiness in our politics.
The Democrats ran actual good candidates who seem in it for virtuous and non-political salesman reasons. Uh, it was, it was an incredible night. It was, I was watching it. The, the, I can only liken it, you know, you're seeing they haven't had a Democratic senator in 100 years. This was like the Knicks championship. This was Knicks in five. This was watching result after result. Each result was like OG Anunobi, just tipping in another one.
Just up there, hanging in the air with old Wemby representing the Republican Congress. Sorry to do that to you, Wemby. OG just tipping in. South Carolina, boom. No way. There's no way. Every five minutes was another explosion of, "I can't believe they came back like this."
Uh, it's an incredible night. And now all they have to do is fucking govern. Govern sanely. Govern competently. This, this victory means nothing if squandered. But oh, the beauty of hope and opportunity raising its delicious head. Uh, and, and, uh, boy, have I been waiting for a night like this for a very long time. And I hope you have as well.
And I hope you're feeling that same feeling of, it's not, it, it, it's an exhalation that creates the space for progress. And I just am so excited for it. Uh, and, and to that end, we got a great guest to discuss all that happened. So let's just get right to it.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, delighted, delighted to welcome today Sarah Longwell, New York Times bestselling author of How to Eat an Elephant, One Voter at a Time, publisher of The Boer, and host of the Focus Group podcast. And I'm going to let the people in on something. This is, uh, backstage knowledge. I hope I'm not in any way, uh, you know, betraying any confidences. Sarah Longwell has not slept.
How could I sleep? How could I sleep? We just had the greatest night in America in ten years. And I wanted to be awake for all of it. I wanted to be on Twitter. Uh, I was filled with adrenaline. Um, I wanted to revel in the, some of the Schadenfreude, the, the, the greatness of democracy. I am just, uh, and I'm still running on it right now.
Sarah, you just said a sentence that I've not heard in, in, uh, maybe ever in my life, which is, "I wanted to be on Twitter."
Yeah.
You, you said out loud to me, "I, I wanted to say I was feeling joyful."
Yeah.
So I wanted to be on, on Twitter. What was it like being on Twitter? Was it, uh, were you cone in the barbarian? Were you, were your enemies lamenting before you? What, what was the situation there?
Yeah, I would say I'm like at a high level of insufferability on Twitter right now. Um, in large part because, listen, I, I have been waiting for ten years for a thorough repudiation of Trump and his political project. And we got it last night, and I didn't want to miss a second of it. And so, uh, some of it was, to be, to be fair, was watching some of the people who had been saying that the polling was wrong and Trump would persevere once again. It was, um, it was reveling in their tears just a bit.
But mostly, mostly it was election nerd Twitter watching the margins. Um, because that's the really satisfying part. When you see places like South Carolina and Texas and Kansas, they, the Democrats didn't win in those places on a knife's edge. It wasn't a whisper. It wasn't a, a hair.
No.
It was six points, seven points. It was awesome. And, um, and, and that's just, that's what I've been waiting for from the American people. And it is frustrating that it took this long. I wish that it had happened sooner. I wish that it happened because Donald Trump tried to overturn an election, lied about the election, all of his manifest, uh, sort of venality. But what it ended up being was that the American people were hurting, uh, over the economy, over the war, over Trump's, uh, lying, not caring about them.
And they sent a message. And it was just, it was something I wanted to revel in.
And, and as, and revel, you should. You've earned it. It, it reminds me, you know, it, I feel like the Democrats should all be faded in the canyon of heroes. Not the Democrats, but the voters. The American voting public should get a ticker tape parade today for being really the one remaining institution in this country that had the courage to repudiate the, uh, reality distortion machine that has been the Donald Trump project.
The universities fell before his feet. Law firms fell before his feet. And the American people said, "Oh, let me, let me just give you a quick little reality check here. This isn't the greatest economy in the history of our country."
Yeah. Look, I, I, I know, uh, the way so many of my colleagues feel, I've certainly felt this. We, like I said, we wish that this had come sooner. We wish it came for other reasons. But this, I, I can't overstate. Uh, and I like to be careful about overstating, but I can't over.
This is not the day for that, Sarah Longwell.
No.
This is the day to overstate.
Listen.
Put yourself out on a limb.
Listen, we have made deep structural change right now. Just think about the Supreme Court. If the Democrats now have a, a Fetterman-proof majority in the Senate.
Wow.
Uh, we are looking at somewhere.
Fetterman-proof.
Yeah. We are going to be over 250 seats in the House, which is a governing majority. We haven't seen pla it's an earthquake in Texas. They didn't just get the Senate seats, they got the governor's races, uh, in so many of these places. And do you know what that means? It means all of the things that we have sat around being so scared of, that Donald Trump could just stay in office, that he could unleash ICE on the streets, that we couldn't get our democracy back. No, what we are watching right now is our ability to bring it back. One of the things that's crazy about last night is how many new voters there were in the system.
In Texas, the number of people who showed up who were first-time voters, uh, the number of Gen Z and young millennials who showed up, uh, this is about building the future and the range of Democrats who won, like the ideological breadth of them, the deep red places they ran in, the trifecta in Wisconsin, the way we're going to be able to beat back.
Breach.
So many of the gerrymandering. And you know what? They tried to gerrymander us out of that majority, and they didn't get anything in Texas. They did a mid-cycle redistricting, and, and Texas voters sent them packing. They didn't pick up anything from that. The people who've been helped Donald Trump try to overturn the election, like Scott Perry in my home district in central Pennsylvania, he got beat. He got crushed by Janelle Stetson last night. It's just, I mean, if you have hopes of OSF in 2028, if you've been watching him thinking, "My God, what is this, what is this man?"
And you were like, "Oh my gosh, but he can't run for president because he's in Georgia and they can't give up that Senate seat." Well, Keisha Lance Bottoms is the first Black woman to be governor of Georgia. And if he wants to run now, she can appoint another Democrat to that seat. I mean, it's just, it's just glorious, Jon. You can stop me.
Sarah, Sarah Longwell, I want to know what your Starbucks order is. I want to know.
I'm sorry.
I want to know what's keeping you on this.
I'll calm down.
This Jeremiah, don't calm down at all. I am, I am enjoying this. This is, uh, uh, you are reflecting the emotional sentiment in, if I were a younger man, I would have the same pace and rhythm, uh, that you are speaking in right now. Uh, but I am enjoying spectating on your joy and your excitement. Uh, and, and it is grounded and it is founded. Uh, Sarah, these past ten years, I, I always view Trump as like a black hat hacker.
And he was able to find the holes and vulnerabilities in a constitutional system that we thought was so brilliantly and meticulously designed that nothing, and, and it turned out it was all built on a kind of, uh, handshake agreement that we would all kind of abide by, uh, the constitutional, uh, precepts. And, and, and it was proven to be false. But the one area that redeemed it all was the, the little, the little part of it called the consent of the governed.
That was the thing last night that turned the tide on all of the rejections of the constitutional checks and balances that had been built in this system that Donald Trump had obliterated over these years to turn this country into, and I don't know how you feel about this, but he, he, he attempted to make us an adjunct of the Trump Organization, just a group that was ruled by the whims of someone who doesn't even have, you know, a shareholders board, doesn't have anything controlling him, the Congress.
And what a repudiation of a lily-livered Congress this was. And I did say lily-livered just to give you the chance to understand that I'm in my 60s. I was going to say, I was going to say petty fog, but I, I pulled back at the, I, I, it was right at the tip of my brain and I pulled it back at the last moment. But speak about that because you, your life's work is out there talking to voters. And this idea of we had forgotten Washington exists in such a bubble that sometimes we forget that in a representative constitutional democracy, the consent of the governed is still that most powerful final backstop.
You know, when Trump won in 2016, I was so shocked. I couldn't imagine a country that would put, elevate Donald Trump to the presidency. And I, I had this idea. I was like, well, we've got to primary him, you know? And I, I was a, I was a Republican, kind of a normie centrist Republican, but I was like, we've got to, we've got to go get our normie centrist Republicans to primary him. And I was talking to Adam Kinzinger and I was talking to Larry Hogan in, in Maryland. And I was saying, come on, guys, one of you have to run. And they were like, well, go figure out, uh, if that's even possible.
And so I went and did a bunch of polling and focus groups. And as I was sitting in the focus groups, it was like a revelation in a bad way, because what, what I heard from voters was how much they were fine with Trump, like all the reasons that they wanted him, all the reasons they were against the establishment, all the reasons they wanted something new, that they saw him as transcending politics. And it struck me how disconnected I was sitting in Washington, DC, doing think tank panels on education reform and the national debt and that policy that norm, you know, normie centrists love to talk about.
And I was like, man, this is not how voters are thinking about things at all. And, you know, Abraham Lincoln said, and I open with this quote, "Public sentiment is everything in a democracy." That's just what it is. The voters, and so like their cheat code for politics. And it was amazing to me after I started just listening and listening to more and more voters. I mean, I got addicted. I was like, I need more voters right now to tell me what's going on. It became the only way for me to understand politics because too many pundits try to understand it through their own experience. But of course, the pundits who are talking about politics right now, they're not unable to buy beef at the grocery store.
Mm-hmm.
They're not going to the gas station being like, well, this is too expensive to fill up my nice car. But the average American is, and they talk about it all the time. And so when I talk to voters, I just feel like I get a true picture of what is happening in the country and what is a priority for them. And it is often not so connected to what we're talking about in Washington, DC. And so, um, I was just like chasing the dragon from 2016 on. Um, I've done nothing but listen to voters. I've already done a focus group today. I've done two today.
Wait.
In fact.
Wait, wait. Sarah Longwell, you've buried the leader.
I got to know.
You've buried the leader this, you know, here we are talking about, we're in a celebratory mode. We're talking about the game last night. We're going over tape. We're going over the things. You're ed, you're already studying. You're already going for, no, the Super Bowl. That was last night. I'm working on what's our next game? What's next season? Uh, because this was more than, you know, I think maybe 2016 was that way as well. This was a visceral election. You, people were feeling something deep in their souls that did not sit with them right.
And I think you're so right to say it's not necessarily about parsing, uh, educational policy or, uh, you know, the federalist system, that people were feeling a sense of unease. I think they felt, and, and we'll talk about this maybe right now when you go over your focus groups. And I don't know if you discussed this, but I felt that the kind of right-wing experiment spearheaded by kind of Bannon using Eastern Europe as our test kitchen, where they would say like, what about Hungary?
I kind of like their soft, illiberal, uh, uh, kind of illiberal democracy, soft authoritarian. That's a wonderful project that we can graft onto America. That's something we should be pursuing. And they've pursued it relentlessly and they've had a lot of success with it. But I think last night America rejected the organ. They, that they viewed it as a foreign experiment and the T cells and whatever our immune system has still left rejected that graft.
I think that's exactly right. And, but here's, it's not that it was a, um, what did you say? I, I'm not sure what kind of experiment, but it was a failed experiment.
By the way, Sarah, I'm talking a lot of shit. So you're going to say, what did you just say? And I'm going to go, I don't remember.
No, no, no. I just.
I'm talking, I'm talking a lot of shit right now.
I'm just going to use a slightly different word, which is the American people know a failed experiment when they see one. There was a lot of people who gave Trump a chance, who gave this Republican.
Yes.
Uh, they gave them a chance to do what, okay, let's make America great again. Okay. What does America first look like? Okay. If your economy's good, I'll ignore some of the, you know, worst impulses of it. And then they watched and they got the results. And some, for some Americans, it was a stove-touching exercise, right?
Yes.
They, they had to get burned. They had to feel the pain before they understood why this was a failure. And so that's what you are seeing right now is this rejection, this backlash. And this is what's, look, man, I, I got to tell you, this is why I wrote the book. This is why I think we have a generational opportunity to.
Yes.
Burn MAGA to the ground and salt the earth with, with its ashes. And it starts with this 2026 election, which was always necessary, but not sufficient, but has moved us forward even further than I thought it might by just the sheer scale of it all. Because the, the rejection of MAGA going forward, the way that we don't fall to that illiberalism, the way that we don't become hungry is with this thorough repudiation. And yes, it's probably again, because of a lot of these economic issues. But when I was doing the focus group this morning, it was also just a lot of people saying, because I, I did a group with Republicans.
Mm-hmm.
Who voted for Democrats.
Who are showing up to that? Who, who like the morning after an election.
People we paid $200 to.
Wait.
Uh, to.
You're throwing down too large to go.
Yeah.
Really?
Let's do a couple of hundreds.
Okay.
We'll go high. We'll go high for a morning focus group in the, in the aftermath of an election.
Okay.
We, we screened them. We screened them, um, earlier. We knew, we knew what, who, who they were going to vote for. And, um, and we just got them on to talk about why. And it was, it's funny, they're not going through what I'm going through right now, what you're going through. They're not sitting around doing victory laps. They're just there being like, yeah, everything was really bad. Dave screwed it up. Trump made these choices about the war. He made the choices about tariffs. And I wanted to send a message that what they're doing sucks. I mean, several people described it as a shit show. And, and so.
Right.
You know, and then also on top of it, uh, one of the things that was heartening to me is how much a lot of times you get sort of lesser of two evils framing.
Sure.
Right? Where they're like, ugh, I didn't want to vote for either. Everyone was bad. This was a little bit more like, I thought James Talarico ran a really nice campaign. Uh, you know, I thought he was doing something different. I liked the pitch where they said they were going to try to work with everybody, where they were not going to be cruel and mean.
Mm-hmm.
Like they liked the tone of what Democrats were saying, uh, in these places. And that gives me hope for the future that Democrats can build on this by taking some of the lessons that can be drawn from this moment.
I hate the news. I, I hate what it's doing to me emotionally. I, I hate that you don't really know where the information is coming from. Sometimes you don't know how it's being manipulated. And it, it adds to the creeping fog of sadness that grows. But I have to keep up. I have to understand what's going on in the world. And that's why Ground News, it, it's, they've got a website, it's an app. It, it lets you compare news coverage across the board to understand how you are being zoomed. Do you know what I'm saying? Uh, you, you can see how different news outlets will frame the same story.
They've got a blind spot feed so you can challenge yourself about your news consumption. You'll see who owns what news outlet to understand why they're framing the stories the way they are. This is the one, this is the one you should, uh, get a hold of, enlighten yourself, please. To get the same unlimited access to the Vantage subscription, go to groundnews.com/stewart and subscribe to get 40% off. Discount only available for a limited time. That's groundnews.com/stewart or scan the QR code on screen.
And by the way, to your point, Sarah, and I reflect everything back to sports, unfortunately, but you know, every now and again a draft class shows up where it's just like these quarterbacks that you can't believe, like what, how, how did we get five Hall of Famers in one class? I thought more than in any year that I can recall, Democrats ran generationally competent, interesting candidates on a spectrum of, of kind of, uh, political ideology.
Some feeling a little bit more, uh, on a progressive tip, a more socialist tip. And then, you know, the guys in Iowa that are, you know, Turek and, uh, uh, their governor.
Rob Sand.
Rob Sand, uh, who I thought was really impressive. They ran, uh, a much more committed and competent group of individuals. You know, I've always said Donald Trump is going to make America great again, just not in the manner in which he thought, because I think the, the immune system reaction to him will create, not to go Kennedy on this shit, but the torch being passed to a new generation of leadership that is showing itself.
And I want to go back to something that you said. You said, you know, we've got to repudiate MAGA. But I want to ask you if you think it's, it's broader than that, because I think MAGA was also a repudiation of a feckless democratic leadership and a government that wasn't responding, you know, to the needs of the populace in a way that was agile enough. And we can't go back to that.
The, the repudiation of MAGA last night cannot be seen outside the context of the repudiation of whatever that, and I'll frame it as the neoliberal status quo democratic governance of the past. It's, it's why seeing Chuck Schumer out there last night give his acceptance speech, I don't know if you saw Sam Cedar, if you know Sam Cedar on, uh, uh, but he was hilarious watching Chuck Schumer and losing his fucking mind as Chuck Schumer went right into like, what an amazing night to, we took a red brick wall and we took the bricks and each brick we put different bricks.
And you're just like, I think that might be the wrong tempo. You know, not my tempo, Chuck, let's go. But, but what do you say to that, that it's not just about the recklessness and the fecklessness and the, uh, uh, cruelty of MAGA. The Democrats have to rebuild something new.
Uh, a hundred percent. But I got to tell you right now, that argument seems to, people are fighting along these factional lines of like, should the Democratic Party be more centrist? Should the Democratic Party be more progressive?
I don't, I don't mean it in that way. I don't mean it in that way.
No, no, no, I know.
Yeah.
I know, but this is sort of like this, this was in the system. It was the big fight sort of going into this. It was a fight about, you know, the Haley Stevens versus Abdullah Sayed. Like this played out in a lot of different races.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not, I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about that.
But I'm going to use it to, I think, express your point.
Yeah.
Which is to say what voters were looking for in each of these cases. And when I talk about a broad ideological range, what I mean is Adam Hamilton in Kansas ran neither a centrist nor a progressive campaign either way. He ran something, he ran a tremendously human campaign.
Yes.
Something that transcends politics overall, right?
Mm-hmm.
It's above it. It's something that says, and, and Talarico did too. I mean, I think, you know, Republicans were mocking Talarico's faith, but Talarico ran a faith, human campaign. One where he said, I see you, I know you're hurting. I'll be kind to you. I'm going to love my neighbor. Both of them ran these like love thy neighbor campaigns that aren't, aren't. And when, so when you say something new, some of it is just like getting rid of our old paradigms where we feel like locked into it's all the like pro-life and pro-choice of it. And I'll tell you something about listening to voters that you come to understand pretty quickly is like voters aren't linear thinkers and they're not segmenting people into these things.
Like it's a big stew of stuff. It's a, people are a weird salad. I got, if I have one more voter be like, they're like.
If that's not the name of your next book, Sarah, people are a weird salad. Come on.
They are.
That's gotta be, that's gotta be the follow-up book.
It's like, do you put croutons in it? Yeah, but I also put carrots in it, but I also put, I don't know, a meatball in it. Like this is how, this is how voters are.
Yes.
And, and, and they'll say, you know, in one breath, they'll be like, I, I, uh, I'm, I'm pro-life, but I believe in a woman's right to choose. Okay. Well, what does that even mean? I'll tell you what it means. It's somebody who says, well, I have these personal values, uh, where I wouldn't have an abortion, but I don't want the law repealed. And that's too extreme for me. It might be like, I want a closed border, but I don't want them to drag off the Abuela down the street or the guy who's been living and working here for 20 years. Like it's not so linear the way politics is.
People contain multitudes.
And so if politicians could run as humans and talk to people like humans, which is a lot of what just happened, you can break out of some of this internecine squabble and be like, we're going to be super focused on Trump. And this is why it is a fight for the soul. When you talk the Trump sort of dark night of the soul stuff, the American carnage, Trump wanted us to hate each other. He wanted to divide us. He was.
That's the strategy.
Feeling anger all day long to pull us apart. And this can be us coming back together, not just to build political coalitions, but to rebuild America in the spirit with which it was originally intended, which is a pluralistic society in which we all get a say and like we learn to live together in all our differences.
But that, Sarah, that, but that's no fait accompli because, you know, one of the kind of seminal arguments that's being made on the right right now is that we are not that. You know, when you have JD Vance.
Well, they're wrong. Sorry.
I, I agree. I've, I've read the thing a couple of times, the Constitution. It seems to.
Great stuff.
Be somewhat credible. Uh, but, but when you have someone out there who is, who is saying as part of his platform, there are heritage Americans who this country belongs more to, uh, than others. And it is not based on how they view the Constitution. It is not based to their fealty to, uh, a rule of law or to, uh, whatever, you know, documents that we had that were part of our founding. It is literally based on how long you've been here and did you come from a generally white Christian European country?
That's his, that's his kind of pitch.
Right. And it's also a fund, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of who we are as a country.
Right.
In fact, it's just like completely wrong.
But it was the, it was the seed of, look, Donald Trump, for whatever we think about his policies, one of his, one of the, the nuclear power packs in his rise was nativism, most certainly.
A hundred percent. Uh, here's the thing. If, if you think about American voters though, on a spectrum, there are the people who responded to the nativism, and then there's the people who responded to, I think we should have a border that's closed so we know who's in the country. Uh, and like then everything in between on that spectrum, like the nativism and the racism is real, but also a big chunk of those voters are people who are like, when he said he was going to build a wall, what they heard was just somebody who's going to take immigration seriously and a bunch of politicians who haven't been, right?
Right, right, right.
This is sort of Mamdani in New York where people heard him talk about his explicit policies of free buses or whatever. And they're kind of like, I don't really care about the explicit policy. I just know this guy is laser focused on affordability. And so like, I'm going there. And so I think that is, um, what I try to do, what part of listening to voters is that I see the worst stuff and then I also see the opportunity for persuasion for people who are not being awful, but have reasonable views on things like fairness. They'll talk about like, well, I know people who came here, you know, and they were waiting in line for this length of time and these other people just came over the border and like, that's not somebody being crazy.
And so.
Right.
To me, I always feel like you can build the biggest, broadest coalition by taking some of those rational people who are voting for a bad thing for not irrational, horrible reasons and like try to get them into your coalition. How do you do persuasion?
Sarah, have you, will, will people share with you the worst stuff?
Oh yeah.
Well, when you're in a focus group, have people become, uh, immune to masking that? Like, will they share it? Is Trump's coalition now, have all those people you're talking about, are they the ones that dissipated? And the core of it really is that nativist kind of more cruel that share with you the worst stuff?
Yeah. I mean, so one of the things we do in focus groups as a, I'll call it a method, methodology of qualitative is to make sure that the groups are actually homogenous. So we don't have a group.
Oh, really?
Yeah. So at the beginning of every group, we'll say, uh, this is a like-minded group. You all voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
Yeah.
And, you know, you think he's doing a bad job now because the number one way to get people to tell you the truth is for them to not feel like the people around them are going to judge or fight them.
Oh.
And so the way that you, and, and people do things differently, different qualitative people, but my experience has shown me that the way to get the truth out of people is to put them with people that they know agree with them.
To feel safe.
Yeah. To feel safe and just tell the truth to each other and for the moderator to always be on their side so that they feel comfortable saying things. Now, look. In a group of strangers, do people always, you know, say the most racist thing that they think or the most sexist thing that they think? No, but I've heard plenty of it.
Wait, so the moderator, does the moderator have to be in there being like, yeah, Mexicans? I mean, come on. Those are.
No.
How do they do that?
Uh, so I, I've moderated a bunch of these and, uh, I don't know if you can tell from my hand movements, but I'm a lesbian and, um, and, uh, and so, you know, you'll be, you'll be, uh, you'll be in a group and you'll just listen to some old guy be like, and there's all these gays, you know, and like the gay basketball players or, you know, whatever.
Right.
And they just want to trans everybody and groom everybody. And you just sit there being like, uh-huh, okay. Um, you know, it's not that you say, I agree with you.
Right.
We should nuke the NWNBA and all the lesbians there. It's just that, you know, you, you say, ah, yes, that's a, you just treat it like it's all a valid perspective.
Right. For those of you who are watching at home, I, I want to reiterate, or not watching at home, but listening, uh, there, her hand movements do not give away any kind of lesbianism. I just want to make that very clear.
Strong wrists.
It seemed, it seemed vaguely ethnic to me. There was a little bit of movement, but nothing in the, uh, it, it's, and I, that part of it, understanding that. What you're saying, I think resonates, but I think you are a very good person to do that. And I want you to talk a little bit about your story and I want to bring it back to earlier on. You were saying we, we finally did it. We turned this over. For those who don't know Sarah Longwell's story, you know, you started out as a relatively conservative Republican, I guess closeted at some level with the, the people working for, you know, real culture warriors.
And what does it feel like for you, your journey through that to be, I mean, you're a full-on, like, I'm like watching somebody in a Knicks jersey sitting next to Spike Lee like high-fiving like, I've always been a Knicks fan. Like what, where's your head at? How does that feel for you?
Okay. I'm very excited for this part of the show 'cause I'm going to live out a dream of mine in the next couple of minutes. So everybody buckle up.
All right.
Everybody just hold on. You were special, Mr. Stewart. I got, I'm gripping the mic hard because I, I need it to stabilize myself 'cause I'm about to have a dream moment.
All right, here we go.
So I did, I grew up in a very small town in central Pennsylvania, uh, very culturally conservative, all white. Um, and, uh, I didn't come out until I was, you know, in my, in my twenties. I was kind of, I became a John McCain fan in college. Uh, but my, uh, specific journey, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't consider myself super conservative. I just, I, I always think of myself as kind of a, a normie Republican squish.
But it was in reaction to, you know, the way you describe it, that Bill Clinton's kind of moral turbitute is, is what drove you.
Oh, yeah. You want to go that deep on my past? Yeah. Okay.
If, if that's okay.
No, that's fine. That's totally fine. Um, 'cause I write about all this in the book.
It was a reaction to something that you saw as corrupt.
Yeah. So I, you know, sometimes politics, it hits you when on, on at, at different ages, right? And so I'm 18 when Bill Clinton is impeached for sleeping with Monica Lewinsky, uh, who is not much older than I am at the time. And so that impeachment was really formative for me and the discourse around it was really formative. So watching feminists and sort of Democrats rally behind him after he had lied to the American people when he said, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, you know, I'm young and idealistic and I think, well, that's really gross.
And the, I was like, that's a gross thing to do. It's a bad thing to do. And so the people who defended him were sort of discredited to me at that early age, right? I saw that.
Right.
But the, the, the, on the, on the inverse though, and this was a little bit of a problem is that I ultimately gave too much credit to his critics, right? Because my first exposure to them was on something I thought they were right about. Uh, but I was too young and the internet wasn't, uh, quite a thing yet.
Sure. You didn't know, you didn't know Gingrich's backstory.
I didn't know Gingrich's backstory. I didn't know Rush Limbaugh's backstory. I didn't know they were all married a thousand times. Uh, and I also didn't know I was gay. Um, and so I went to work, uh, after college at a very conservative think tank. Also, again, by accident, and this is a true story, I got stoned, uh, because there, there was this like place that, that funded student newspapers and I didn't do anything really political in college. I played sports, I played softball and field hockey, again, lesbian. Um, but I, but I, I did it. I wrote like a couple of things for the conservative magazine at the time.
So they invited me to this dinner at the fanciest restaurant on campus. And so I got high and went and was like, I'm going to eat a great dinner, uh, free dinner for me. And then, uh, the guy who was taking us out was like, I started telling him about my thesis or something. He was like, okay, you should come work at this place. I just said yes. I didn't have a job. I didn't know what I was going to do. I ended up at a pretty conservative think tank and I ended up working for Christine O'Donnell. Do you remember that name?
No.
Christine O'Donnell. Yes, you do. 'Cause she was not a witch.
Oh shit.
Yeah.
Where was that? Delaware?
In Delaware.
Is that where she ran?
I, that's where I was. I moved to Delaware.
Christine O'Donnell ran in Delaware and it was, she had the commercial, I am not a witch.
That was her closing argument. Yes.
Ah, son of a gun.
And she was the, she was, so, so this was before all of that happened, but I, I ended up at this pretty conservative think tank that, that funded, it had like this separate thing that funded conservative campus and libertarian newspapers.
Right.
So, um, but she ran the communications for the whole thing.
And this was in the, on the, the kind of the Sarah Palin wave where they were looking for, uh, those like tough women that had that conservative, I, I remember this.
It was the Tea Party wave.
Tea Party wave.
That's what it was. That's right.
Yes, yes.
That's right. So, so before she was the Christine O'Donnell who lost to Senator Chris Coons, still Senator Chris Coons.
Yes. Still a senator. Yeah.
She was, she worked at the same place that I did. And when she left, I got her job and I was quite young. I was about 25 and the, it had a publishing imprint. So it published, uh, mostly published like the Constitution and Aristotle or whatever.
Was it Regent or Regency? One of those, you know, those.
Yeah. It's like, it is something like Regnery. Regnery.
Yeah, that's what it was.
Um, and so, but, but it was, well, ISI books, but Regnery, it's like a similar thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So they were publishing Rick Santorum's book. And so as a 25-year-old who was just starting to come out, I end up on Rick Santorum's book tour. Okay. And I have to run sort of the, the part, uh, for the publishing company. Now I was the lowest person on the totem pole. I was the youngest person there. I was not important, but it was a terrifying, uh, stretch for me. And I just want to read you, if you'll indulge me.
No, I remember that part.
One part of my book.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it takes a family. Well, right. 'Cause he came on your show.
Yes.
Uh, and I was with him. You don't remember me, but you and I have met before 'cause we met in the green room of your show when you were interviewing Rick Santorum. And if you don't mind, I'd just like to read you this part of the book.
Yes.
During the book tour, I traveled with him several times, him being Santorum. He had a lot of kids and sometimes the older ones would join him on the road. I remember taking the train with him and his two oldest kids to New York at one point to do the daily show with Jon Stewart.
They were there.
Santorum was a devoted dad and an easy hang. 'Cause he was. I got to meet Jon Stewart in the green room and it was like a dream. I remember that when he walked in and saw me and Santorum's kids, he said to the senator, wow, you have a bigger entourage than Snoop Dogg. But the trip.
I still use that joke, by the way.
Yeah. It's like, okay.
Yeah.
Uh, but that trip was also when things began to shift. As nice as Santorum was to me, I found myself internally cheering against him as I stood offstage while Stewart took his anti-gay marriage argument apart brick by brick. Other interviewers hadn't managed that kind of devastating pushback and watching it happen live jolted something in me. I'd been surrounded by people who agreed with Santorum for the last few years, and Santorum himself was deeply competent at defending his worldview. Gay marriage was far from becoming a reality. I still wasn't out to my parents, and it just hadn't occurred to me yet how to advocate for such a thing.
But standing in the wings of the studio, watching Jon Stewart forcefully and nimbly argue in favor of gay marriage, I realized I could do that too.
Oh my God.
So this is the moment when I get to tell you that you changed the trajectory of my life with that interview with Santorum. And after that, I went and I became, I joined Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry, Log Cam Republicans, anything I could do to repeal, don't ask, don't tell, fight for gay marriage, uh, as a Republican. And then, so when you ask me, what does it feel like now? That was, that's the question where you started this. It feels like being an American because I don't have to play politics like a team sport between Democrats and Republicans. I can still play it as somebody who loves the country, who feels like it's a, gave her an enormous gift, um, and who wants to see it thrive and succeed.
And that means a thorough repudiation of Trump. That's what I got. But I have always wanted to thank you for giving me that, uh, moment.
Ah, you don't have to thank me because I remember that interview being so pleasurable to be able to do that to Rick Santorum in front of me.
That pleasure is how I feel today. So that's how it feels.
Oh my goodness.
That's how the journey feels.
So how you doing? Let me, let me ask you a question. I know you've been listening to the podcast. I know hopefully you're engaged. Hopefully it's something interesting, but let me ask you a question. I didn't want to bring this up and I certainly don't want to pry, uh, but, uh, how's, how's your power bank? How you doing with your chargers? What do you got going? What, you got them in a drawer somewhere? Done in the basement? You always looking around for one? Well, that's why I'm excited to, to tell you people, uh, if you're looking for a power bank, Ridge Power Bank, that's where it's at. And with the holidays coming and you're always thinking to yourself, what should I get people? You know what's the greatest thing you can get people? Power bank, five in one charger.
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What makes you, I think, such an interesting kind of Rosetta Stone to this is your journey reflects the complexity of what we're all feeling. Because what social media, what, what the general, uh, tenor of our media, what it's funneling us all into is purity camps.
Yes.
I mean, I don't know if you're watching the MAGA kind of media infrastructure machine that's been holding up that reality distortion field. I don't know if you're watching them today just utterly dissolve, like they have no fucking idea what to do with themselves.
I mean, watching Laura Loomer say like, there is no God, we're in a dark night of the soul and we're all about to speak Arabic. I'm like, yeah, this, this sounds right. You guys, you guys are sue, having a real normal one here.
Right. And they're not, let's even go beyond the Laura Loomers. Let's talk about Brett Baier on television, on Fox News in the middle of, this is their gold standard. We hired a cronkite so that you can be sure that we are not a, in any way, the political propaganda organization that Roger Ailes designed us to be in the middle of it going, okay, so how do we spin this? Like asking it to the ether, the Fox News complex, the brain.
Can, can anyone just in my ear real quick, give me something that spins this fucking thing? Oh, I'm sorry. We're on the air.
Yeah.
That's how deep this is. It is architecture. They have designed the blueprints of a reality distortion machine and this burst that.
It did. And this is why you needed this repudiation is because the, the MAGA media infotainment ecosystem is part of something I call the Republican Triangle of Doom, which is the toxic and symbiotic relationship between the right-wing infotainment media, the Republican elected officials, and the Republican voters, where they like mutually reinforce each other with their nonsense, right? And so a lot of people last night are genuinely people, if you watch Fox News and Benny Johnson and Tucker C, whatever, you are shocked by what happened because all of the people from that ecosystem, they're not there to tell you the truth, right?
Like you live in a world where you're like, wait a minute, how did this just happen? Did they steal it? Wait, it's so big. And even Donald Trump's not saying it was stolen 'cause it's just too big and massive. Like it is a, it punctures their reality. They, they have, they have constructed a reality that now when it breaks down, yeah, they don't know what to do. Like you're watching Brett Baier short circuit 'cause they're like, we've built this distortion field for people to live in.
Right.
And now they can't live there anymore.
And also there's an economic incentive in.
Oh, for sure.
A lot of that grifting mechanism is, you know, these are folks that have just been elevated to really great wealth by participating in what is ironically a kind of a welfare system where they're paid by right-wing billion. You know, they are basically just on the dole to push this nonsense out to people.
Yeah. There's been a, a real, uh, Trump economy and it's not the one you and I and all the rural voters and all the people live in. The Trump economy is, uh, the people who sell MAGA lies to voters. Um, and it's a, it's a whole host of podcasters. It's your Megyn Kellys, uh, and your, yeah, Benny Johnson's and all of these sick folks. And, and I, I do think they're sick. They, they are cruel. They have reveled in the cruelty. They have pumped up the cruelty.
That's the thing that's so insane is the, when I wa, look, full disclosure, never been a huge fan of Megyn Kelly. Not gonna, but when she was on Fox, there was that patina of like, it's like in the old wrestling thing, like she was the face, the network was a heel, but she was a face. She was the good guy. Then she tried to live out in the normie world and like they, they were all just like, eh, I don't think, you know, outside of that Fox ecosystem, not that interesting, not that special.
They were like, wait, why can't Santa be black ever?
Right.
Couldn't Santa maybe, maybe he could be.
Right. And didn't really care. And so she, she kind of falls apart there. But that humiliation drives her to, and I don't know if it's a reinvention or just she's, she's living her truth right now, but it's such a cruel truth. I don't know if you saw the, she said something about the poor woman from Cornell where she.
Her body, she body shamed her. She was like, oh, she wanted that attention 'cause she's not, she had fat arms or something.
She had fake arms. Right. You're like.
No, it was so disgusting.
What kind of fucking, like, what kind of fucking human are you? Like, what are, what are we doing here?
This, this, and when people talk about like, well, what is Trumpism? 'Cause sometimes I use the phrase Trumpism, and to me it is like the way that people's souls have been corroded by this moment where they've sort of lost, because vice signaling is a, is a mode of communication now in right-wing circles. Like when you hear one of these news stories comes out, right, where there's a bunch of young Republicans, and by young, I mean like in their thirties, not only forties on some chat and they're all just making jokes about, uh, you know, using the N word or talking about putting in people in ovens.
Fresh off their Nazi curious years.
That's right. That's right. And that's, and so they vice signal like the way that they accuse libs of, of, of virtue signaling, they, they vice, uh, signal and, and that over time, right? There's like, you do it for a while with an ironic distance, like, oh, this is just commentary on woke libs, but over time that ironic distance shrinks and before you know it, you wake up and you're a terrible person. And that is what has happened because you've defended.
Now it's your soul.
Too many indefensible things.
Right.
And it's who you are.
But it's so interesting. Did you see, so you're in these focus groups and these are just regular people.
Yeah.
Do you feel the downstream effects of that economy in those moments when you're sitting in that group? Could you just as well be sitting in, uh, with the Twitter feed from a Benny Johnson? Like, are they, have they bought the product? Is it Scientology? Are they regurgitating or are they processing it through their own experiences and everything else?
Yeah, it's mostly the latter. It's mostly through their own experiences with, with, with a bit of like a, um, a covering of the vibes of like they all swim in kind of a MAGA soup, like the, the Trump voters, right? A lot of it is, we are geographically sorted in many ways, right? And so, uh, and, and, and polarized. And so people who, who live in these really red areas, right, they find it mutually reinforcing with each other. Um, but mostly when I listen to voters, we were joking about Twitter earlier.
One of the reasons that I can kind of like throw down on Twitter, uh, and fight with people from the far left and people from the MAGA right and whatever is that I, I know it's not real life because listening to voters, voters, everybody is at their worst on places like Twitter. They are anonymized.
Sure.
The, the, it is flattened. Like, are you talking to somebody from Nairobi or are you talking to an 18-year-old from, you know, you don't know.
And the algorithm incentivizes that, that conflict and that.
Totally.
And that hatred.
And they silo us and they are meant, it is meant to, it is a, they put an algorithmic, uh, like gasoline on fear and anger, right? They take our fear and anger and they say, that's why we're gonna keep them on this platform. But out in the world, they might swim in this soup or whatever, but like they don't walk around their neighborhood, you know, screaming slurs at people.
They can take the cape off, they can put it on and take it off. Although there's always two houses in the neighborhood that do. Like there's a house in my neighborhood that's got like fuck Joe Biden still up on like a giant, like, you know how when you go by a high school and they have the giant sign that's lit up that's like, welcome back students.
Yeah.
He's got one of those handmade on his lawn that just says like, you know, let's go Brandon still.
But that guy doesn't have any friends.
But that's what I'm saying.
Right.
There's always a couple of houses where you go, oh, he doesn't, he's now lost to that dimension. He's not living in the world.
But that's because for those people, it has become their personality to be that person, right? Like they've taken it on as a.
Do you see them in groups? Are they like, are they there?
Yeah. I guess this is what I mean about the groups is like you see the people that you're like, I see you, you're Twitter pilled. Like you're a Twitter pilled person and you can recognize it, but it's not most of the people.
Yeah.
Most of the people are like, well, I had to drop my kids off and here's how I'm thinking about their local school. And like I walk into the grocery store and this is what everything cost. And like this is the trade-off I had to make between driving to this place or being able to do this other thing because gas prices are so expensive. Like that's how most people talk and most people talk about what they do for their families. They, they still volunteer. This is the thing. I get actually filled up more by the groups. People are often say to me, like, how can you listen to all these dumb voters or whatever? And I'm like, no, Twitter is where all the terrible people are.
In the groups, mostly people are pretty normal and you hear people say terrible things sometimes, but mostly you don't. Mostly what I hear is people struggling to be decent and live decent lives. Um, and I just, I won't lose faith in Americans, um, because, you know, after we've exhausted all the wrong choices, we'll do the right thing. And that's what happened last night. We exhausted all the bad things and here we are.
And that's why the feeling of last night was so emotional for me.
Yeah.
Because it was a feeling of hope and opportunity in a new path. It wasn't, I didn't at any moment feel like we did it. It's over. What I felt like was, oh, we got a fucking chance.
Yeah.
We just got ourselves a chance to do that. Sarah, when you're in with those groups, is there, is there a moment where you feel you break through that patina, that Twitter patina? Is, is it, do you have to design it to kind of get past the superficial, like everybody's got their shoulders up and their kind of thing? And can you feel a room relax and start to reveal their true selves?
Yeah. So there's always a couple of moments. The first, the first thing that happens is when you tell them it's a like-minded group, you do feel everyone relax there. They, okay, so they understand they're gonna talk about politics, but they understand that everybody, that they're not gonna be in a, a bar fight for it. Okay? So that's the first time they relax. And then as they settle into the conversation, the opening question that we ask every single time is, how do you think things are going in the country? And it's the most revealing question of the entire two hours because what people bring up organically is the things that are top of mind that are vexing them, and they form connections through those conversations.
You watch them connect with each other because they are all saying, so let's say we'll do a group of Trump voters who now think he's doing a very bad job. So they're all kind of feeding off of each other's, like, is it the war? Is it gas prices? Is it grocery prices? They're telling stories to each other. And so watching them connect with each other's stories is honestly the way you get the best read. And then the other thing, one reason I like qualitative, so you, you, we all sit through polls, we all have PTSD from the polls. We look at the polls, they drive a lot of the political conversation.
But what's interesting, that'll tell you the what, and I'm interested in the why. And the stories that they tell each other are the why and the connections that they make in the group kind of mimic real world connections, right? You see them through what they're saying to each other, you figure like that's kind of what they're talking to their friends about. They tell you stories about, you know, uh, um, when the, the Vivek Ramaswamy ad against Amy Acton dropped, we immediately convened a group of Ohio voters, um, who were, uh, Trump voters, but were disaffected Trump voters.
And there was a guy who was like, my brother who doesn't even follow politics and I don't really call, he called me and said, have you heard about the ad? And to me, I was like, that when you have people picking up the phone to call their family members because they're so disgusted about something, it reveals something that, that's moving people. It's broken through with people.
Right.
And so, you know, for me, like democracy is the practice of collective action in the country. Like our voting, like democracy is just a bunch of people in this country getting together and saying a thing.
Making their wishes known.
Yeah. But all, and, and also sort of being in community with each other, right? They're influenced by the people that they're around. And so I feel like what I really get out of the groups is watching people interacting with each other and telling their stories, um, and that that feels authentic. And then the other thing is sort of the energy. So one of the things I was saying going into this election and I was like, there's an enormous enthusiasm gap. You sit in Republican groups right now and they are depressed and they don't like their candidates and they think Trump's doing a bad job. You get in Democratic groups and they're like, somebody let me vote.
Somebody let me outta here. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go vote so hard.
Gotta do it now.
Yeah. Uh, and I was like, okay, well that says a lot to me and you can feel it in the body language. And so it's a lot of that watching that.
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And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let 'em know it was The Weekly Show. Best way to support the show. Do you see your journey reflected in the, the, the voting groups that you're talking to?
Yeah.
And, and is that a way that you can relate to them? And then the second question, I guess what I got is like, Ronald Trump, what journey then go for you?
Okay, that's a deep question.
Yeah. Well, because it's such an interesting transformation, you know, we're all aware of like never Trumper and the never Trumpers and we're all gonna be never Trumpers. But then you think to yourself like, well, is this a diaspora? Is it a Republicans of your, because it doesn't feel that way. It feels like something new. What you are advocating for doesn't feel like a return to what we imagine is the Republican, you know, there's a nostalgia for the Republican of old, but that doesn't sound like what you are talking about.
No, actually, I'm really glad you asked this because I do think this isn't just about me. This is, I do think that there have been a lot of Republicans who have thought that Trump is the aberration and that there's a going back. I even think Democrats think this sometimes like, oh, well, the Republican Party could get back to a, a Mitt Romney, John McCain Republican Party. It is never going back. And I know this not for myself, and this is where I see myself. The voters know it's not going back. They don't want it to go back.
And this is where I really divert from them is when I listen to Republican voters, I don't see myself in them at all. Um, not that I think all of them are bad people, but the political project that they are interested in, the candidates that they are interested in, the people who, who really wanted Trump, they want something that their values are just different than mine. And so I don't look at the Republican Party right now. There's nothing in it that connects for me. Like it, when, and you say like, oh, there's been this big evolution, like I know that this sometimes is hard for Democrats, but I, I, I'll just tell you from my own perspective, somebody like John McCain, who was like in a camp and wouldn't leave without his guys and like was a war hero and talked all the time about what a great country America was.
Like I'm invested in that. I'm invested in America being a great country. And like I could, I could connect to that. There's nothing in this cruel, performative, um, anti-pluralistic, anti-rule of law, entirely corrupt. Like nothing about that reflects my values or what I thought the Republican Party and, and so the Republican Party could get less sick than it is now, but its trajectory, even with this thorough repudiation, it's gonna take a long time for it to find its new level. But that level's not the Mitt Romney, John McCain, because there's Republican Party, 'cause that's not what Republican base voters want.
They want something that is, they're gonna be in a real America first has never been tried, uh, moment for a while. And again, that's not me. And so I think about everything now from again, going up here instead of the partisan back and forth is to think, what is the best thing for America? And I knew that the best thing for America was gonna be, and this is once I started trying to fight Trump, it became clear to me pretty quickly that there's two political parties. People can wish that there were more, but there's two.
Right. And that's how the government functions.
That's right. One of them was gonna be the home base for the pro-democracy movement. And even if a lot of Democrats, so sometimes I do get in fights with people on the, the far, far left, and part of that is that our political projects sometimes are, are a little different. Like theirs is one of, um, I don't know, they have a lot of like progressive policy things they want or whatever.
Yeah.
And that's fine.
It's very factionalized anyway. It's, it's.
Yeah.
And you'll always, and, and again, we're incentivized for, uh, that type of fighting. It's all villagers and pitchforks and torches wandering the countryside.
Right. And that's why to me, the candidates that are so exciting are the ones that transcended it. Because I think people are looking for somebody to transcend the partisan divide. And I think that I see myself in a lot of swing voters where I'll say, you know, I am pro-choice, but also don't think that, you know, I think, uh, you know, we don't want it to be all the time everywhere. You know, I'm like, it makes me, it makes me, you know, or I think that we should use American, uh, military power incredibly, uh, judiciously.
Um, I am somebody who is always quite, um, pro-Israel, who in this moment thinks that America at least needs to reevaluate our relationship with Israel. The American people want that. But also.
You don't like to deal in absolutes. You like to.
I don't. And neither do American people. Right.
Right. Well, that's what you're learning, I think, from, from seeing them. Sarah, what, what to, to this new project, right?
Yeah.
To this opportunity that we, that we find ourselves in, and it is an opportunity. It, how would you like your work to be utilized to that new project? And, and what are the aspects of it that you think are, are useful to be utilized in that project? What for you, what is the purpose now? Where do you want that understanding? Because so much of, of your project is understanding the mindset of people that may think a little like you, not like you at all.
How are these people operating? So much of that work is commoditized for the boilerplate of the consultant, the political media consultant machine.
Yeah.
But it doesn't sound like you are invested in that project of it. So what.
No.
And, and can you speak to that project of it or what you would like this to be? I know that's a lot, but.
No, no, no. But, but the reason I wrote the book is that I, what I want is for people to listen to Americans. I want them to understand what Americans are asking for. And then, okay, so there's, there's two ways to think about the, a politician's relationship with voters. They can either be led or they can lead. And to me, there is a kind of alchemy where it is not one or the other, where it is you listen to voters, but you also demonstrate leadership, right? So one of the things I talk about in the book, there's this old parable, like a Native American parable, grandfather talking to a grandson saying, grandson, inside each of us, there are two wolves, uh, one representing greed and avarice and falsehoods and all the bad things, and one representing truth and light and decency and compassion.
And they're constantly at war with each other. And the grandson says, grandpa, which one wins? And he says, the one that you feed. And I want to feed what is good in us. Americans have light and dark inside of us. We are not all good or bad. America itself is not all good or bad, right? It is complicated. But leadership, what I wanted is for people to take this book. I want John Ossoff to read it. I gave it, I handed it to Pete Buttigieg and he, Pete Buttigieg is like, it's on my nightstand. I'm reading it and I'm just like, I want Democrats to read it.
And I'm gonna be like, listen to these voters. Stop demanding, stop like, and pundits too. Everybody's like, well, here's my personal opinion about how I think the country should go. And I'm like, okay, but also let's listen to what these voters want, because they wanna be safe and they want their material wellbeing to be considered and for people to think about humans and leadership in a way that's like, I wanna bring out the best in people. I wanna bring out the best in the country. I wanna take what our country was built on and draw out its best aspects. I wanna lead with that. I wanna rediscover what's great about America, because this was the Bill Clinton line.
For funny, for Bill Clinton kind of turning me into a Republican in the first place, he's got the best line in politics for me, which is there is nothing that is wrong with America that cannot be solved.
By what's right.
With what is right with America.
That's right.
And that's what I want for this moment. That's my political project is how do we get back to a place where America is on its front foot? I mean, we've gotta, we've got so much work to do now. Trump's destroyed so much. So the question is, if Trump's gonna burn it all down, what are we going to build? Not what are we gonna go back, not what are we gonna reestablish, what are we gonna build new? Because we have, we have a renaissance moment and I wanna be part of that.
What does this opportunity represent? And that is such a crucial point is that this cannot just be another turn of the wheel in the cycle that we have been on. This is a moment, uh, of that needs real consideration. And, and that's, I think, where these things, and it's kind of nice to see, you know, we're all building out our, our ecosystems of communication and, and we all exist in an economic, uh, thing, but there's good faith and there's bad faith and there's people that utilize, uh, those mechanisms cynically.
And there are people that you, that are doing it for the very reason that you're talking about, which is I'm just trying to figure out how to exert some kind of gravitational force in this battle of what I perceive as good versus evil that pushes it to the good. However, incrementally, we can do that.
My man. That's right.
And is the idea of that, is it for you to identify those leaders that you think are going to have sway and try and get them to understand the parameters of that conversation with American voters that you've been having?
Do you know what it is actually? Um, it's that I do think that politicians, pundits, like whatever elites, I just think they start to forget about regular people. I think regular people become an abstraction. Like these, like dots on Steve Kornacki's big boards, like places you go to mine votes. And I just, I want politicians to act more like human beings and I want them, and in doing so, I would like them to remember that like the stakes for human beings are real. Like the reason I rejected Trump from the beginning wasn't because he was just a different kind of Republican or he was kind of icky on this.
It was 'cause he did not care about people at all. He did not care about America at all.
You could feel that. You could.
You know it.
You could feel it.
And so what do I want? I wanna feel from a politician and voters wanna feel from a politician. We use authenticity as a buzzword. What they mean is like, man, show me you like care and think about me, that you care about this country.
Not as a strategy, but as.
Yeah.
As a being.
As a human, like as a human level. And you're that you're doing this job, that you came to this work because you wanted to make people's lives better, that we can argue about what our specific policies are to do that, but like believe that people wanna make people's lives better.
Chicken and the egg. Do you think that our system of politics for all its shenanigans and fundraising and corruption enabled mostly by a Supreme Court that's decided money is speech and corporations are people and corruption doesn't exist and, uh, partisan gerrymandering is fine, uh, but remediation is not? Um, do you believe that that system creates that in politicians or that a certain kind of more craven individual looks for the ring and wants to get that power?
Or is it a combin what, what has been your experience in seeing like does the system create that in people or are the people going into that clearly corrupt system that way?
Man, that's a good question. I, I don't, I think it's.
That's where we're end, Sarah. That's where we're ending on today. That's where we're ending on.
Okay. Well, I, I.
Come on.
Let me, let me tell you why.
Do some grand gestures while you're at it.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you, this is why last night, this is why last night mattered so much, because I think there are vicissitudes in politics, right? There are, there are eras. And I think we are coming out of an era where a lot of people were in politics for the wrong reasons.
Mm-hmm.
And the people who won last night, you know what they are? They're young. They're like 39, 40 years old.
Yeah.
45 years old. Right. These are people for Donald Trump has defined the last decade of their politics and they were forged at a time they were called to service to oppose that. Right? And so I believe we now have a generation of people like, uh, Hamilton, the guy who just won in Kansas. Like these were people who were called to service. John Ossoff, he's a guy who I feel like it's not just that it, it, that, that he wants the moment, the moment's choosing him. Pete Buttigieg just went and spent months on the road going to every red place, talking to every person who voted Republican, believing that they can still be reached.
And that energy, that new energy, this new talent.
This new era.
This group of people that got pulled in because they were a reaction to Trump, I think they could be in it for the right reasons. Now, will the system corrupt 'em? Maybe. Or maybe they'll change the system. It's possible to still hope.
Bless up. Bless up.
Bless up.
You just exp, you, you explained the entire socio-political media complex through Taylor Swift's Eras albums.
Which is exactly what I was trying to do.
And let me tell you something. To be able to pull that off.
Ah.
On no sleep. God, God bless, Sarah. I don't know what you're like when you're getting enough rest, but you're fucking crushing it today. For sure.
Thank you, Jon Stewart.
Uh, really appreciate you, man. And, and really appreciate taking the time to come on the show and, uh, especially in this moment where I know you're, you're fired up and doing all this work and all that. So, uh, thank you for being here and, uh, really look forward to, to seeing you again. Sarah Longwell, New York Times bestselling author of How to Eat an Elephant, One Voter at a Time, publisher of The Bulwark, host of the Focus Group podcast. And my guest is on her way to two or three other focus groups even right now.
Yeah.
Because shit never stops.
Never stops. Hey, you changed my life, man. Thanks for having me on.
Oh man. Thank you so much. You know, this company, it meant mobile. I don't wanna keep you in suspense. You got overpriced phone bills and you can lose 'em by switching to mint mobile. I feel like Ryan would've said that so much more charmingly than I just did because his voice doesn't sound like he's been smoking for 60 years, which is what my voice sounds like because it's was true for quite some time.
But the, the, the, the, the, the way that he says it, it, it, it draws me in. And I do appreciate getting the opportunity to also have my voice be heard on the pro mint mobile side. You know, the fucking thing's 15 bucks a month. Were you looking for better? What are you thinking? You're gonna grab one for nine? It's 15 bucks a month. High-speed data, unlimited talk and text, largest 5G network in the nation. You can use your current phone and your current phone number.
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Upfront payments of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. I really hope they speed that up. What? She is functioning on a level of, of expertise and execution on no sleep.
The vibes are just that good.
She's got, she's got the pit vibes.
Yeah.
She's got, there's been an accident at the plant and we've got, we've been here all night and now there's 37 more fucking people that are coming in.
Sedation, baby.
On a, on a, there was a, a gas explosion at the corner of Permanente and Maine, uh, flying high. I, I'm telling you though, I fucking hate consultants and focus group people because it always feels cynical.
Mm-hmm.
And it always feels like they're just trying to figure out a way to hack into your brain so that they can manipulate it. She does not strike me in that way. And I don't think I'm being naive.
No.
I think she is idealistic. I think she is trying to actually, oh my fucking God, find out what people really think and work towards the good.
Yeah. And it really comes across in the podcast. Like I feel like, you know, you always like understand that people are complicated and like how you, like at the end of an election, you're like, how did it shake out this way? You're looking at like which groups went where and it, but people are very nuanced and that is something that like really comes across in her podcast. I.
Yeah.
It was very enlightening in the weeks leading up to the election to hear what people were actually saying in these states. Therapeutic, honestly. Yeah.
And it's also, you know, oftentimes, and I, and I apologize, I am working off of the most cynical interpretation of focus grouping and because that's been my experience with the people and the people that I know, like it's all, it's like Frank Luntz shit.
Mm-hmm.
Where they're like, I found a word that if you use this word, you can trick them into not understanding.
Yeah.
What the Affordable Care Act is.
Well, you're also trying to hear what you wanna hear, you know?
Right.
It's like, yeah.
But you're, you're, what you're doing is you're poking their brains to find ways around what they really think.
You're trying to hack it.
Right. And you view the people that you're talking to as a commodity, a, a means to the end of what you want. I get the sense she really is a humanist.
Yeah.
Like she really has an affection for people. You might not, you don't have to agree with her on all her political, whatever it is that you wanna do, but there's no question in my mind that she is approaching this from the perspective of like people wanna be good.
100%. And she writes about people so affectionately in her book.
Mm-hmm.
Which is after listening to the people on her focus group podcasts, I'm like, if you can have affection for all of these people.
Right.
You're a good person because I'm ripping my hair out.
She's respectful in how she does it as well.
Yeah.
Which I appreciate. Like she's not talking down to people. She's not talking down about people. Like she said, it's human politics, which is great.
Yeah. And I've always known that about her. I mean, I remember that from when I met her in the green room.
Yes.
I was at San Toro.
You mentioned that. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. No, I, I remember that, uh, the whole, I do actually remember though, San Torum and his kids. Like, 'cause I, I remember that so clearly 'cause it was, that was on San Torum's. We used to get a lot of conservatives that would come on and be like, I'm the relatable. Like they would write a book, you know, the title of it would be like Liberal Skullfuck Nuns. And then like they'd come on, they, and I, I'd ask 'em like, Liberal Skullfuck Nuns, is that, do you believe that? And they're like, look, I don't think we're that far apart.
I think, you know, I'm looking to build a bridge, you know? And that was San Torum was on one of those like bridge building, like, hey, I'm just a normal.
Yeah.
You know.
Not this person with these abhorrent views.
Speech across the aisle.
It's wild. What are, what are the people, do we even wanna hear from, what do the people wanna know today?
Oh, we wanna hear from them.
How are we gonna celebrate?
Yeah.
How are you celebrating?
And I, and I mean this, this opportunity, this means nothing other than what an opportunity to rebuild the better infrastructure and system of, of this. What a chance that is now in front of everybody. But it is no fait accompli that that chance will be, uh, realized and taken.
Let's fucking do this.
Let's fucking go.
Alright.
What do you want?
We have four this week.
Whoa.
So first, Jon.
Yeah.
For all that is good and righteous.
Yes.
Could you please ask George Clooney to write an op-ed calling on Chuck Schumer to step down as majority leader?
Oh my God, that's hilarious. I thought they were gonna say, can you ask George Clooney to write an op-ed to get Biden to run again? He just write an op-ed that is a total apologia. Just say, hey man, I don't know what I was thinking. Uh, now is your time. The, the torch has been passed to the old generation.
Yes.
Let's do that again.
Yeah.
Uh.
Let's run it back.
Boy, if they don't take, and, and by the way, that's job one of this opportunity. Job one of this opportunity is to tear down the, the obstacles and old way of thinking that got us into this mess. Someone has to meet this moment and they have got to show, and, and this moment is not, oh, we get to impeach everybody. Like fuck that.
No.
Like you have an opportunity to actually govern. Do it. Take it. And one of the first things you need to do is remove that system of seniority from democratic politics. It is a bullshit system and it needs to go. And they're, by the way, they're already like, Chuck Schumer deserves a lot of credit for putting together this.
Yes.
Chuck Schumer deserves a, Chuck Schumer fought tooth and nail against half of these fucking people. And even if he didn't, he does not understand the urgency of the moment and what the future demands. I truly believe that.
Yeah. From the fucking genius that brought you Hailey Stevens. Like, let's, let's move on.
Yeah. You never see that on the movie poster, do you?
Yeah.
From the director of Hailey Stevens. What else they got?
Alright, Jon, so we're definitely not getting the five grand now, right?
Uh, oh no. I, he, he was always gonna give us the five grand. It was one of those things like, hey, if you, uh, if you eat all your vegetables, I'll take you to go see a movie Saturday. And you never eat your vegetables, but you know what? You always end up doing? Going to the movies. So I'm sure he'll deliver. He's the type of man, and I think I, we've all known this in New York, that always means what he says. Always delivers on, on the promise of, of tomorrow. He is a promise made is a promise, you know, he is the type of leader.
And he, he, he said this himself, uh, while he was standing by the reflecting pool. Uh, that he has actually delivered on more of his promises than he made.
Yes.
Yeah.
He's, he's pulled off really a mathematical miracle that we have not seen from a politician who is able.
Or anyone.
Or any human.
Yeah. New maths.
He has elevated, you know, they always talk about how the, the elevations that you take in certain religions to get towards nirvana. Uh, he has gone beyond that to the land where you can deliver on more promises. I have answered more questions than have been asked.
Drug prices are down 400%.
More than that.
Riddle me this.
It's the best economy in the history of the world. He didn't promise that.
No.
But he delivered.
But he delivered.
God bless.
Okay, next.
What do we got? What do we got?
Jon.
Yeah.
Do you think Elon is kicking himself for not having spent just a little more money?
Ugh, that would've done it.
Can I tell you? He's now playing the whole like, uh, hi, you know, he's like joking now. Like, oh, I guess my space lasers didn't work. Like it was no fucking joke. It was the richest man in the world who controls a social media platform that he tilted in the direction of his politics, his ethno-national, whatever the fuck he is now, and, and tried desperately to exert gravitational force, uh, outside and exceeding of what any citizen has any right to be, uh, exerting on our political process.
And now he's gonna play it off like, ah, it was just a little lark I was on. Fuck that. Like that more than anything, uh, demonstrated a poison in the political system that needs to be excised. Nobody should have, no unelected individual should have that kind of power over, uh, our system at all. Never, never, never. And I don't mean that like, oh, it's criminal. Like if that is the way the system is designed.
Mm-hmm.
Then the design of the system is incorrect. And he can play it off. Here's the thing about Elon Musk. He got fucking cybertrucked. He, he got hit by, by the worst that he got hit by a refrigerator on wheels, which is what his car is.
It exploded.
It exploded in his face.
Crashed all over.
Best laid plans. And he was cocky and arrogant about, I have thrown my lot in it. His whole like fucking, if, if the Dems win this, we no longer have a democracy. No. If we allow one man who through the process of his own riches is allowed to exert his will over the will of our voters, that's the threat.
Yeah.
Jon.
Hey, fucking man.
Texas can't be bought.
Well, yeah. Probably. Alright.
Okay, last one.
Mm-hmm.
Jon.
Mm-hmm.
Longtime listener here.
Uh-huh.
Just curious.
How long did you have been listening? We're going to do this. Alright.
Just curious if you're ever gonna get around to hanging those photos on the floor.
Where would I put, I don't know where I would put 'em. I do, do you have a place? Like I'm looking at the symmetry in the room. First of all, what am I doing in this room? Like it really like.
The octagon.
What kind of weird Doctor Who side office am I even existing in? I, I, I don't, it's like it doesn't exist in dimensional time or space. I'm, I'm in, you know, uh, Willem Dafoe's lighthouse. I don't even know what I'm doing here with the long beard. But they're right. Look, I have, I, I don't even know if I can show you. See that cardboard box there?
Yes.
That's been there for five years. I'm, I'm not even sure what's in it.
What's in it?
I don't know.
Find out. Today's the day.
There's something in it.
Oh my God. If you're listening on the audio, Jon just walked away.
Oh.
Oh, it's an oar.
Oh.
That's unexpected.
This is, you know what this is from?
They're gonna have to watch the YouTube for this.
This is from, uh, I, I hosted, I think it's memorabilia from hosting, you know, the Warrior Games, you know, those, it's like Invictus.
Yeah.
But for, so I host those a bunch of years and they always give me like super cool shit, but I don't know what to do with it. So I think that's just a box filled with super cool Warrior Games shit.
Yeah. You'll have to hang that on the wall as well.
That's the oar you can use to paddle away from your lighthouse. It's been there the whole time.
That's, that's hilarious. You know, should I put the pictures up or let's ask the, the viewers at home, put the pictures up or maybe just festoon my office with gold cherubs.
Oh.
Very in right now.
In the style of despotic, uh, leaders.
Again, for those listening, the YouTube will be out on Thursday this week.
Oh, right. Yeah. It's gonna.
You know, I think between this and the election, what we've learned is that people really want home renovations.
They really want home renovations. They want them desperately. Uh, Brittany, how, how are they gonna continue to stay in touch with us?
Twitter, we are Weekly Show Pod, Instagram Threads, TikTok, Blue Sky. We are a Weekly Show podcast and you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart.
Fan fucking tastic. Guys, uh, thank you so much. Fabulous episode as always. Uh, and, uh, I wanna thank, uh, producer Brittany Medvic, producer Gillian Spear, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola. Is Rob even still here today or did he, did he have the.
Last day.
Last one.
Rob Vitola is leaving us for a couple of weeks to what, Rob? To what?
He's having a baby.
He's having a baby.
Rob's having a baby. He's having another baby. He's building a team of video editor and engineers. He's gonna need the soundproofing.
Yeah.
That many of us have as he fills his house with yelling. So congratulations so much to Rob and his beautiful family. Uh, our audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, our associate producer, Rebecca Rotenberg. He's gonna get to produce Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Uh, we will see you guys. Are we seeing everybody next week?
We sure are.
Doesn't it feel weird? Like after an election like this, you're like, take, take the week off.
Vacation, baby.
Uh, excellent, excellent, excellent. We'll see you guys next week. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.
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As a nationwide wave of Democratic midterm victories delivers a decisive rebuke to the MAGA movement, Jon is joined by Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, author of “How to Eat an Elephant,” and host of “The Focus Group” podcast. Together, they discuss what she’s learned from conducting hundreds of focus groups with voters, why Trump’s politics failed this cycle, and how to build on the momentum to cement a lasting pro-democracy coalition. Plus, Jon answers listeners’ questions about Schumer’s future, Elon’s ROI, and to hang or not to hang!
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Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart
Executive Producer – James Dixon
Executive Producer – Chris McShane
Executive Producer – Caity Gray
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Producer – Gillian Spear
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Music by Hansdle Hsu
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