Transcript of Trump’s Domination Politics, at Home and Abroad with Fareed Zakaria

Hello. Welcome back to the Weekly Show podcast with Jon Stewart. My name is Jon Stewart, and we have been gone. God knows how long we've been gone. I can tell you how long we've been gone. I'm back at my podcasting desk, and there are, it would appear to be three dead insects. You would think that I would have come up here and cleared those out, but I took a nice break, but boy, did the world not. There is so much going on that is disparaging and needing of framing, and I'm delighted to have Farid Zaharia is going to be joining us on the show. So much of this is about what exactly is the theory of power for this Trump administration? Is there anything that we can figure out that gives us a coherent directional worldview as to where these guys are going, or is it just literally big, fuck, I think it's more complicated than that. How does Iran and Venezuela fit into all that? All these different things we will try and run through and get some through line that could maybe help us feel slightly less vertigal go from what we feel from the bouncing around between we are going to invade Greenland.

Also, is that delicious oil? I think I'm going to have to take over your country and drill it. I haven't I talked to... This fellow used to come on The Old Daily Show constantly, and I haven't been able to talk to him in quite a bit, so I'm delighted to have him on the program today. Mr. Farid Zecaria, host of CNN's Farid Zecaria, GPS. And so, folks, in a world that has so many now plates spinning in the air and a constant stream of what appear to be really close to cataclysmic events and catastrophes, we bring in a gentleman who's been doing his program, keeping an eye on all this thing for 18 years now, Farid Zahkari, a host of CNN's Farid Zahkari GPS. And as we spoke earlier, you were the most frequent guest that we had on The Daily Show back when I still had to work every night, which God bless. You figured that early on, Farid, didn't you?

Well, it was a huge pleasure, honestly. But you asked me to do it when I was very young, and it was based on my first book, actually, which was all about illiberal democracy. Democracies where elected rulers start to abuse elected leaders start to abuse the rule of law and individual rights. In those days, I was talking about places like Pakistan and the Philippines, not the United States of America. And it was a huge pleasure. And of course, it leaves me wondering, what happened, John? What am I? Choped liver? Why have you forgotten me?

Let me tell you what happens. I disappear for nine years, raise a couple of kids, and then I decided to come back once a week. I don't have time for any guests. Somebody shows up in the office.

Plus, you got to see me. Now, you got to look young and hip and I'm old news.

Somehow, I think this face, I'm ready to play Tevia in Fiddler with this face. You'd be good. None of this is I can. Farid, what a great way to jump in with, which is you make your bones on this idea of illiberal democracies and all the ways in which these more authoritarian the rulers, use the mechanisms of democracy to create systems that are actually eroding it and corroding it and the infrastructure of it to the point of somewhat of a collapse. You jumped my first question, which is, are you seeing now the things that you viewed in Philippines? I don't want to be alarmist or hyperbolic, but boy, it's hard not to view this country as So the polite way would be, I guess, we are now a subsidiary of the Trump organization, which would look at it more benignly. And the less benign way would be, they've been using these illiberal techniques test kitchens in the Philippines and all kinds of other places, and now they've brought this new McRib to the United States, and they're applying it here.

Look, there's no question that that's true. When I was writing about it, when I coined the phrase illiberal democracy, '96, '97, I was looking at places like Pakistan, the Philippines, Slovakia, Turkey, and Erdoğan, you could begin to see it happening. I always thought that this is not going to affect the developed world as much. I did actually in my book have a chapter or two about America, but I thought it was a tendency, a danger that we were becoming too enamored of the idea of these charismatic leaders. But what I didn't expect is that the institutional framework of Western democracies would be as fragile as it is. And in this case, actually, the United States is in worse than other places. So if you look at in Europe- Explain that.

We're in worse shape than places like Pakistan and Slovakia and Turkey.

No, no, no, no, no, more than in places like in Europe. I see. Look at Georgia. I see. Georgia Maloney comes to power in Italy, and she's a fire- breathing, right-wing populist, but she's contained by the institutions. Her policies have actually not been as radical as people thought they would be, partly because there are a lot lots of institutions, both within Italy and within the European Union, and she's basically not torn them up. In the United States, we have the oldest Constitution in the world, which is great in many ways, But in some ways, it's old fashioned. So for example, our Justice Department does technically sit entirely under the President. That is not true in Europe. All their Justice Departments are independent agencies. So what that means is that what we developed after Watergate was a set of norms. The President wouldn't ask the attorney general to prosecute certain cases. But those are all just norms that we developed after Watergate. And Trump just broke them all. And he just said, look, there's no law that tells me I can't do this. Similarly, he's correct when he says, There's no law that says my kids can't do all the business they want and take advantage of the fact that they're my children.

And All these things were norms. And what it's turned out is that we need more actual laws that constrain executive power in particular. And the challenge here is the Supreme Court has become so pro executive power that I think we're in a very bad fix because you can see the problem, as you described it. The Trump presidency is basically knocking down norms, in many cases, violating laws. The TikTok ban should have been implemented. It was a Congressional ban.

That was a law. Congress made it Allah, and he's done recisions. He's pulled money back. So that's my question to you because we talk a lot about how Trump has blown past norms, or let's say Maloney goes into Italy, but she's more constrained. But I think what Trump is demonstrating is that even these laws, it's not so much that the system has been restraining individuals, is that the individuals themselves believe believed in that system as being the most viable and most stable and most productive. It would be the most prosperous. It's one of the reasons why America has done so well is because by laying out rules of the road and adhering to it, we've earned credibility and trust that we weren't going to be ruled by the whims of mercurial and volatile leaders. Trump, I think, has made a different choice. I think he's shown the weakness of liberal democracies, almost not in norms, but by the idea that if you control... What did he say about the Supreme Court? When the Supreme Court came in and said, You can't do that, and what was his response? How are you going to enforce that?

I think Trump is actually it's worse than, Oh, he's blowing past. It's why I wasn't so bothered by, Oh, he fired some Inspector Generals. When he blew past norms, I soft-pedaled it. This is a different thing that is now being accomplished. This isn't about norms. It's exposing the weakness of the enforcement mechanisms of the laws that a powerful executive just decides to ignore.

Yeah. And that is in some ways at the heart of the problem of the American Constitution, Because I would argue that one of the things that the founders really could not have imagined was these political parties that are so loyal to the party and to the President as the head of the party that they completely abdicate their institutional loyalty to Congress. So Madison always believed that Congressional power would always be a check on executive power because Congress wants to retain its own self-interested For self-interested reasons, retain power. No. Mike Johnson is happy to be the errand boy to Donald Trump. Because at the end of the day, he knows that the way he's going to stay in power and get elected is by being Donald Trump's errand boy. So if you have a system like that, you actually don't have the checks and balances. The checks and balances are completely notional. Or similarly, as you point out with the court, I think what Trump is doing, for example, on the tariff case is a fascinating use, again, of this illiberal democracy, because he's intimidating the court and saying, We're doing this for national security. We're getting tons of revenue.

All these deals have been done. You will undo the whole reputation of a system Instead of relationships I have good deals I have made. Well, yes, but what you did was plainly unconstitutional. I mean, literally, it is in the Constitution, in a line, not by implication or conference, there is a line that says foreign commerce will be regulated by Congress. Tariffs were regulated by... And by the way, they knew what tariffs were. The reason we had the American Revolution was tariffs. When people talk about the tea party, what was that? That was a tariff, which they called a tax and a tariff interchangeable on tea coming in from Britain.

Which, of course, the tariff was paid by Britain and not the American people. And it raised so much money, and we were so powerful.

But by the way, that means the whole American revolution was a misunderstanding. If only we had realized that we in America were not paying the tariff, it was the poor Brits who were paying it.

Why did we vote? That's right. It was making America great again. But the thing that it is not hard for me to foresee a world that even if the Supreme Court says those tariffs are unconstitutional, that he will not get rid of them or Congress, which is now a vestigal organ, will just say, or they may do a different thing and say, Okay, certainly they control the Senate and they control the House, and they could pass them if they wanted to, but they have to take responsibility because they don't want to go on record for anything.

But I don't think he'll do it, John, because I think your inspectors general point is an interesting one. So he comes in for day one, he fires all the inspectors general. Now, Congressional law allows the President to fire the inspectors general, but there's a procedure in the law, which is you have to give six months notice.

He didn't follow a procedure.

There has to be a specific charge of complaints against each inspector general, and he fired them all without cause. I think that for Trump and for the people around him, and I think this is very much part of the Heritage 2025 project, it is important as an act of principle to violate these laws because they believe these laws are incorrectly restraining executive power. So I think what Trump will do is he will deliberately not go to Congress to get congressional authorization because he wants to make the point, I, as President, am going to retain the right to do this. And it'll be some made up jumbal of emergency national security. The lawyers can argue anything, and he'll come up with. But if you look at the way in which he handles the recisions, as you said, it's absolutely clear that you can't just stop spending money that Congress gave. But they wanted to do it.

But he did.

Because they want to make the point that we think all these constraints are bullshit. We, in the executive branch, can do whatever we want. What I'm puzzled by is, do the Republicans going along with this not realize that one day there will be a Democratic president.

But I think what they believe is that because you will find that Congress suddenly grows a spine again when a Democrat takes office. I think what they're not understanding, and maybe they think of a Democratic President won't push this to the extent that he does, is that final step to that, which is, and what we were talking about earlier, which is, you and what army, motherfucker. How are you going to enforce this. And that's where I think the line is being drawn in the most dangerous place.

It's the Andrew Jackson line. You remember when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sioux Indians who were being displaced?

Or Cherokee. Yeah.

And Andrew Jackson is supposed to have said, Justice Marshall has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.

That's exactly right. And Steven Miller has made this case explicitly. He's gone out and he does that. Whenever he talks, I always imagine dark clouds start to arise over there and the theme from The Exorcist starts playing. But his point is, Hey, we see the world as it is, and the world belongs to the strong, and the wrong. And this gets to, and I want to talk about, it's a more generalized theory of power, because right now, they're trying to find a coherent governing philosophy that they can sell the Don Rohe doctrine or these different things. We're going to strengthen our hemisphere, and that's what makes America great, and all these different things. What I believe they have decided is a more old-school theory of power, which is coercion coerced compliance is ultimately better than alliance. That Common Cause Alliance will not get America the prosperous future. That coerced Compliance will get us. And you see it everywhere. We're going to get Greenland, or we're going to do it the nice way, or we're going to do it the hard way. So even if he strikes a deal to buy it or to do these other things, it is obviously at the point of a gun.

I don't think, and we'll tie this all together because I have something I want to ask you about in terms of Iran and Venezuela with all of that. But would you say that the bet they are making is that one, that we want to take the world back to those systems where makes right. If you have the larger Navy, you get to take it, and just blindly ignoring how volatile and violent and ultimately unsustainable that world was.

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Most people don't realize what a sharp break it took place in international relations after 1945. If you look at the years before 1945, you see every two years, there's a war of conquest, there's aggression, there's annexations. France and Germany went to war three times between 1850 and 1945. Twice, they dragged the whole world into it. The shift then from 1945 to this rules-based international system, the United States, basically, it was Franklin Roosevelt's dream, Harry Truman implements it. And what you have since then is remarkable. There's almost no war of conquest that has taken place. There's almost no annexations. There are almost none of that that has taken place. Of course, there have been violence and conflicts, but it's a remarkable break. And Why did it happen? It's because the United States conceived of a system that was not this traditional real-policy law of the jungle. It was, let's try to create a world in which everyone has an incentive for peace. Let's create an open economy economy so everyone can grow and prosper. And they have this much more dark machtpolitik. It's like the 19th century German view of how to be powerful. And the only thing I would point out is, didn't do so well for the Germans.

But that's for Farid, America created that world 80 years ago. Now, that world wasn't perfect. And it certainly, mistakes were made in terms of how liberalized globalization was and how you balanced your industry with other things. But it was remarkably successful. But in their vision, that world, the 80 years post-World War II, were the sucker bet for the United States, that we are the victims. First of all, that we are the victims of that. We were the most prosperous country out of anybody during that time.

And remained the most prosperous.

And remained the most prosperous. But the second thing is we fucking created it. That was our design. And they're acting like that is the world that was created to take advantage of us.

Right. Trump says the European universe created to screw the United States. We basically encouraged the Europeans to come together because we didn't want them to fight wars again. We thought that they would understand the advantages of commerce, and it worked brilliantly. But the point you make, John, which is very important, is the The whole mega premise is that the United States has gotten screwed over the last 80 years, and particularly the last 30 or 40. Here's the data. About 25 years ago, US and European wages were roughly the same. Today, US wages are 50% higher than European wages. About 15 years ago, the Eurozone economy and the US economy were the same size. Today, the US economy is 70% larger than the Eurozone economy. If you look at one company, NVIDIA, it has a higher market capitalization than the entire German Stock Exchange. It's like, what world are you talking about? The United States is more dominant today than it has ever been. We have some issues with inequality and things like that, but those are issues of redistribution. How do we organize and divide the pie?

But not of prospering. We've created more wealth- We've thrived in this world, and we've got the dollar underpinning the world So the fundamental, to me, the fascinating thing is that the whole vision is premised on decline, decay, sclerosis, even the Venezuela thing.

As you said, what they want to do is go from being the global hegemon that set the rules, that created the system, that maintains the system to a regional bully. We give up to Putin, Ukraine. We give up Asia to China, and we get to boss over Venezuela and Mexico. Isn't that great? And it's like such a shrinking of American power.

And also what it says is this administration believes we will be more prosperous having total dominance and a more colonial view of South America and removing Europe and what we gained from that alliance. And even the ridiculousness of we need to take over Greenland so that Russia and China don't take over Greenland. You're like, Isn't that what NATO is for? We formed an alliance. It's like saying, We will fight alone to control South America instead of fighting with all of our allies to have a mutually beneficial position in the entire world. And how is that more prosperous for us?

Think about the difference. As you say, you put it right. They think coerced compliance is better than the messiness of this alliance between democracies.

Because it's zero sum. They have to have zero sum.

Right. Look at the coerced compliance. We have something like 50 freeD allies in the United States, and most of them are the richest countries in the world, the Europeans, Japan, Australia. China has one freeD ally, North Korea. Let's throw in Russia.

That's really true?

Yeah, that It's the only treaty ally they have.

I thought they had Trade Treaty allies, though.

They do have- But not defense. You know what I mean? Not defense. I see what you're saying. Let's throw in Russia and let's throw in Iran. Think of that. They've got three, we've got 50.

We want to give that up. We want to piss them off so that we can have Greenland, which we already have. Basically, we have base there. We could put more bases there. It's as though they don't They think that alliances are weak. It's better for them. It's the same thing they're doing with immigration in the United States. Rather than trying to... Are they really trying to tell Americans that the best way to get criminal, undocumented people in this country, out of this country, is to show up in force at a target, wearing masks with guns. They want that feeling of boot on the neck. It's for some reason, the goals that they want are so much more easily accomplished if they didn't have that sense of, and we must dominate and humiliate you if you are our foe, including if you didn't vote for him.

Yeah. The theater is very important. As you well know, Obama has probably still deported more people than Trump. In other words, if you look at it month to month- But they did that.

It was a different... They did do it at the border.

Exactly. And they did it in a very different way. But that's my point, which is, in one case, they were almost trying to minimize the theater and maximize the effectiveness. In this case, They are actually trying to maximize the effectiveness, even if the numbers aren't what they want to show that this is what we are doing.

They've got quotas. Right.

I also think, back to your Greenland point, it's a very important thing to understand that their view of wealth and economic growth is weirdly old fashioned. So they think, like, Greenland has minerals in the ground. It has all this stuff. You can always buy them. You can always lease them. The idea that the country that has minerals underneath its soil is going to be rich as precess. It's like, if that were true, all of Africa would be rich. Think about Israel, South Korea.

It is a colonial mindset. Yeah.

These countries have nothing. And what do they have? They have smart people. You can always buy this stuff from around the world. Think about the oil revolution in America. The Chinese kept going around Africa and trying to lock up oil and natural gas deals. The US did technological innovation and invented fracking. It turned out ours was a much more successful thing because it's fundamentally knowledge-driven. Theirs, they've got to make corrupt deals with African dictators innovators. In a weird way, Trump is more like that Chinese mentality. That's why he loves the Venezuela case.

And a colonial mentality. It is a King's mentality. And the strange thing about it to me is, think about the damage you do to our world's standing by going in and taking the resources from Venezuela to get more oil, right? Who's the largest oil producer in the world? It's us. It's already Be us. To do that, but what are we doing when we push that? We're sending a message to the world that it's like the old peaky blinders thing, big, fuck, small. If you're big, you can do this. Here's what we may be trading off. We get to take a bigger cut of Venezuelan oil, and China looks at that and goes, Oh, well, then I guess we get to take a cut of quantum chips in Taiwan. And what do you think is going to be more important in the modern world? What's the trade-off for us, Farid?

Yeah. I mean, one way to think about what they're doing here is for Trump, it's clear I just read this book, The gods of New York, which is the New York in the '80s. You'd love it actually. It's really fascinating. It's when I moved there. And Trump is a huge character in it. And you can look, even then, every time he did a deal, his absolute imperative was, how do I squeeze everybody in every possible way to screw them and get the best deal I can for myself? There was never a thought about... Instead of a transaction, how do I build a relationship? And any really great businessman will tell you, businesses were built not on a single transaction, but on building a relationship.

And he burns bridges like nobody's burned bridges before.

And this is what he's doing in each of these tariff negotiations. Relations. His point is, I'm going to screw you. I'm going to squeeze you. I'm going to get there. And there's something strange about not realizing that American power since 1945 has been built on this unique thing that we have built so much goodwill and trust among the richest countries in the world. International relations theories all predicted that at some point, Germany will go nuclear, Japan will go nuclear. They're too rich, they're too powerful to allow their foreign and defense policy to be subcontracted to the United States. But it never happened. It never happened because we were honorable about saying, We're taking everyone's interest into account. As you say, we made mistakes and all that. But compared to other great powers that dominated the world. The United States has been remarkable in having this enlightened self-interest. It took 80 years to build that level of trust. My great fear is that, as you say, four almost misguided notions of economic wealth. We're squandering it because what are we going to get? First of all, the Venezuelan oil is a bit of a mirage. Most people don't realize they talk about Venezuela having the largest oil reserves in the world, 300 million.

You know where that number comes from? Hugo Chávez, one day, crippled the estimate of Venezuela's... Chávez is a bit like Trump that way. He likes big numbers.

We're not getting the good numbers? It's also apparently not the type of grade of oil that's easily got… It's much cheaper. It's not something that even the oil company is like, I don't know about that stuff.

I love the classifications. The stuff we produce is called light sweet, and this is heavy, crude. Who wants that? But also, they're right now, they're exporting 1% of the world's petroleum. They're 21st. So they're going to be able to do more. But the whole idea of some gold mine, which is why the CEO of Exxon in front of the television camera tells Trump, Venezuela is currently uninvestible, which means if you want us to invest, the US government is going to have to give us guarantees. This is the new form of capitalism that we're embracing.

And you saw Trump's response to that was, Everybody wants to be a part of it, but I think I'm going to cut Exxon out of it because they were too glib with their answer. And what I don't understand about the MAGA movement or the Republicans right now is that somehow they believe as poorly as maybe some of our institutions had performed over time and the reform that they needed in the various things, is that replacing that with the whims of a mercurial, megalomaniac, and malignant narcissist is the key to a more stable and prosperous American future. Rocket Money. You still paying that OnlyFans subscription you told your wife to cancel? I feel you. You know what you need? Rocket Money. You're paying for subscriptions you don't even remember signing up for. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money. You can track your subscriptions. Cancel with just a few How many of you? I am losing money left and right of these. Rocket Money is the thing that can set you straight. How many of the cars you don't drive anymore still have satellite radio, for God's sakes?

Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney. Com/tws. That's rocketmoney. Com/tws. Matt, The maga is steeped in the mythology of American creation, and they're really going in hard on it. Jd Vant says, The Heritage American is really the most important American. They have more say in this land, We're not a creed. We're a people, right? But the Constitution very clearly says, No, I think we're actually a creed. And that creed is that the consent of the governed, that we are given unalienable rights by a creator, and those rights carry weight in whatever governing system that we place in there. And this is the thing they fetishize. They put it on their busses, and they don't Don't Tread on me, and they've got the Gads and flags and all that. They're clearly, though, giving fealty to someone operating utterly outside of that system. But here's where I think it really That's interesting. Other countries, we exported that people want to govern themselves. When you go in and you start to exploit their resources and do it explicitly so or say, What you unleash in the people that you are exploiting is a cycle that we have seen play out numerously through history.

I'll use Iran and Venezuela as the example. It's a 70-year cycle. In Iran, think of this as the Lion King. It's the cycle of life, Farid. In Venezuela, we just started the cycle. We couped the leader, we arrested him. Whether that's justified or not, we'll save that for a different day. We're going to go in and we're going to take their oil. People would say, Americans don't want that. That's like Iraq. It's not like Iraq. It's like Iran. In 1953, we and British Petroleum did the same thing in Iran. Mosadik, we removed him. And what did we do? We replaced him with a pro-western leader, and we got all those resources. And how long did that system hold up for? 1979. Because the resentments that we created within that region exploded into it's the reason that the Mollets were in power in '79. And now the Mollets rule their iron fist, and now they're in the cycle where they're about to turn over that country. And what's going to happen then? My guess is the Western powers or somebody's going to come in and install somebody else and the cycle. How do we not see that?

How do we not see that what we are starting in Venezuela is going to sow the seeds for the volatility and danger that we had already sowed in Iran in 1953? We're just repeating the same stupid cycle.

For the United States, for America, it's always been very hard to understand other people's nationalism. In other words, we are very proud, nationalists, patriots. But then when you go to Vietnam and they're like, We want our country. We just don't understand that. We're like, No, we are going to give you a better system. We go to Iraq and they're like, Get out of here. And we said, No, you don't understand. We're going to We're going to set up a wonderful democracy where the Shia and the Sindhi will live together. And I actually, as an immigrant, I think we do mean well in many of these cases. But we seem to have no understanding that other people have nationalism, too. Other people, there's this famous moment. It may have been apocryphal when Mount Baton, the last British viceroy, is talking to Gandhi.

You know I love a good Mount Baton anecdote. Throw it my way.

Yeah. And And he says, Mr. Gandhi, if the British just leave India, it's going to be chaos. And Gandhi looks at him and says, yes, but it'll be our chaos. And that's what I think most people don't understand sometimes. People prefer their own chaos to a foreign-imposed peace, a foreign-imposed order. And what Trump is doing is actually igniting nationalism and anti-American nationalism in places that have really never had it, like Canada, like Denmark, like the Nordic countries, like Sweden. I'm talking to these people, and you can feel that underneath they're trying to be polite. There is a deep resentment at the way they are being treated. And what are we doing this for? That's, to me, the most bizarre part. We're creating all these enemies out of allies for what? For the notional idea that we'll have more bases on Greenland, which we could have had any way.

I think it's the thing. Nationalism is there's so many connotations about that that some people view differently. I think what we're missing is, which is so strange, again, because of how much we just lionize our own origin story. People yearn to breathe free. Self-determination is inherent in the human condition. I don't understand how we believe that so deeply in our bones for our story. And yet somehow think Venezuelans don't feel the same about themselves. They may not like the Chavista, they may not like Maduro, that election may have been screwed, but they want the ability to determine their own future, not this paternalizing. We would never accept it.

Yeah. And in fact, even in Venezuela, I think it's important for people to understand, Chávez was hugely popular. He won the first election.

Well, that's the difference between him and Trump. These populace movements.

And the truth is, there are a lot of people who still believe in Chávez and believe. So that's one of the reasons why this could get very... If they actually try regime change, this would be very complicated because there are still, first of all, a lot of people with guns who are not going to give up power easily. But there are also a lot of believing Chávez followers. And then there's drug traffickers in Cartel. So the whole thing is much more complicated, which is why the sad truth is this is probably going to look like essentially the most expensive arrest in human history of Maduro, which got rid of him, got American oil companies some concessions into Venezuela, and left everything else intact. The entire repressive apparatus of the regime, the defense minister, the interior minister will all stay exactly as they are, because Otherwise, you're opening a Pandora's box.

We're jumping into one of the things that creates such instability in South America and Central America is our interventions into their politics is what created a a lot of these more extreme left-wing movements. So now they bounce back and forth between right-wing authoritarian strongmen and left-wing authoritarian strongmen. And the thing that prevented that type of pendulum swings, which is the type of thing you see in Pakistan, where it'll go from a military junta to a corrupt democracy. It's that cycle. What prevents that is our system system of constitutional checks and balances. And what we're saying is we'd like to throw that out to get a system more like theirs. They're setting the United States up for that.

So the really interesting question, John, that I would put to you is if you assume all the things we are saying are true, the part that's most difficult to understand for me is why are Americans, or at least 40 to 50% of Americans, okay with this. You have a situation where it's absolutely clear that a party, that the President right now is accumulating powers on a scale that no President has done in decades maybe ever. You have a situation where laws are being violated, norms are being violated. You have a situation where he's intimidating the court, intimidating the Federal Reserve. And yet, he he doesn't lose much support from his base. And I think he's decided he's governing for his base. And so what it leaves me thinking is, is about half the country really okay with illiberal democracy, with the idea that it's okay to abuse individual rights, minority rights, separation of powers, all that? And what does that mean for the future of democracy if half the country doesn't really believe in liberal democracy?

No, they believe in it's okay if it's our guy. Look, this is all very Lord of the Rings, but it is everybody believes in liberal democracy until they get to hold the ring. And then suddenly, it's a very different scenario.

And to be fair, the left has also done this sometimes.

Of course, but not nearly to the extent.

Not nearly. There's no both sides. But it always worried me when Biden would do these student loan waivers using executive power. So that stuff, just because you want the outcome, you cannot want the outcome so badly that you violate the processes of liberal democracy. That's the whole point of liberalism and liberal democracy, which is the process is very important. You don't get to just make your policy happen any which way. And what Trump is showing you is the real cost of that.

But I think there's also something to be said about, look, the system that we have in place is so complex and byzantine that in many ways there is always a clause or something from the sergeant of arms or whoever might jump in or the parliamentarian to prevent us from doing anything. But it's also complex enough that if you're really dig down into emergency powers, you could do anything. The difference is, generally, it has been at some level of consensus and not at the whim of an individual, and a mercurial one at that with absolute silence and no pushback, even from those in his party who would disagree. This is an absolute utter takeover of the apparatus of a political party. You asked why they would go along with it. And the reason is because they believe that the left is the enemy, not that they are a competitor leading worldview or any of those other things, that they are an enemy. They are their enemy. And the dopamine hit that they get, this is an algorithmically driven... Look, populace or popular for a reason. They sell a story of you being forgotten and of a country in decline and of a people that have been abused and victimized.

And this man, what does he say? I am your vengeance. I will fight for you. And they don't give a shit how he does it or how punitive he is. And if that means threatening to arrest the Fed chair, so be it. That guy is corrupt anyway, and he's our enemy. And so this plays to the passions and prejudices of your base. And that's how it's all done. Look, they're selling a story that the reason why eggs are expensive is because some Somalis in Minnesota fucked with a Medicaid program. Not that we spend a trillion dollars on military equipment, soon to be $1. 5 trillion, or not that we subsidize corporations and they suck a lot of the prosperity out of this country, and they don't distribute it in any way within the country in any way that resembles fairness. None of that matters to them, Farid. And so until they You think there's some... I guess I would put that question back on you. What do you think they think the peril is? Some larger goal of constitutional bureaucracy? Why wouldn't they love him. He's basically saying, If you're for me, you can go to the Capitol and beat the shit out of a policeman with the flag pole of a Confederate flag, and I will praise you and pardon you.

But if you try and block a street and you clearly don't have any idea what you're doing, we can shoot you in the head. So why wouldn't they love that?

You know what your point makes me think about is the degree to which maybe during the Cold War, American politics was constrained, was disciplined by the reality of the ideological contest between the Soviet Union, the need for America to be this beacon of freedom and democracy. There was a sense in which... Hubert Humphrey once said this, that he thought the reason for the civil rights movement was there was a foreign policy reason. We had to show the communist world that America was, in fact, the shining city on the hill. And since then, I think what's happened is, honestly, we have no competition. We've become so powerful. It's exactly the opposite of the MAGA narrative. We have no check, no constraint. So I think at some level, the power has gone to our heads, and the power has gone particularly to somebody like Trump's head. Look at the way he treats other countries. The only way, reason you can do that is because you're so powerful, you're unconstrained. You don't have to worry that they're going to go over to the communist side. There's something here that feels very much like it's about the arrogance of power power, the ability to act in unconstrained ways.

And I wonder whether the reason when we were powerful in the past, there was this check. There was this sense in which you had to put forward your best front.

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And the reason why we're not mad at Russia is because we view them through that prism. They're white and Christian, and they're defending Western civilization, not in the sense that we think of the enlightenment, but of a more Orthodox white Christian version of that.

Yeah, exactly. The cultural divide that has developed now is one in which, I think for somebody like JD Vance, Russia are actually the good guys. They're, as you said, they're white, they're Christian. In fact, Putin often makes the point of... Putin is culturally a neoconservative. I mean, he's against all the licentiousness of Western liberalism. So, by the way, Xi Jinping.

One of And it's why they don't like Europe. Europe's too gay and atheist. They don't want any part of that.

Exactly. They worry that the acids of Western liberalism will change their societies as well. And so in many ways, the Russians and the Chinese are not just balancing against the West geopolitically, but they're balancing against them culturally because they don't want these forces of modernization and liberalism to infect their societies. But the twist now Now, compared to the Cold War, is they have allies within the West who feel the same way. This is what's so different about this moment, whereas we faced adversaries in the past. We faced ideological adversaries, geopolitical ones. But what's strange is we now have within the West very important, strong forces that agree with our enemies. That's what makes it so difficult to navigate foreign policy because you watch Trump on Russia and Ukraine. It's pretty clear everyone tries to find some rationale. He hates the Ukrainians. He likes the Russians. He hates Zelenskyy. He likes Putin. Zelensky is the guy who got him impeached in his first term. His solution to peace is, I'm going to squeeze Zelensky, try to get the Ukrainians to make all the concessions they can, hand it over to Putin and plain peace and say, Hey, I got peace.

Can I please get the Nobel Peace His problem so far is Putin wants more. This is a very strange moment for the American President to be acting not as the lawyer for the embattled European democracy, yearning to breathe free, but for the dictatorship that is the aggressor. That, I think, has never happened.

But Farid, if you look at it through the prism that you're talking about. The culture one, exactly. The culture one, but also in terms of the one that you were talking about when the battle was democracy versus communism, and we had to demonstrate democracy. Well, if that's not the battle anymore, then we don't have to demonstrate that democracy works. But this is where I think it gets darker, that it means that the actions that are being taken are not the whims of a mercurial maniac, but are much more purposeful, that changing it to Department of War is much more purposeful. Not backing Ukraine is It's not necessarily about, Well, they never got the dirt on Biden that I wanted. It really is about, no, we're not the great democratic leaders like the people that we lionized in the old days. We are now Putin, Netanyahu, us, Erdoğan, and Xi Jinping. And that is what we are demonstrating because now we can police, the purity. I don't know if you've seen some of this homeland security iconography that they're using. One homeland, our one of you, all of them. It is so... At this point, it's not even implicit of fascist iconography.

It's just a direct translation.

And so much of it, I don't know if you've seen this, is like '50s nostalgia. They have these photographs of old cars and pristine beaches. It's so fascinating because the whole thing is the politics of nostalgia. There's this one moment where in Nikki Haley, in her trying her best to do a MAGA imitation when she was running, she tweets something like, Wasn't life so much simpler when we were growing up? I was thinking to myself, so when would that be? So you put it, roughly speaking, I think for Nikki Haley, it would be the mid '70s. And they're like, okay, the United States in the mid '70s. The oil embargo. Right. We lost our first war in history. The President was impeached and had to resign. A hundred American cities were engulfed in ruinous race riots. Oil prices quadrupled in one day, and then the economy was so bad, we had to create a new name for it, stagflation.

We had whip inflation, now buttons we had to wear, parade around.

Those were the happy Niki Haleci in this. I think there's something fascinating about it. It's almost like, I think we have an evolutionary need to forget bad things that happen and we remember the past in a misty-eye way or something.

I think nostalgia is One of the things that Nikki Hale or any of those people, and I've always said this, is when people say, It's never been like it was when I was a kid, and you're like, right, because you were a kid. You were a child. The reason why you loved the world then is all you cared about is when that ice cream truck was coming by. That's right.

Your parents paid the rent.

Right. That's all you gave a shit about. So of course, that nostalgia. And it's so fascinating because it's... And now that Elon Musk either tweeted this out or reposted it or did some shit. But it was literally that exact thing you were talking about. It was 1950s Rhodesia, and it was a picture in black and white of this pristine, look suburban-looking and South Africa. It was the chaos and darkness and all that. You're like, You do know in Rhodesia how they got that, right? Do you understand? I used to think like, Oh, they're hypocritical. They don't understand how. Now I realized, no, they're saying, this is how we do it. Colonialism. You take it by force and you extract those resources cheaply, and that's how you create and you Who leas, who gets to be there? And you can create these utopias.

When I saw that, I know the tweet you're talking about. And I saw that and I thought to myself, Elon Musk is so smart, but it's a perfect example of how these tech geniuses somehow seem to either lack any historical understanding or any common sense. You look at those pictures, and as you say, my reaction was, you do understand that that world on the left that is that beautiful Radisha was true for like 3% of Radicians who were white, who were tyrannizing the 97% who were not. And that's why you could live like that. That's right. And the same is true in South Africa. And by the way, I grew up in India, where if you had looked at the British enclaves in Bombay and Delhi and Kolkata and Madras, they looked gorgeous. But if you went and looked at rural of poverty in India and looked at where all the money was being extracted in a way. I mean, it's weird to me that somebody as smart as Elon Musk would not think to himself, how did this How did this come to be?

But it's not even how it comes to be, because that would entail an empathy for those that have been exploited, and they don't roll that way. What I'm saying is they believe that's the way we should do it. If we have the opportunity to exploit to our benefit, we should do it. I think what it's missing is the real politic of it, which is to sustain that level of exploitation requires a tremendous amount of resources. And the further away you do it from your center of power, the harder it is to hold the forces of entropy and chaos from exploding. And that's the thing I don't even want to appeal to their moral center. I don't think it exists. I don't think they look at Roedicia and think, oh, that probably was a little fucked up for the other people who live there. But what they're not taking into account is how unsustainable it is because, let's go back to the Constitution, people want to be free. They don't want taxation without representation. They have rights, and they are going to fight for them. And if you're the one holding them back, you're the one they're going to fight.

And understanding that and building a foreign policy that was based around this idea that take Latin America. We went in, we exploited it, we toppled regimes, and then we came to realize the point you're making. So for the last 40 or 50 years, Really, ever since the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, both parties decided, let's have a different approach to Latin America. Let's partner with them. We'll figure out a way to help them restructure their economies. We help them transition Almost every Latin American country in the early '80s was a military junta. They all became democracies by the '90s, with the exception of Cuba. That whole process of partnering, integration, cooperation, law enforcement cooperation, Cooperation, drug cooperation, ended up making the United States much more influential in Latin America. It produced... Mexico now is half a middle-class society. There's no migration from Mexico into the US anymore because there are jobs there. All these good things happen, but it points to the dilemma you're describing. This is complicated. It's messy. You have to treat countries that are really not like your equal. You have to give them respect and defer to them sometimes.

And yet it has worked miraculously well. We're throwing that all away for this much older version of power and coercion, which doesn't work. It's a weird thing. There was this caricature, which is that everybody in America thought that if China kept doing what we were saying China was going to become like America. But what's really happening is America is becoming more like China. We are becoming admiring of China's methods of running the economy.

State-run capitalism.

Controlling the population, of buying mineral rights around the world. It's like we are becoming them.

And it's such a strange bargain for a country like ours to make that has so benefited from a world order that we ourselves created. The subterfuge of coups, not only is it exhausting, not only is it undercutting the values by which we think we stand for, it's not sustainable, and it's a much more volatile system. And by the way, a constitutional republic is not really the best system by which to graft an imperial leader onto. So let's say he builds his giant fucking ball room with all the gold trimmings, and he knocks down the... The next guy can just undo it because that's how... And when you start going into these systems that they're setting up of resentment, I don't know that we're going to be able to get that back. I don't know how other countries would be able to trust us knowing that one person who just decides to push it as far as you can push it can just come in. And what did Trump do? Pulled out of 60 treaties the other day?

It's something that's true in personal life as well, right? Like, real deep abiding trust takes decades to build. It's a lot of hard work. Rupturing trust is very easy because exactly as you say, because after this, every European country, every Canadian, the Australians, they always know the Americans could do this again. So I have to hedge. I have to have an insurance policy. I have to have a way out, some diversification. And that's the tragedy. We had been so reliable that the world never thought, that our allies never thought they needed an insurance policy. They needed to hedge against our becoming crazy, rogue imperialists. And now they do.

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Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Over 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability speed and coverage varies. See, mintmobile. Com.. Com. Farid, where do you see when we talk about... So as we change the world order and we align ourselves more with that idea of the strong men, spheres of influence, those kinds of things, the trade offs that we make within that. So what is now, who is the leader of the free world? Because if we're the ones that are going into countries and dictating who can be their leaders, which we're doing. They've said it explicitly, Venezuela can have a new leader, but they have to meet this requirement. So that's not a free election. What is the world order? Is it literally us, China, Russia, some smaller, strong men that also get to assert their spheres of influence in their things, a completely rotted EU EU that has no power? Where does Canada, Australia, the EU, where does the block that we led? What becomes of that?

We are leaving them leaderless. We are leaving them disunited and leaderless precisely because their strength came from being part of a whole. They individually, none of them, many of them are pretty strong, the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh largest economies in the world. But what gave them the power was that we were all together, we were united. So we'll end up in a multipolar world, which is like the 19th century world, very unstable, very volatile, prone to war, miscalculation, except this time we of nuclear weapons. So not a happy scenario. Also not a world in which freedom has as much capacity to expand. And to my mind, What is strange about all of it is we took something where we were at the center, where we were the rule setter, where we were the agenda setter, and we've turned it into something where we've got this little box of the Western hemisphere, which is, by the way, the least important of the three main regions in terms of even our own trading, our main trading partners are in Europe and Asia. But I tend to think, John, that maybe it's just, again, I'm an optimistic immigrant migrant.

This is not going to last. Americans don't like this, I don't think. I think the idea that America stands for nothing, stands for no higher ideals, the idea that the United States is just a bully, that it's going to literally, consciously emulate the ways of old fashioned imperialists, that it's going to essentially become a version of Putin's Russia. I don't think this is popular. I don't people like it. I think that we are going through a bad phase in American history. And I think there is going to be some... At some point, the fever breaks.

And I think the problem is, we will have done damage. I've been hearing that for a very, very, very long time.

I know. And this is why I said to you, to me, the biggest puzzle is that the fever hasn't broken. But sometimes these things take longer.

Because it's too flattering to, I think, that nostalgia that you talk about to a group of people that feel... And by the way, many of them feel rightfully let down, that the systems that we talked about that created the prosperity in the world did leave them behind, and our system was not fast enough to catch up. And we did have a problem with not gaining control over immigration. None of these stories is completely invented out of whole cloth. The thing I worry about is the narrative that we're describing is one that makes perfect sense to what we observe in the world. But as we saw, let's take Minneapolis as an example. I look at that video and I see something very different than what When the President of the United States, an hour afterwards, just come out and say, That's a domestic terrorist. That was a terrorist attack trying to murder an ICE agent. I'm like, Pretty sure that... Someone said she She was a well-trained operative in a domestic territory. You're like, Well, someone's trained in that, but it's not her. It's the officers. They're the ones that are trained. They're the ones that...

It seemed like, getting back to our point, there were a lot of different ways that they could have accomplished de-escalating that situation beyond killing the person. But they chose that, and it was a choice. I see people criticizing liberal saying, So it's okay that she tried to murder that agent. You're like, No, we're not saying it's okay that she tried to murder an agent. What we're saying is from what we saw, that's not what she was trying to do. But we have two different interpretations. So my view of what are we doing in the world, I wonder, did they view it as, See America's back? Oh, yeah. And that's how they digest it. I hope that this It feels alien to me. It's surprising that someone, an authoritarian move like Trump's, normally a populist is more popular than he is.

Yeah. And that's the hope, again, that he's governing to his base, which he's doing very well, but he is losing the majority, not a huge majority, but it does say his approval ratings are in the high 30s at this point. But what you What we have to hope then is that the next Democrat, or honestly, frankly, a Republican, like a John McCain type Republican, would come up and say, Look, we're proud of the things we've done. We're proud that we were the richest country in the history of the world. We were also the most generous country in the history of the world. And I want to save the lives of the poorest people in Africa if I can do it at one % of the federal budget. Sometimes I worry the Democrats are too scared to make the argument that there's something honorable and noble about the things we were doing.

I think they're too scared to make almost any argument at this point, and they don't have the wherewithal. I think what I see in the Trump administration is, I think at times they even have some worthy goals. But when they have a choice, Trump says, We could do it the easy way or we could do it the hard way. I think what they like is doing it the hard way because the hard way is a way of showing power. Exactly. There is a way for them to do immigration enforcement in this country that doesn't involve beating the shit out of people in target parking lots.

Yeah. And I think, by the way, that is the place the Democrats should be, because as you say, the Democrats totally mishandled immigration over the last 10 years. Biden, it was a disaster. You don't want to be supporting massive illegal immigration. It's wrong. It's bad, right? And so the question is, how do you get at this? That's right. And is there a way to do it that is more consistent with our values and yet is very effective and very hard line? And look, as a legal immigrant, I, in particular, don't like the idea that you can cut the line, as it were. But There's a way to do it that's consistent with our values.

And there's also, I think, there's the sense that, yeah, if people are murderers and rapists and all that stuff, and they're still in the country, yeah, get them. Overwhelmingly, Americans support that. And if that is what they were trying to accomplish, they could do it. But in the manner that they're doing it, it's almost as though they want the confrontation and they want the provocation. And so everything is done in the most egregious manner they can possibly think of because they want the fight. And that's what you said. And that's what makes me think, oh, you know what? This isn't even incompetence. This isn't mercurial whims of a dictator. This is the plan. What their end game on that is, I don't know.

And it's the opposite of what the whole point of liberal democracy is. This is highly mobilized societies charged to find intern enemies. It feels very different. The whole point of liberal democracy is you live in your house, the government respects your privacy, nobody interferes with you. You have your wonderful private life. It's Civil society builds. That's what it used to be, and that's what the whole idea of capitalism and liberal democracy was.

And American democracy, the craziest thing to me has been watching the Don't Tread on Me crowd flip over to, You obey and you comply. That's what the founders want.

An idealization of state power. That's right. The President should be the one doling out, I'm going to give NVIDIA this contract. I'm not going to give it to Exxon because you wasn't nice to me. And now the Swiss can have lower tariffs because they gave me a gold bar. That's that state power of a kind that no President has ever wielded.

It was only maybe 25 years ago that Francis Fukuyama wrote the end of... What was it? The end of History. The End of History. And that it was that democracy, liberal democracy in particular, had triumphed over history.

It looked like that at the time. It's funny. The thing about life is this is what gives me hope, Ja. Nothing stays the same. So that's what we have to hope.

To the ramparts, to read the Zecaria. Farid, thank you. Boy, what a lovely chance to catch up. I've really enjoyed it. I hope I get a chance to see you again. Fereed Zecaria, host of CNN's. Fereed Zecaria, GPS. Good luck over there at CNN. I don't know who's buying it next, but I hope that they believe in you and that you stay on and keep going.

From your lips to God's ears.

All right. Well, actually, we haven't talked in a while, but I'll see what I can do. Farid Zaharia, thanks for joining us.

Pleasure.

Farid. I haven't seen him in a dog's age. He was the most frequent guest on on The Daily Show.

You can see why. Yeah.

Now I wonder what happens when they sell CNN. Do they sell it for parts? Does he get just left out on a curb and then anybody can drive by and just pick it up?

Just with a sign, a piece of paper that says free on it.

Yes.

Works well.

Or they just start shutting parts down. Remember CNN Plus? That was a moment. Oh, God.

They did that for a week, and then they were like, No, fuck this. This seems like it might be hard. And then go, I really like that. I don't even know who's going to get it. But the President, Trump is like, I'll decide who gets to buy it. You're like, Sure. I think that's how business works. Basically, two people come to the father and say, I would like it. It's like Solomon, I'll cut CNN in half, and then one of you can take.

Then the father basically says, You have X amount of time to make it worth my while.

You got to make it worth my while, and you got to change so that every time I turn it on, it makes me feel good. That's the only thing that works. By the way, I thought it was interesting that I came into it with the idea that, Oh, we're being led by this mercurial, and they're following the whims, and I don't know. But I did leave thinking, Oh, this is a darker, deeper plan.

There does seem to be a unifying theory, weirdly, which is, I think it goes back to what you say, which is big fuck small. You can see it from what's going on in Minneapolis to what's going on in Venezuela. It's the one thing that seems to unite at all, which is just this dick-swinging contest.

But it's big, fuck, small, but it's in regards to, it's not just a theory of power, it's a theory of returning to a more colonial economy, an extraction economy of those weaker economies, and your country being more homogenous. There is actually now metrics rather than just, Oh, we have more weapons so we can take what we want. But why are we doing it?

I also think something that you touched on that I can't get my head around is the ideological malleability of Maga. Two seconds ago, it was America first, a type of isolationism. Steve Banon, who was the mouthpiece partially for it, is now saying, Well, there is that Western exceptionalism for isolation.

It's like, Oh, okay. There's a lot of exceptions to go along But I think the larger point is it is a return to great homogenous, heritage-based powers extracting the resources they need from the unwashed masses of lessers. I think it's that dirty and dark in a lot of respects. What they don't understand is the fresh hell that they've unleashed, not just morally, but in terms of stability their ability to manage it.

We're going to miss the postwar world order when it's gone.

Yeah, they're going to... I like that. You're going to miss this world order. You know what? Maybe that's the way to go here. Why don't we just fucking guilt them into this? We worked very hard on that world order. You're going to miss it when it's gone. It's a terrible, terrible thing. Now, we've been gone forever. While we were gone, was the audience still active in some way? Were there things that they... Or are we done now?

Absolutely. All All right. What are they want? We've got loads of questions for you.

All right, let's do it.

First up, John. Bill and Hillary Clinton have announced that they won't comply with the subpoena from the House Oversight Committee's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Do you think that they should comply?

I absolutely do. But why should they comply if the Department of Justice is not complying with releasing the files? Is compliance a specialized individual Indigenous Is it an opportunity or should it be universal? The Department of Justice has subpoenaed them to testify in the Jeffrey Epstein case while not complying with releasing the files. How does that comport in any? But do I personally think they should comply? Absa fucking lootly. Absolutely. If they've got something to hide or an affair, yes, we should know about all this. This is bonkers how long this is going on.

We have only We've seen such a fraction. I think I was reading it's the 2 million file stuff to come out.

It's 1% is what I've seen. Yeah, that we've seen.

The casual nature in these emails were like, Hey, can you get me an Indian and a redhead? They're just casually. It's literally like they're ordering from Uber Eats. I mean, it's just...

And the fact that we don't- And the spelling errors. It's humiliating.

That would bother Gillian the most.

The grammar. It's just these people, you think they're Titans of the world, and they can't type on a Blackbury.

The grammar police have also indicted- The Grammar police are doing more here. No, I think that's wise. But absolutely, they should comply, and the Department of Justice should comply. These victims of this heinous case should finally get some of the justice and peace that they deserve. God's sakes.

Preach.

Fuck That's a good thing.

Next up. John, which one do you like doing more, the Daily Show or the Weekly Show?

Oh, that is an excellent question.

We're all listening.

Any time you can do something in your house, if they would let me do the Daily Show from my house, it may have the edge. It is The whole thing is just part... You guys know that generally when I'm not doing this show or The Daily Show, that I am in a state of stasis where the charger is unplug and I sit quietly not talking to anybody for five days. I love the interaction of all of it. I spend all the rest of my time when I'm not doing that, reading articles about how not to get Alzheimer's. The The only way to do it, apparently, is to continue collaborating and being around people and engaging in the world. This is the manner by which I choose to do it, and you are the people that I love doing it with. No, Take that Daily Show.

Yeah.

That was the takeaway.

I meant both. Yeah.

No, cut that. I'm taking it.

But I will say the Commute to the Weekly Show is much more important.

It's pretty good.

They got any more for us?

Yeah. Saw you joined Instagram, John. Does that mean you're through with Twitter? Sorry, X.

I did join, but I'm not really sure what to do with it.

No one else is.

Unfortunately, I joined it, but then I was like, So now what do I do? Then I was like, I have to take a picture if I want to put something on there. You can't just write shit. You got to take a picture. I haven't used it yet, but I did join it, and I am going to put something there. I'll probably put our stuff on there and Daily Show stuff on there and maybe figure out some other shit if I could figure it out. But yeah, Twitter's rough, man. There's only so many times that I say something random on Twitter, where I can be told I'm a Jew, where you're just like, Hey, this is getting a little like, I know, I'm aware, not hiding. It It'd be okay if you don't have to jump on and tell me. And by the way, Instagram could be the same fucking thing. I have no idea. It just seems like a slightly less toxic environment than the one that appears to have developed. But you guys are on it. What do you think?

Just toxic in a different way.

Well, I think people are going to tell me I'm a Jew on both platforms. The nice thing for me is my life is relatively drab, so there will be no posturing about the fabulous, fabulosity of all this. I feel no pressure in that regard. As you guys can see, we were laughing about it earlier, by the way I dress and look. I gave up about 17 years ago.

I'm sure there's some thirst traps on the camera roll, waiting for their moment.

Listen, thirst traps. I shower in my clothes. It's bad. Gillian, you're on Instagram, too, yeah?

Yeah, I'm on Instagram. I'm not on X, the Everything app. I love myself too much for that.

It's fucking wild, man. You just think to yourself, I really do hope, actually, this is a Russian bot. Because if there's a human being out there who really felt the need in their day, seconds after I posted something, to just jump on there and be like, I'll never forgive you for the rally to restore sanity. You're like, What's your life? What What's your fucking life?

The good news is it certainly is a Russian bot.

They all are Russian bots.

Well, I can't wait to see your Instagram esthetic.

It'll be a lot like my Pinterest boards. Okay. It's going to be mostly Anne Taylor. Is that still a company?

Yes. I want to say yes.

Great tales. I thought that was a reference from a while back, but I wasn't quite sure. Well, guys, it's so good to be back with you and to get my Alzheimer's medicine for the day. We'll move there. But as always, great preparation, great work. So lovely to have you guys back. Lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mamedevik, producer, Gillian Speer, video editor and engineer, Rob Vittolo, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Bois, and our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie gray. Thank you guys so much for rejoining us after a lovely break, and we shall see you guys next week. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bustboy Productions.

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