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Hello everybody, Jordan Klepper here and your ears have wandered into a special podcast episode where we take.
You behind the show.
At the Daily Show, I'm joined virtually by supervising producer and segment director Ian Berger today to talk about our latest foray into the megalopolis, figuring the polls at Trump's second inauguration.
Ian, Hello, going good, good.
I'm happy to be home and thought out from that frigid weekend. But I think we had a good time.
It was a cool one.
I would say in prepping for this piece, a good ninety percent of it was discussing layers, how many layers we should bring put on, what was appropriate for the upcoming apocalyptic freeescape.
Yeah, we had a few weather strategy meetings that were very important, and I think we succeeded so go us.
People were very scared of this weather, and I will say, in retrospect, not as cold as as somebody growing up in Michigan.
This was like a Tuesday.
It was a regular Tuesday, and it was a It was I would say, a June Tuesday in Michigan.
Which actually brings up a joke you had that I don't think made of the cut. But we're like, if if Maga and Trump can't weather, you know, fifteen degrees in Washington, d C. How is he going to take Greenland. I don't think they know that much about Greenland, but I'm pretty sure they understand as cold.
We know for a fact they don't know much at all about Greenland. We talked significantly about Greenland where it is, what it provides, the simple need to have Greenland existed out there in the Maga universe. But the temperature that the reality of the temperature definitely didn't blame.
Yeah, they want and they want to make Canada the fifty first state. I got news for you that's also cold.
Yeah, people are their temperature sensitive. I think we also positive the idea that it was less a temperature decision of the Trump CAMPI part and more we don't want to see an audience smaller than Obama's decision. So there's a lot of Frankly, there were snowflakes.
Everywhere, Yes, there were certainly.
Back you want to tell us about that weekends overall compared to the inauguration you went to eight years ago.
Yeah, you know eight years ago. Nobody really knew what to expect. There was a lot of shell shocked reactions to the Trump administration going into this. I knew it was going to be a weekend full of red hats, people celebrating, people excited, and we were not disappointed. As far as that goes. You enter into Washington, d C.
And it is on lockdown. I think what we had this year because there was such a last minute shift in the ceremony, how there was going to be nothing out there on the National Mall like it was very confusing to travel around Washington, d C. Streets were blocked off, nobody knew where to go, what events were taking place, and so US as a a production, it was confusing navigating that.
But we kept running into.
People who were there for the celebration who had no idea where to go, what to do, where to stand, what to expect.
If used, but happy it didn't matter.
They had like you're you're with your people, if you're a maga, you know fan, it didn't matter that you didn't know where to go. It felt like yeah, it felt like people were kind of asking if we knew about things or where they should go. But at least Trump had a rally the day before, which when we were first planning this seemed like, oh, that's a good story point because it's kind of crazy to be to me to say I'm going to have a rally the
day before the inauguration, which is basically a rally. So but you know, Trump needs attention, so he was doing that. But then because things got changed so much, it kind of like, I think his you know, his fans were really happy that he had this rally because there wasn't necessarily, you know, like a lawn event or whatever, a great mall event to go to.
It's in retrospect I understand the need for this rally.
At first, I was like, this.
Man just wants nothing but celebrations. But when you have to feed the beast that is Kid Rock, placing him the day before on stage, Trump was gonna give Kid Rock three or four songs to perform inauguration day.
Hard to slide that in.
It wouldn't be totally surprising if he did on inauguration day sneak Kid Rock in there, but it felt a little bit cleaner to have him the day before. It really was an event that was like, let's bring everybody who has made a lot of noise and created awful music and culture wars. Let's put them on stage to dance around, and I think the fans were very excited to have it.
Yeah, in fact, like one of the lanes we wanted to explore it. It was kind of a game we had that again did make it into the piece because you go out in the world and you find other stuff, great stuff. You weren't expecting was that we were treating it like it was a destination wedding, but one of those like really long destination weddings with too many events, and a lot of the MAGA crowd like bought into that. They're like, absolutely, it's like a destination wedding.
That's great.
And I think we even had jokes about like, you know, the the gifts for Trump and you know, whether they're where they would be seated and whether they'd get invited to the Tuesday brunch. But it, you know, it really was like a destination wedding because there was parties everywhere, and people are drunk during the day and there's a lot of outpha changes.
So one premise that we had walking out was like, oh, this does feel like this big weekend, and we started joking with people about whether or not they had seen the Trump Registry and given to the Trump Registry, and perhaps there's no surprise anymore. Everybody, everybody didn't bet an eye, like the idea that like, oh, no, one I buy a bunch of Trump shit. So I've already I've already paid a ton of money to the vendors right around here for the newest Trump merge. But secondarily like, oh yeah,
there's there's a tithing to be paid. We've we've already gifted to the Care campaign. And we joked with a lot of people about like how important it is to give money to the Trump campaign because your voice won't be heard if you don't give money, and of course, the more money you give the lottery, your voice will be That as a comedic premise feels sound, but does not land as a comedic premise there, it just lands as a baseline reality.
Yeah, and that's a sad state of affairs for like, you know, politics in general in America. But yeah, there was no shame in that. We no shame.
It's again we've talked about it on the show, but the implicit is now explicit, and so perhaps we are the silly ones to be like, isn't that crazy? They're like, oh, you mean bezos and musk and everybody's standing right behind Donald trumpety sport it.
No, that's just America.
Yeah, absolutely, I'm gonna talk about some of the things like you were surprised to see. I mean, we can talk about like the reactions to the J six photos. What did you think of that? What were you expecting?
What? You know? How did play out?
Well?
We we went down there expecting some pardons to come down on day one of the new Trump administration, and frankly, we've been covering J six since we were there on January sixth, and I think the question we had in New York was like, what is the line? Is there truly a line with the Maga Faithful? So we put it out pictures and images from January sixth, people who brought a gun, a man who brought a gun and shouted outside of January sixth.
We brought a picture of.
Him police officers being beaten, and we kind of confronted people about like we understand you want quote unquote blanket pardons. When you ask the Maga Faithful, like what do you think about January six folks?
You know, to a.
Person, they all would say like, pardon, and then you'd follow up blanket pardons, and most people said.
Yes, of course, yeah.
When confronted with the actual images, confronted with what they did, a good number of the people we talked to did draw a line, did see a police officer getting beaten, and say, well, they of course not violent protesters. And I think looking back at what Trump did the next day, which is essentially pardon everyone and commute the sentences of the people who were of violent criminals, the majority of the MAGA folks we interacted with did see a line
and drew the line at violence and attacking cops. And there was even one person who was a little ray of sunshine who who saw these images of cops being attacked beaten and was somewhat horrified and said to us, I've never seen these images before. When we asked him where he got his media sources, he said it was just conservative media.
He was very open about that and vulnerable.
Where was this That was January sixth, Yeah, have.
You not seen his image? No, I have not seen that.
Seen any of these images.
Some of them, but not these really maybe the ones maybe the media that I'm following, is not is not showing.
These what it could be?
It could be what media conservative Did you watch the January sixth hearings?
No, I didn't know.
Okay, so this is new.
So that's my fall I should have been better informed.
Yes, I will say, that's a refreshing thing to hear. And we went on to have a conversation beyond what is even in the piece where he said he will he said he promised to do his own research and engage in other media sources. Who knows if that man is knee deep in huffing and post right now or not. But there was a true openness to him that we rarely see at the.
Trump Yeah, he was.
He was genuinely concerned looking at those pictures, like concerned one for like the victims in those photos, but concerned for like the state of the world that he had never seen them before and confused by it. And it's kind of amazing. And then of course.
It's it's it does speak to many of the folks we show this to. I don't think it's seen many of these images their their media diet doesn't show that to them, but usually approach it with well, you're.
Trying to manipulate me what this man showed it.
Perhaps it's a it's a crack of the wall, it's a little bit of the light that's coming through. A case for optimism. I don't know how you want to frame it, but the Maga Faithful were not defensive when it came to these conversations. They've won, they feel you're feeling good on cloud night, They're getting what they want, and so in that moment, you're like, why did we get this person to actually be somewhat reflective.
It's because the defensiveness has gone.
He's doing a victory laugh, and perhaps there's an openness or at least we saw a moment of it.
Yeah, that was incredible. It was incredible.
But and of course there are people who just have like blinders on and like their guard up no matter what you show them. I think of the guy in the hockey jersey. He he went from like kind of trying to deny the reality of the photo to just admitting that he didn't care. He's like, oh maybe that's Antifa, Oh maybe the cops are attacking. And then finally he was like, I don't care what you show me, Like truly,
it is the It is the old line. Trump could shoot somebody, It could be on video, and there will be people like I don't know, they still seem sorry.
This guy, this guy with a gun outside the Capitol.
Should he be pardoned?
Did he shoot the gun?
Is that a real gun or was out a fake gun?
Shot the gun up in the air. Yes, yes, he should be because.
Yeah, I think you should be.
Pardon why because I don't think he should be.
Uh, I don't think he was.
I think you should be part of What about this guy's spraying a bear spray at the police of Defense?
So pardon. Yeah, that's a tough one. Was that from the same day?
Yeah, that's January January sixth, the most photograph crime in human history. Yeah yeah, okay, well you can show me eight million more. I'm pro pardon.
Wow.
Like when you ask somebody something uncomfortable in the Trump world, the first thing is like, wow, it's antifao, or that's a manipulated image, or that didn't happen. Like they throw out a bunch of possibilities, and then when you get through all of it, it ends finally with I don't fucking care.
Yeah, yeah, you can, just didn't make that right away, and we could grap by lunch. If you just all said it right away, it'll be great. Another thing we kind of discovered, which was on a lighter note, a pretty funny thing about a special VIP guest.
Everybody here was excited about.
Garbage truck. Baby. One thing you're most excited about seeing.
Today Donald Trump at five o'clock.
That's it. Garbage truck.
Yes, this garbage truck.
The mag of garbage truck that went viral during the campaign who reportedly hit the streets during the inauguration day parade, and these full grown adults who voted for the president were really really pumped.
The garbage truck is Yeah.
No, I didn't know that the garbage truck is here.
I did hear that.
I did hear you.
It was common. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Garbage truck is here.
Have you heard about the one that Trump's sat in?
Yeah, Donald Trump, garbage truck was scheduled to appear at this inauguration and we laughed about it on the show. And when that news article came about, like who the VIPs were they mentioned garbage truck. You know, we had a field day with anout of the show. And so the question that we had before coming down is like, do people really give a shit about the garbage truck? And it turns out the answer is yes, they do.
But it's they are so excited.
The group of three women, they reminded us about their excitement because they brought it up. It wasn't We didn't actually have to prompt them. They were like, oh, I'm also very excited about the garbage truck.
Yeah.
The funniest thing might be that the garbage truck was never there. As far as we can tell.
That this was a weekend of metaphors. Like, if you want, when years from now we look back, what was the Trump presidency? Like, you see nothing but metaphors. You see a rich man hanging out with his billionaire friends, leaving his supporters out in the cold. You see a bunch of people coming to Washington Tea excited about one image of American greatness, that being a garbage truck, and yet the third metaphor being the garbage truck that was promised never even fucking arrived.
It felt like it's funny because it was just it was reported that it would be there. It feels like those convoys that were like forever supposed to be heading to the Capitol. They show these images of like seven thousand truckers are driving in the capitol protests, you know, vaccine mandates, and it just didn't exist, but everybody would post about it. So it feels like that I'm sad where you know, how could they not get the garbage truck there? It doesn't seem like it takes that much, but.
It was.
I remember day when we shot this piece over two days, the day before at the victory rally and the inauguration day, and one of those first interviews, the women brought up garbage truck, and so we just decided, because the reaction was so funny to us, that we would ask everybody about the garbage truck.
And everybody was.
So so fricking excited to a tea that it became like our internal the one thing that we found so much joy in asking, Well, we got to ask what the garbage truck?
Maybe you see their faces light up. It was like a switch, like I think you made the observation and it didn't make it to the piece, but like their reaction and like obviously discussion and excitement over garbage trucks is very childish, but their reaction was like like that time's one hundred. It was like telling your child you could have ice cream for breakfast. Will you tell a kid that, like, oh my god, this is the best day ever? Oh yes, that was. It was that kind
of reaction. It was like a child finding out they getting extra dessert.
It was pure, unadult traded joy. It was like they're excited about two things. One they're excited about migrant families being detained at the border, and a garbage truck has arrived to Washington, DC.
What joy, This is a new serious chapter in America.
A garbage truck.
We did get.
One of my favorite moments in these pieces was the lovely couple at the end, one dressed as Spider Man, the other dressed as a traditional.
MAGA supporter with a Fipe Fight Fight t shirt.
And they were bummed, as most people were out there on the Capitol lawn that there was no event, and when we told them that the truck was potentially there, they got so giddy, and the man and the Spider Man said.
Ooh, ooh, I saw one. I saw one such joy.
And then when we slowed it down to be like wait, wait, you saw a garbage truck, not necessarily the garbage truck, and he conferred, yes, that it was a garbage truck.
And I'm so excited that I saw a garbage truck. To me that that that was.
Such a lovely comedic height need and also an articulation of what that joy is. It's it's not even attached anymore to the trolling an event of the garbage truck or Donald Trump's supremacy. It's attached to the sere joy of seeing a thing. And that's the Maga twenty twenty five.
Everyone, Yeah, it's It was the exact same kind of reaction to my child in a stroller being pushed around Brooklyn and seeing an actual garbage truck and pointing truck truck. It was the exact same thing, except my child was two.
And to be clear, your your child's not in control of of or has a say and who should be running the largest democracy on planet Earth correctly.
Did not vote, did not vote, did not donate. Moody the Trump campaign so has no say yeah, no say What other group I want to talk about were the I think they called themselves the Maga Boys, and they look like a boy band We saw them from a distance and it was like too incredible not to approach.
Not only are we excited here in the US, but the world is excited.
We're excited to get rid of the old administration. You know, just wipe the slate clean.
You do that with like dope dance moves or something.
No, we do that with Crypto and AI.
We only used this a little bit of them. But that was a fun interaction. What was your reaction, What did you think of them, and what do you think of their story? Remember they kind of told told you who they were and what they did or supposed did.
Yeah, I mean, that's it's fascinating to see the the Donald Trump means different things to different groups.
The Maga faithful are not monolithic.
And these guys, these guys were dressed head to toe and bespoke Maga gear, like expensive red, white and blue leather jackets. Nice jackets, they were nice jackets, and they were they had energy. They had they had they had Maga bro energy. And they told us their story, which was essentially that like they found this, they found this team,
this Maga tine. They traveled around in a bus and they had converted their their bus into a podcast bust that is hitting the country and bringing the power of talk Maga Boydom all of that stuff to change America. When we asked them, how do they go to change America? And they said, through the power of AI and crypto,
big Crypto. Guys huge into AI Crypto. They talked a lot about bitcoin and all sorts of all sorts of cryptonomics with us, and I think when we brought up like, oh, well, the big news was the Trump coin and it made so much fricking money, We're like, oh, how many of those did you guys get?
They missed it.
They missed their whole thing is Trump and crypto and Trump coin. They missed that investment opportunity and they felt so stupid and they should And then their excuse was, we didn't think the Trump effect would be that big while they're dressed in head to toe Trump gear, Like if anyone should know that it's that big. You guys have like dedicated your life to this. Look you are it.
You are it, you believe in this man and crypto, and you missed the moment because you underplan it.
I feel like that missing that moment is like altered their course in some ways that we can't. We don't know, but like their lives would be very different obviously, but like I almost feel like sadly missing that moment. I could see them, like the group splintering and them blaming
each other and Maga Boys is over. Like you think that we were writing that episode of TV about them, That's what I think would be that missed we missed, they missed trump Coin and then now they're they got to blame each other.
I think I imagine them like a traditional boy band, like an En Sync or Backstreet Boy. You got your you got your vibe of who's the justin Timberlake and who's going to break out, who's going to end up having substance abuse problems, who's going to have a solo career in the maga sphere, become a crypto rapper or something.
You know.
A year and a half from now, you could really see it all distilled.
You're the quiet one. You're the one who's going to get thrown out of your job in law enforcement. This is what Okay, I figured it out.
And you're all going through divorces right now. Okay, that's the tie.
There's a lot here. Okay, you know what you know.
What a moment that stood out to me too is like the culture of Maga is fascinating. And we we were outside Capital One arena and then we did most of our interviews and I went in not to the arena but hotel and just watched most of that victory rally. And it's wild to watch these events played out over an hour and a half. You watch Kid Rock do multiple songs that are anti Deep State, and then he does Bau with Taba with Trump speeches intercut in between
where he's wearing like a wife beater. There's a guitar solo, and the audience is filmed filled of like fifty of like thousands of fifty to sixty year olds, half dancing and half not knowing what to do. It's a weird cultural moment. Village people comes in like it's just it's abrasively. It's abrasively like wedding band culture, yeah, to an audience that is not super into it, but it's just excited to have been invited to the.
Wedding yeah, and had a few cocktails.
So they're gonna dance so hard to these songs that they've never given a shit about.
And like you.
We traveled around DC that day, like the Village People has now just become almost a trolling song. There's little rickshaws that were riding around trying to get people to
hop on playing the Village People. I walked into a pizza shop that for the inauguration had brought in a DJ to Spin Tunes who was playing y MCA at a sad little pizza shop outside of Capitol One Arena with a bunch of maga red hats sitting there on dates, awkwardly eating mediocre pizza and listening to a DJ blast the Village People, where you're just like, are you guys even enjoying this?
Is this what victory looks like? Is this what the new culture is? That?
I don't want to be pretentious that the new culture has to has to live in some world of like Philip Roth novels or us just zoning out to the newest electro jazz. But there's something to what is.
There should be better music. There should be better music in America is like future.
We should aspire to something better than a set actually a DJ and a pizza joint playing a gay anthem from the eighties.
Right, just want to finish and talk about the vibe at the Mall on the second day, because obviously there was not an event there. But we went there knowing people would just show up because what else do they have to do.
It's we were unsure where to go.
There's a twenty thousand people I believe were getting into Capital One Arena with like a promise of perhaps seeing Donald Trump later in the day.
But for the thousands, you.
Know, some people said, there's hundreds of thousands of people who came to DC to see Donald Trump. They had no place to go, and it was fascinating people. We walked around on the National Mall like people were starting to congregate there. They had taken down the jumbotrons, they had taken out any place for people to hang. But Donald Trump was in the rotundan, So people kind of made their way there as a pilgrimage. People were bummed out. They'd spent thousands of to get there. We felt for it.
We would see families there who came down to DC for the first time, spent a bunch of money to get there, and now they didn't know where to go or what to do, and so there was a there's like a melancholy on the National Mall.
We ran into a few people who like who spoke to that. I think we laughed.
They called it a calm we felt it was like somber felt a bit like a funeral.
At well, I mean, because we've shot on them all a bunch, And obviously we were there in January sixth, and that day is very different and the energy is very different. But it was so odd to be there and see that many people being quiet, Like like your brain when you see that many people, you're kind of anticipating just like noise. But it was really quiet, like I think you you you know, you touched on that on the piece. But still they had to go and
gather somewhere. So it's not like there's like great museums in that town that they could all go to.
Yeah, I don't know. It's Martin Luther King's Day.
And maybe if there could be like an African American museum that can help, you know, Americans reflect on our troubled history with racial inequality.
Literally, maybe that would be a nice opportunity.
Literally hundreds of yards just a couple hundred yard from where we were standing, not like another section of the city like right there.
You could go right there today.
It is. It created such a fascinating organic situation, which is true, Like the Maga faithful are always asking where's the party at, and oftentimes it's in a fricking parking lot. But then a jumbo jet comes in and a man yells about immigrants for an hour and a half and they buy a silly hat. That day, nobody knew where the party was at, and so they meandered and they wandered.
They didn't know how to like organize their their excitement, and the reality was the party was inside the rotunda with a bunch of rich people who are taking care of the things that they want to take care of, and they're they're left to sort of wander the National Mall among these monuments essentially lost.
So obviously we've been to Trump events when he's won and events when he's lost, and the ones he lost were really kind of hairy January sixth, even the millionm Aga march before that was in a way kind of scarier. But now they won and they're feeling pretty good. Did you notice a shift in the tone and the vibes for yourself at this event?
People were definitely jubilant and excited to be there. I didn't see any vibes that were the anti media vibes that we've seen in the past. I don't see that as a long term solution to this, this tension that exists oftentimes out there in the field. But because this weekend was an example of Donald Trump's vision for America finding its audience and being celebrated, people seem just just happy and didn't pay us any mind.
We are we are part of the We are part of the.
Media landscape that they don't have to pay attention to now weeks from now, as as things perhaps don't go as well as they imagine they could go in their own minds, I imagine sort of, perhaps there's a tension that gets brought back into it. I think that's what happened with us last time, eight years ago. Again, I don't think I think it's going to be very different four years than Trump's first four years. Yeah, but I do think I do think this is just a brief
pause in the tension and the anger. I think the MAGA movement is based on anger and grievance aimed at something, and therefore this was this was more of an aberration to what is maga as opposed to a new new angle for it.
Yeah.
Absolutely, Just but just wait until Congress refuses to change the constitution so he could run for a third term. They're going to be so angry that Prepare yourself.
I am. I'm already prepared. I've already heard the rumor that he's going to run as vice.
President next time around, which which I'm like, oh that that makes too much sense.
God damn it, it really does. Oh my god.
Any thoughts going forward, I mean, we we've covered Trump in the past. I think he took a little break from rallies, but still he can't resist doing them. Any ideas about like covering the these kinds of events the next few months.
I mean, we always talk about what we like about going to these events. You know, it's it's like a it's it's a laboratory of ideas. We get to see that the conversations that Donald Trump has in front of the media or he tweets about, like what actually resonates with his his supporters.
What we discovered with this one.
We talked, you know, since since Trump was elected, we hadn't gone to one of these events before, and so a lot has happened, and so we brought up things like Greenland and what and and the Panama Canal and and Canada. There's a lot new Mexico, the uh oh yeah, the the golf of the Golf of Mexico slash America. We brought up a lot of these issues, and it
is fascinating to see what has penetrated. Like again, more often than that, we see people create an argument for Donald Trump out of these things that they haven't thought about, perhaps ever in their lives, but also stuff that doesn't resonate with them. They had no opinions about the Panama Canal. They were grasping at straws about Greenland. And I think as we move forward, who knows how many of these events there will be.
But I think we.
Always are on the searche to see what people actually are talking about and how the propaganda is working. And many times, I think that's what we do out there. We're testing what propaganda works and what doesn't work.
And when you're in a.
Hotel and you see people cheer for Donald Trump saying he won the Youth Book by thirty six percent, that propaganda's working. But then when you're out in the cold, and you hear people have no idea what's going on with the Panama Canal. You see that propaganda hasn't taken hold yet, and so I think we're going to continue to stress test how America's propaganda diet is sitting in Well.
I'm looking forward to it. I would make kind of one ask of the universe, and that would be, like, he's in Florida all the time, do a public rally down there so we can go to Florida in the winter and not a northeastern frigid city.
Just do that.
I couldn't agree more. I think we support mar Lago being the second White House. Let's do the events down there. For the love of God, The Daily Show asked you Donald Trump.
Great idea. All right, Jordan, thank you, a.
Big thank you to Ian Berger. We're going to continue fingering the pulls together for Trump Part two, and hopefully we'll be back here to tell some more war stories. This has been behind the show at the Daily Show. Thank you for listening. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you.
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