Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick

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Welcome to the Daily Show.

My name is John.

Sewart, and man, we worked almost all day on tonight's show. We've got a great record to David Remnick will be joining me later. He is the editor of the New Yorker magazine. They're celebrating.

What in an area dyte crowd.

Celebrating their one hundred year of the New Yorker, and he and I will be just testing the difference between umlauts and diarysius emphasis on the I'll just go now, let's just but first. The Super Bowl was last night, and man, it was on television. It began with the teams being introduced from Heaven.

And it's just weird. And it ended with the Kansas City changed. And how so, congratulations to the people of Philadelphia who immediately.

Who immediately I disagree by the way, who immediately celebrated their victory by attacking the road, said I kill their own city, Die Philadelphia. They were smashing their own city, doing tens of dollars worth of demon.

Yeah, that's right, I'm implying it's a shit hole.

Give sat Quad back.

But of course my favorite moment was the inexplicable post victory horse race for the winner stands triumphant atop the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum. That's that's not that's a photoshop. That's the horse ran up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, reared up on its hind legs and went its weird.

But here's here's and I'm going to drop some knowledge.

And no one really cared about the game because of the earth shattering announcement that had been made moments prior.

You know, we're flying over right now, we're flying over a thing called the Gulf of America, and I'm signing a proclamation. And perhaps you could define that.

First of all, why do you fly around in a Hyatt Hotel room? Second of all, define proclamation? You don't know what a proclaim?

Or do you just want her to say what the actual propett I'm sorry, I interrupted. Go ahead.

This is a.

Proclamation declaring today, February ninth, twenty twenty five is the first ever Bolf of America Day.

And we're flying right over it right now, so we thought this would be appropriate, even bigger than the super Bowl.

It's true, bigger than the super Bowl.

In fact, my favorite thing about Gulf of America Day are the commercials.

It's very historic.

I'm sure we'll look back on this day fondly when America is swallowed up by the rising waters of the Gulf of America.

You know, it turns out it's kind of a weird thing.

Airplanes might not be the best place to make bigger than the super Bowl announcements.

Even bigger than the Super Bowl. This is a big thing, and almost everybody now has assented to that.

On board, Ladies and gentleman, if you can please direct your tention out the wayside of the aircraft. Air Force one is currently in international waters the first time in history, flying over the recently renamed of America.

First of all, oh my god, it shut him up. Even for Justice Acond, I think airplane pilots must be the most powerful force in the universe.

I feel like the Democrats have to get themselves an airplane pilot. Sorry for the interruption, but you can't do that. Maybe they'll let's Shumer. Schumer will be the pilot. Uh, but forgive me, I see been forgotten. What does calling a Gulf of America do?

Do?

We get all its fish?

Now make America great again?

Right, that's what we care about.

Making America great again.

Everything Trump does all part of making America great again. Order one, roll back everything from the previous not great administration, regulations on the environment, regulations on the Second Amendment, the Title nine guidance, and not just the big shit. You want to make America great again, you can't skimp on the details.

President Trump says he's going to reverse Joe Biden's mandate to phase out plastic straw saying, enjoy your next drink without a straw that disgustingly dissolves in your mouth.

You okay, He's right on this one.

He is right on this one.

Those straws are fing terrible.

Objectively, I'm supposed to have some weird tissue paper dissolve in my mouth just because turtles can't figure out straws aren't food.

Now donate to tubes, stupid turtles.

So Trump is making America great again by taking us back to twenty sixteen. But obviously, if we're gonna make America great again, we can't stop in twenty sixteen.

We gotta keep pushing to that place when America was truly great. How much further back do we need to go? See, so it looks like it's the seventies. Oh, like you don't know who Burt Reynolds is.

If you're gonna make us great, you're gonna have to roll further back than the seventies.

What do you got.

We're going to stop the destructive and devisive diversity, equity and inclusion.

Yeah, the seventies won't fly. Seventies was all about women's lib and stone Wall. Now, my friends, we got to go back further to make America great. And ladies, when we do go back, don't worry. It's all gonna work out for you.

You will no longer be thinking about abortion.

Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free like everything else.

That's a little bit different.

Today, you're not allowed to say that, because if you call a woman or a girl beautiful, that's the end of your career.

No, you can't even say, hey, sugar tits. The ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna go.

Back to the old days with regular tits, not the ones that disgustingly dissolve in your mouth.

Also, Jesus.

But let's not stop in the seventies, their folks, not even in the fact, Let's keep going, because that sounds like the fifties, and the fifties are still too inclusive.

I mean, by then Italians and Irish were considered white. No, that's too far.

Keep going back.

America's greatness, awaits. We were the richest country in the world.

We were at our riches from eighteen seventy to nineteen thirteen.

That's when we had we were a tariff country eighteen seventies.

Okay, there we go, eighteen seventies.

Doo.

And of course, well America presently is still pretty freaking rich.

Apologies Luxembourg. Point taken.

Who wouldn't trade our current environment for America's eighteen seventies tariff driven but candled tuberculosis laden pre industrial.

We were so wealthy we had commissions set up what to do with all the money that we would taking.

In quick point of order.

Though to the extent that we were at our richest from eighteen seventy to nineteen thirteen, it wasn't so much. We as like four guys, and we called them robber barons as a sign of affection. Meanwhile, the rest of America, the leading cause of death was falling into a vat at work. And it got to the point where even the robber barons realized that the only way this glorious era in American history was going to end was.

Either full scale in revolution.

Or reasonable compromise, which is how we ended up with stuff like income tax and labor laws and workplace safety guarantees. So let's really tread carefully in the greatness way back machine.

Arizona House Republican Andy Biggs introduced a bill this week would abolish OSHA, a Department of Labor agency tasked with overseen workplace safety to the.

Vats and fill mine with boiling tallow. Boy, what what?

Why not just bring back child labor while you're at it.

When you talk about school lunches, Hey, I work my way through high school. I know about you, but I worked since I was before I was even thirteen years old, I was picking berries in the field before a child labor laws that precluded that.

You were picking berries in a field before you bummits fun. I mean, by the way, how old are you if you were picking berries before there were child labor laws?

Because you look great.

Is the key to good skin, working the fields as a child. Now, I hate to bring this up, but if we are going back to the eighteen seventies and before, does that include every diversity initiative.

Breathright citizenship was if you look back when this was passed and made, that was meant for the children of slaves.

This was not meant for the whole world to come in.

Everybody coming in and totally unqualified people with perhaps unqualified children, don't bring us.

You're tired and poor, huddled masses.

Do you have any mathletes, any doogies, houser, We will

Vice President J. D.

Vans he had some interesting words about the separation of power and government.

He's four it.

If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.

If a judge tried.

To command the attorney general on how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.

Of course, they're allowed to kate the boundaries of that power. That's the whole point of the judiciary to interpret whether those powers are legitimate.

You would the lads over the the alternative.

Acting.

The only alternative is that the executive determines for himself what is constitutional, at which point there would be no guardrails against.

Hate.

Congress, hey, buddy, you got a little separation of powers problem. I was wondering any chance he might be reasserting your authority opposition pardon Democrats? Are you ready to do some oppositioning?

There are some things we can do, but the Republicans are in the majority in the Senate and the House. We're gonna need some Republicans, frankly, who are willing to lose. Who are willing to be a Liz Cheney and say I will lose my seat to do the right thing by this country, not the right thing by Donald Trump.

I haven't seen it yet.

Let's hope.

Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman.

Of New York that's the sales pitch.

We just need someone on their side willing to lose everything to progress, like a Russian dog being shot into space. You can see the Democrats backbone on our new show American Backslides, starring Dan.

Goldman as hope poll loser.

But fine, we have to rely on Republicans in Congress to be a check on Trump.

How's that going.

Republican Senator Tom Tillis says that while he believes Trump's actions run a foul of the Constitution in the strictest sense, he believes nobody should belly ache about that.

You're comfortable if he shuts those down without getting congressions.

Congress will be involved at some point.

But I'm I think the country is comfortable.

They're using that authority right now in a way it hasn't been used in a long time.

So it looks radical, it's not.

Well technically, yeah, I'm not losing a whole lot of sleep.

Well, it's been a good run, America.

It's looked like we're becoming less like the constitutional republican's been for two hundred and fifty years and more like the monarchy that we all thought to escape from.

But I think the important thing, all right, I whoa here?

Yeah?

Fun?

John VI?

The uh the tragical sun appears to have returned?

Is that?

Wait?

Is that? Hold on?

Do my eyes deceive me? Is that is that? Young John Oliver? You here to offer America your wisdom and council?

Oh no, no, no, no, no, John, I'm here to gloat.

Macca had its little fun, didn't you, experimenting with democracy? You thought so hard to get away from us, acting.

Up, throwing all that tea into the harbor. You still owe us.

For that, by the way, I mean how much it was just tea? John?

It was, it was just tea.

You take that back, You take that back.

I know.

The point it's a sensitive beverage.

The point is you told everybody that you were going to be different, you were going to turn out like you mean, old Dad, who was so horrible to you when you were growing up. So we sat back, We let you spend your wild teen years experimenting with your ridiculous ideas of checks and balances, because deep down we knew that once you got that nonsense out of your system, you'd be backed. In fact, if I may sing from Hamilton.

I'd really I'd appreciate.

Now that's fair. What I'm saying is, let me be the first to welcome America to its monarchy era.

Congratulations everyone, you can now take your place in the pantheon of great empires, alongside the British, the Roman, the Klingon Wakanga whatever one Babar the Elephants was the ruler of If against.

Hold on a second, mister Oliver, Yes, if I may, Ambassador Oliver, go ahead for a moment, please America. Yes, we are having a bit of trouble with democratic governess, but I don't think we want to abandon our republic and go full empire.

But why not?

You really prefer the system that you have right now? Only fifty one votes for a bill to pass? Is the vice president in town to break a tie?

Or wait?

Is this one of the bills that needs sixty votes for no clear reason? Well, I'm sorry, little to me, No health care for you.

All right, it does not sound great when you put it like that.

Oh you mean when I put it entirely accurately, John, didn't sound great. What I'm saying is, don't fight being a monarchy, John, embrace it. Kings get shit done now, is it stuff that you once done? Not necessarily, but they do move quick. They taste coom in at lunch and they've taken over an entire continent by dinner time. That is how the British rolls, John, everyone else they're.

Not like us.

In fact, if I may say, alive from mister Kendrick Lamar.

No no, no, no, no, no no no, I really I really don't think you should do that.

I appreciate you for stopping me on that one out to day.

Yeah, not to be short sighted, but spoiler alert, John, things didn't end up so great for the British Empire.

First of all, how dare you?

We are technically between empires at the moment, but we're keeping our castles warm and our crowns bedeweled for.

The day that we get back onto our feet.

Look, no offense, but.

I'm not sure the imperial model is for us?

Oh really, the imperial model isn't for you, John, Have you seen anything America's die over the last fifty years, Because for a country that doesn't want to be an empire, you're doing a pretty fucking good impression of one right now. Invasions, economic exploitations are now suggesting turning Gaza into.

A beachfront casino.

Even King George would have been like, well, I don't know, guys, feels like the situation is a bit more complicated than that. And I'm literally dying of medieval brain disease.

He was, he was doing that, he was, he was dying.

He's dying of brain disease. It drove me crazy, but he could see that it was an unreasonable request.

We really, we really have become our father.

Yeah yeah, and you know what, don't be sad about it. We couldn't be more proud.

This shouldn't be a sad time. The arc of history is so long it eventually becomes a circle and you end up right where you started. You might even call it the circle of life. In fact, if one may scene, he greats Imperial subject, Sir Elton Jones opening Zulu chunks from the Life King. Please stop me, Joe, Please please stop me.

To do that.

I don't want to do you. Please tell me, Please tell me.

I don't want to go out, stell me.

Jones, John Oliver, everybody.

Do you know what?

Come there?

Fay Hbo. When we come back, David Remnick.

Will be joining.

I don't know what what?

Oh about my guest.

Tonight, A tout surprize winning journalist, author, and longtime editor of The New Yorker, which is celebrating one hundred years with a special anniversary issue out today.

Please welcome David Remnick, Sarah, thank you.

The being here.

Very exciting. One hundred years of the New Yorker. And there's a special treat ladies and gentlemen. I don't you can see this. It is their swimsuit edition.

It is.

This is this the original cover from.

From nineteen twenty.

Five, and this is the first cover that was on the New Yorker.

That's right. Ray Irvin was the artist and they put it out and it went on the newsstands. Harold Ross was the editor. Raoul Fleischman, a yeast fortune behind the magazine and it sold nothing.

It sold nothing. Didn't do with all that yeast money behind it, didn't your eyes. So you should enter that as a caption contest.

John Oliver warmed it up. Yeah, we warmed it up pretty get out there.

And this is they almost seized the whole thing down after three months. They almost gave up on the whole thing.

What was it that turned it? Why in three months did something happen? This meant to be just a.

Purely comic jazz age nineteen twenties, pre depression thing, and they were going to close it down after three months, And then they had a good piece about the Scopes monkey trial.

Sure did what I watched it on Court TV. It's fantastic, Paltrow.

And then I swear to god, what took off on the newsstand was a piece you're not going to believe this about cabarets and nightclubs and things like this, and people were fascinated and it flew off the news stand a nice thing.

You know, we were a big success freely at that time. Were the illustrations the majority of it? Or were the articles of the majority of Oh it was.

It was purely little bits and pieces. And the first profile that ever ran, and we're famous for longer pieces, you know, the first piece that ever ran as a profile was a one page profile the head of the Metropolitan.

Opera one page, and you know, the writer is like five hundred words, I'll never make it.

And it was awful.

It was dreadful, really.

And now one hundred years later, then, when you're carrying the mantle of something that has been here for so long, though, it does present an extra burden and challenge.

You don't want to be the guide.

You don't want to be the last guy out out the building.

And it's changeable. So in this more challenging challenge media environment to do long form this. You buy this and you I don't remember what that's called, but you look at it and.

Read and read more.

What Yeah, there aren't little dots and one sentence summaries of world events is son of a bitch. No, it's it is in defiance of every trend that we think is happening. But I look, I think that people actually want to know. They want to know what's going on in the world. They want to know what's going on in Washington. They want to know what's going on with other people's lives and have some empathy for it. They want to laugh. And that's what we're trying to do.

I almost think it's leading that sort of incentivized outrage and hate and things that I find great solace in long form journalism.

It really is a comfort food.

But also there's not a lot of people out there who are taking the time to contextualize things.

Well, I think there are more people than you think. I mean a million, two million, three people subscribe to the magazine. I hope it'll be more, especially after this night.

I think a.

Pandering.

They're mostly sports fans.

They're not interested.

My first job sports writer for the Washington Post.

Really yeah, I didn't even know they had athletic teams.

They had that what's now called the Commodorees.

Oh very nice.

I was the singing group.

It's exciting.

I think people want to find out more than just ridiculous tweets, and they want to know what's going on, and they want fairness and fact checking and a sense of decency. And they also want some media outlets that aren't knuckling under.

Not intimidated by the moments. And then and.

That's our promise to you, and you know, I think that we're looking for another hundred years, but I'd like to get past the next four.

Frankly, is this have you You've been in this a long time? Yeah?

Is this a media moment that is reminiscent to you of any other analogous.

It's not even reminiscent of the first Trump.

Term, right, totally.

In a weird way, more competent. I know that sounds very strange, but they seem to have come to the game very determined to do a ton of things fast and overwhelm you and overwhelm me and everybody here.

And they have a project. I don't know what year it was named for, damn.

It, but there's a shrewdness to it. And part of the shrewdness is contingent on the weakness of the Democrats and the confusion of the Democrats at the moment, and the sport of the election. Quite frankly, there are a lot of people behind them, and our job is to get it right and to get it fair, and to get it factual, and to not just be yelling and screaming and wagging our fingers with polemics, but to really disc these things with some sense of seriousness, and I think people want that.

Is there a break glass moment for you in this You know, we talked about it earlier with the audience about not overreacting to each individual outrage and moment. And is that frustrating? Do we keep ourselves on defcon? And I don't know which one is the worst?

Nine in ten?

Yeah?

I notice sometimes when I go out to dinner with this person and that person, who meet friends whatever. There's every once in a while, in fact quite a lot, somebody will say to me, you know what, I've signed off.

On the news.

I'm not watching it. I can take it. I have to, you know, protect myself too much.

I understand that instinct.

I understand it. But while you're doing that, Trump keeps going, politics keeps going, the world keeps happening, and you may choose to protect yourself, but then you're part of the problem. I'm afraid.

No, we were talking again.

Too much action is the antidote for that anxiety. The question is what have you learned from deterring this kind of executive action, Because the real moment to me will be that sort of Marbury versus happening Madison moment. Where you know they'll say, well, well enforce it. Well who enforces it? I guess the US marshals. And if the US Marshals work for the DJ and the DJ is run by somebody who tells them, no, don't enforce it.

Right now, Right now, the president is overstepping executive power, not once, not twice, but in multiple ways. And courts are going to have to stand up to do what courts need to do. The press needs to describe it and in all its fullness and accuracy. Citizens need to do what citizens are capable of doing, and it requires everybody and the Democratic Party and that Congressman Goldman did not exactly present the face of a warrior.

My favorite moment that I've seen where we go like, what are the Democrats going to do? And he's like, I I hope.

Hopefully one of the Republicans will be like, this is crazy. We shouldn't I want to lose.

Chapter twelve in Profiles and Currents.

Right, do you as you and you've you've spent time talking to people that are obviously very informed within Democratic Party?

It's their beat.

Do they sense there is anything I look at this as this is a fifty year project that the Republicans have run to reset the country to. It's not just pre great society, not just pre a new deal. But as even Trump is saying, like Robert Baron Ethos.

But that's a political battle. Some of that is a political battle that's natural, over executive over federal spending, for example, over culture wars. It's not a mystery that we have such.

That's right, it's not constitutional.

No, this is about breaking the norms of the constitution and the law. And what do you go to do about it? That's different.

So what are if you were going to say, you know, the people, There's going to be protests, There's going to be those things. But at this moment it is broadly popular. The agenda that has been enacted is if we had a revote today, he would probably do better than how he.

Did all I think CBS said fifty two fifty.

Three percent, which for him is a lands for me that for any president really in this day and age, to have that kind of popularity is really unusual.

So I think we're headed toward a big crisis. I really do, and I think we're in the midst of it.

I really do.

Okay, well, thanks for being here.

It's incredible to me how there really is a rudderlessness amongst the opposition party.

Well, the opposition party is the Democratic Party that's licking its wounds. It's beating itself up for what happened, and rightly so. In terms of the Biden decision to run a second time, or the decision to kind of have a willing suspension of disbelief on where Biden was in terms of popularity or his age, well there is there's a kind of a sense of injury, embarrassment and withdrawal. But enough, already, enough, already, sack up.

Yeah, you hear that. I'm gonna say this right now.

The editor of one of the most esteemed magazines in American history just told the Democrats sack up.

Shocking. You heard it from an else, shocking.

Look, but you did what you described, which is that you have a historical trend and then there's a reaction to it. And this has happened in any number of times. I fully expect and hope that that will happen again in some form or another. Again, it is not the job the press. And this may disappoint some of you to be at the head of the barricades shaking the

Do you really think the Democrats problem is a messaging problem. I think it's I don't know what they stand for.

I don't know. Was this three weeks old? What is it three four week's old? This is not people did not believe.

I think people did not fully take on board that what Donald Trump was saying that he was going to do in all those speeches that we either laughed about or disbelieved or you know, kind of let fly by, or or foolish enough to believe that he would lose.

Heels, right, And I.

Hope that doesn't last for because there's no time. If you keep seating that to Trump, a lot of damage is going to be done very very quickly.

I almost wonder you almost want to say to them, you have to exist outside of him.

It's as though they define themselves almost entirely by reactions to his movements, you know.

But the problem is is that he's president, and he's maximizing executive powers quickly and as fully as he possibly can. And unless you have a coherent reaction to that, whether it's in Congress with a press or the greater world or on the street, you're going to lose a lot. Ultimately, he might get pushed back. Ultimately in two years, there might be a midterm election that weakens him. Ultimately, he may overplay his hand in this court case or that

There is a.

Tone of insult and the desire to damage.

If you were to come to me and say, I want to make government more efficient, I want to make it more effective. There's a lot of things here in the way that we do it and it doesn't work. I'd be highly on board with that. It's something that I can.

Fully believe it and any government age and see, whether it's USAID or whatever it might be. Yes, But the notion of putting somebody in charge of the health, the public health of this country who's a conspiracy theorist and a liar.

But see, they're strange.

They don't view it in that way though, So I think that's part of the disconnect is they're not viewing it through that lens. What they're viewing it as a fighter who's done their own research and awoken to the

I don't know what you're looking at.

Without government effectively managing those instincts, what are we handing this all over to?

This is what's new between the first Trump term and the second term. I lived for four years in the Soviet Union and the last years of the Soviet Union, and then kept coming back. Now I can't go anymore for obvious reasons.

But what if what did you do in the Soviet Union? So it's running a little. I can't reas did you kill a dude?

Just a few But you don't need to.

Know about that.

What I was a reporter. Oh, you were reported to live over four years. I was a reporter for a.

While on a bus and you you know this was I was coming to a place that, for seventy odd years had lived lives not only of censorship, but of self censorship and a kind of relationship to the government where you were not a citizen, you were a subject. And I had the thrilling experience, and says a witness, to see this seemingly come to an end, to liberalize, to have the promise of democracy, to see miraculously Michel

Heard that.

It's a long but aggravating Yes. Yeah, but now it's you know, when in the other direction, and the oligarchs took over this country in concert with with Vladimir Putin and before him Yelson. And to see at an inauguration a few weeks ago of the tech titans of this world sitting in the best seats in the house, right behind the President of the United States, was the most ominous thing. It was even more honest than the speech itself, because those guys are seemingly willing to say and do

I don't know why I'm bumming you out.

No, I remain optimistic because the history of this country is such resilience through peaks and valleys that we were.

Sure were fatal blows.

It's different than these other you know, we are for the adolescence of America, being two hundred and fifty years old, we are a more mature democracy than I think a lot of those countries. We have a history and a pattern of civic engagement at local and state levels that I think will prove even if the body politic at that level begins to erode.

But people have top we have our job.

We don't have our job.

I think everybody here can't sit back either.

I think we need a game plan. Honestly, I don't think it's that people aren't awake. I think they feel rudderless and thirsty for inspiring leadership that feels principled and has a plan.

Of action that can turn this into something.

I don't think the American people want this corrosive day to day. I truly don't believe that. That doesn't mean they don't want a secure border. It doesn't mean they don't want law and order in their cities. It doesn't mean that they don't want some other common sense things that have been done. They don't want the other part.

I agree with you, and I for once.

So by agreeing with me, I have now officially been published in the New Yorker.

You got it, by the way, not for the first time. You've been published in the New York and we're still waiting for pieces for you. What do you got a job?

I was in The New Yorker.

Yeah, you row pieces for shouts and murmurs?

Did I really?

Yeah?

I can't imagine how happy my mother was, as always, a bliged to The New Yorker under an of our three shows out, we're breaking me right by.

Not chalking a night.

Everybody, Before we go, We're gonna check in with your host for the rest of the week, mister Jordan Clapper.

Jordan, what's up?

What's up?

Well, John?

We'll continue our coverage of America's descent into fascism, report on the president's onslaught on the Constitution, and give ten blowjob tips that'll make your man say.

But zinga, what?

Well?

Well?

Friday is Valentine's Day, and just because our country's in trouble doesn't mean our love lives have to be.

I want to hear one of the tips now involves a great fruce.

Everybody work to day.

And also, by the way, before you go, join myself and a bunch of other fine fine comics at Comic Relief Stand Up for La.

It's on March third in this New York City.

For more info and to buy tickets or donate, Please go to the link below and get your free blowjob tips.

It's right off a sinka here.

It is.

Your moment is that sky highs signing and President Trump ushers in Golf of America Day.

Try that on.

Golf of Mexico. Golf of America.

Everyone listen to this Golf of America Day.

Golf of America, Gulf of America Day.

It's the Gulf of America. Things are changing the world as a.

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