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One of the most trusted journalists at Comedy.
Central a very special special report.
The Daily Show presents Inauguration Conyny Bull. That the and likely final from Inauguration with.
Your host John Stuart Boom Father, Hi, welcome, Welcome to The Daily Show.
My name is uh hold on, my.
Name is My name is John Stewart. I'm your host. Most historic vibe shift of day.
Donald J. Trump, the forty fifth.
President of the United States, a man who's licentious and felonious behavior has been well cataloged and documented, returned to the Capitol of Rotunda just four short years after inspiring in that very place a day of riotous.
Shickfre.
Shitury. Return to the exact same room.
Now, generally, if this were a dateline documentary, he would return to that room to express a form of repentance, in maturity and acknowledgment of pain that had been wrought on that terrible day. But in this show that we're filming now, it's to be sworn in as the forty seventh President of the United States, And as with most, returning to the scene of the crime.
It began with tea with the people you tried to steal it from a short time ago.
President Joe Biden greeted mister and Missus Trump at the White House for tea, an inaugural tradition.
It's always important to keep up the tea tradition when you hand over the keys to I'm sorry, what did you call them?
Hitler, But gotta be a good host.
And the WiFi password his White House, but I change the eye to a one.
I hope that's not weird.
I'm not saying Biden should have done his own insurrection, but there's got to be a happy medium between storming the Capitol and would.
You like a crumpet?
But everyone showed up. Yes, it's the Supreme Court taxing in. Oh please, they're taxing in.
Like the private jets some of them take to caged pheasant hunts. All very legal because illustrious senators like Amy Koba Shar and Deb Fisher.
And of course Hakeem Jeffreys was there, and.
Fetterman was are you come on, Fetterman?
Really, Schwartz, it's not even an inaugural decorum thing.
It's freezing out there.
It's a it's a health cancer.
Fedtterman is literally America's teenage son.
It's your grandma's funeral.
I told you I don't like long pants.
Fine, be cold.
Even the president's family attended, most of whom didn't have to be warned not to do that weird thing with their hands.
Don't, hey, hey, hey, don't don't do it with your hands. Can you Jeff be normal for a day?
What was he doing?
Literally like, look at my dick?
What now? Okay? Okay, but not to worry.
Also attending were all those people who warned Americans to shun this wannabe fascist dictator called Trump. Look at me, ma, Oh, let's go see Hitler and get a quick selfie. First look at us, a quick one for the gram. Yes, former President Obama was there. George Bush seemed kind of there, definitely high. Even Mike Pence showed up. I guess to let the crowd finish the job. Only Michelle Obama seemed to.
Have the consistent ethical stance of saying, when they go low, I stayed the foul.
I don't have.
Of course, Joe Biden was there, making the strategic choice of keeping her person, which, as you know, is the international symbol of but the award for most useful fashion accessory went to the ever stylish Millennia Trump, who's Audrey hepburn esque chapeau or head close as it's called double doesn't affect him.
If you don't control your borders, we don't have egg.
Meanwhile, many dignitaries went not only hatless, but hairless, with a plethora of stocky bald billionaires who all seem to go to the same biohack life extension clinic and say, give me the lex luthor, Yes, taking the place of seats normally reserved for democratic or Republican governors. Sat Zuck Bezos, Tim Cook, Elon, Tictac guy, the Google guy, the six guys who control maybe twenty percent of the world's wealth and one hundred percent of your nudes. You don't need
to pretend with me. I don't know what he's talking about.
Delete delete delete populism, Ladies and gentlemen.
Shouldn't this gathering be happening in a volcanoes layer near Zurich? Or are we just open source Illuminati? Now, where's the conspiracy.
Fund in that?
Honestly, there is not a useful app of communication not controlled by at least one of these individuals, And you may not be concerned that they've all ponied up a million dollars to be sitting there and are kissing the ass of a president who openly threatens non ass kissers. But trust me, shit's gonna get weird even by that afternoon.
Disappearance of Elon Muscat, an earlier trunk rallies getting loads of attention because of a one armed gesture he made.
This one really matters, and I just want to say thank you for making it happen.
Thank you.
Okay, Charitably, I'm going to say that was just an awkward My heart goes out to you, jest.
Sure any of you might have done it like this.
You know, even Taylor Swift has done that, you know, my heart, but she almost never does nothing goes down to you like just always stays with But you know, listen, it's nerve wracking day. You're not normally a public speaker. It's one off gesture. Please try not to use it again.
A bit.
I really want to make sure that people in the backseat. I guess.
I'm just going to be generous and say maybe that was Elon's attempt at dabbing on the haters.
I don't by the way do people still dab on haters?
Is that?
Was that a very old man?
Okay, wasn't that a thing at one time?
No?
I think I think it's important in these troubled times to continue to dab on the haters. But don't be concerned that these tech titans control Google and TikTok and WhatsApp and Instagram and x and any other way that we communicate in the Year of Our Lord twenty twenty five, because you know, I'm not going to censor us. And it doesn't matter anyway, because I know in my heart we don't need any of them, because we'll always.
Have you messing your pigeon.
No, no, how dare you, sir? Why messenger pigeon? Why would you turn on me? I'd let you live in a cage on my roof, surrounded by your own shit.
You know.
I asked them to make that animation at like five o'clock.
Tonight, literally with everything else going on in the show, and.
I was literally like, could you make me a pigeon doing this?
And they were just like sure, Hey, then it was time for the swearing in on me kind of on the Bible. Yes, it turns out Trump didn't actually put his hand on the Bible, obviously because one or the other would burst into flames, perhaps both. And so, ladies and gentlemen, the torch has been passed from Piden to Trump. Yes, the torch has been passed to the same generation of Americans. Let's hear from the four seventh president, fresh off the warm embrace of a tea ceremony with his predecessor.
My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place.
He's right behind you. Luckily, I don't think he can hear you.
Yes.
The inaugural speech followed the American tradition of a passive aggressive transfer of power. The incoming president gets the completely shit on the outgoing president in front of that president and hopefully his spouse.
In recent years, our nation has suffered greatly record inflation. Trying to socially engineered race and gender disastrous invasion of our country is a radical and corrupt, establishous, violent, and unfair weaponization. From this moment on, America's dickline is over.
This is a tumultuous time in American history, filled with much uncertainty, interrepidation. But it is very difficult for me to not in any way take the bait of the way he said dickline. It really did sound like, he said, our dickline, like the line of our dick So you can see America's dickline. I mean, how are you going to end our dickline with a tuck or a full reassignment?
Or is this more about Fetterman's shorts?
What about our dickline?
I am a child, but as bad as things were, guess what, folks, Daddy's home, It's about to get a whole lot better.
The Golden Age of America begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish. The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before.
We will win like never before.
We will be a rich nation again.
We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again.
We will drill, baby drill.
I think I just saw Jade Vance's dickline, Drill, baby drill. But for all the day's eerie energy, one thing stood out to America's watchdogs of democracy. We have watched as the forty seventh President of the United States has been sworn in a cornerstone of democracy. This is the true transfer of power here of the current president and the former president making this walk.
This process is what distinguishes the United States from a lot of other parts of the world.
Yeah, it's all just normal shit, it's just another day.
It's all just normal transfer powershit. We're just going to play along like all this theater is normal. Oh, except there was one thing that might have given the game away.
For just twenty minutes or so left in his presidency. We've just gotten word from President Biden that he is pardoning his brothers, their wives, his sister, other family members.
He says that he is.
Doing this because baseless and politically motivated investigations Greek havoc.
On the lives of a individuals. It's all just normal.
First of all, Biden, you're at the inauguration. Did you auto schedule your pardons? And second of all, what the man? You're just pardoning your whole family. It's not a great look. Yet, like any good captain, as the ship is going down, Biden gave the order that life vot is from my family. The rest of you can do just like a kind of Jack and Rose thing, one on one off fifty
to fifty shot. Who gives a shit? Biden outy. So the takeaway of this entire day was a man who tried to overthrow the government has been peacefully handed the reins of power, and the outgoing president has started a new tradition of blanket pardoning everyone in his orbit, the two men creating a magnificent snake sucking its own dick cycle of no accountability. And then, of course we end with the grand finale, the attack on Greenland has begun.
Yeah, what are you gonna do?
For more on the day's events, we go out to the best news team in the country, starting at the Capitol with Michael cost and dasy Leer.
Michael Costa, I'm gonna start with you, my friend.
What's the mood over there at the inaugural parties tonight?
John? It's incredible.
Donald Trump hasn't even been president for one whole day, but already unemployment is down, gas is low, my vertical jump increased half an inch, and the stock market is.
Soaring.
Yeah. I think.
I mean, obviously a lot of that economic stuff was happening before noon today, so.
I don't think so.
Also, Trump made eggs sheep again. I mean, we can eat ton twenty thirty of these a day. John, They're literally selling them by the dozen. My albumen levels are.
Foreign.
Desi Leidick. You're down there as well. You've been covering Blue Washington as it were.
John.
I'm with the hashtag resistance, and they are aphalled by what they're seeing. The executive orders, the renaming of military bases.
They've already renamed the bases after Confederate generals.
No Hitler, it's just Fort Hitler.
Now.
It's overwhelming.
John, all right, Well, try and stay safe out there, Dosy.
And John, if I could say something, I'm sorry, Yeah, Josh Johnson, are you.
I'm at the Martin Luther King Memorial Today was also MLK Day. There was a march honoring a man that represented the best about America. Just want to put that out there.
Okay, fantastic, good to keep in mind, John, Can I interraw, Yes, Michael, I just thought of some more egg stuff.
Egg salad, egg creams, eggnog, yawnie, eggs, egg plants.
Thanks to Trump, these things are now super cheap.
And the best part about eggs, John, they never expire.
That's definitely not true.
Michael's Okay, well, we'll see what the new Secretary of Health and Human Services has to say about that, right after he legalizes raw milk.
You know, speaking of the letters M L and K.
Let me tell you about someone else we should be celebrating today.
Black guy preacher and he talked like Vice, the black guy from the movie Selma.
No, well yeah, but no, no, John, I have an update from Resistance headquarters that the Cheetos man is not gonna like yes.
Does he do initiatives? Is there another march?
Not gonna be necessary? I'm hearing Rachel Maddow is coming back five days a week, and when she compares what's happening now to the Chay's rebellion of seventeen eighty seven.
Whooh boy, I would not want to be Trump.
Excuse me, sorry, I'm sorry, great cool Trump, we're being recognized again.
Why are you dressed like a caveman and a robot?
Oh we were under studies for the village people.
Yeah. Yeah.
If the copper Native American gets sick, then caveman and robots step in. Well, aren't you guys a little like shamed at all about performing at the Trump inauguration?
Or do we look like we're capable of shame.
John.
Besides, this is fun, much.
Like it's fun to stay at the White.
Yeah, that's you know where it's not fun to stay.
It's not fun to stay at a Birmingham jail.
Yeah, Josh, can't we just talk about this another day?
It is literally the day to talk about it.
Damn, am I the only one who thinks it's fucking crazy that Martin Luther King Day is having it at the same.
Time that Trump taking power.
A man who staged violent resistance is being rewarded with power to the diminishment of our greatest nonviolent resistance leader.
This cannot halt in it won It's just been renamed Martin Luther Trump Day.
So that's your news team, everybody.
When weak you're looking for Brook Carrington, you'll be joining me.
We'll rob.
Hello the buddy. Welcome back to the Daily Show.
My guest Tonight.
My guest Tonight is an economic sociologist at Dartmouth College who studies the behavior of the ultra rich. Her latest book is called Offshore Stealth, Wealth and the New Colonialism. Please welcome to the program, Brook Carrington.
I'm so happy here.
You have studied oligarchy, you have studied the ultra rich.
As you were watching today, I'm going to assume you were struck by the scenes of the collegial atmosphere.
Yeah, that was that odd.
Do we normally see all the titans of industries and things in the front row the box seats.
No, this is really different, And in fact I was reflecting on how different this is even from Russian oligarchy, because.
Don't now, Okay, that hurts, that actually hurts.
Sorry, well, you know, at least Putin had a very clear red line with hisligarchs. The grand bargain of the early two thousands was he was going to let them get rich on condition that they kept their noses out of his political business. At most they would be his errand boys from some diplomatic missions in Europe, for example, and they're superyodds. But that was it, and it ended there.
And he made a huge example of Mikhail Haroowsky, who was the Yukos Oil chairman who dared to stand up for transparency and human rights in Russia, and that earned him almost a decade in Russian prison and seizure of all of his assets by Putin. He was lucky to escape with his life.
Oh and so you're not expecting any of our oligarchs to be like, hey, watch what you're doing, Like none of that.
No, But what Trump has done is so extraordinary because he doesn't have that bright line with the new oligarchs of America at all. He's basically said, Okay, you bought it, do what you want.
But he's blended them. I mean this doze.
I mean, he's brought them in to the But is there maybe something better about that because the explicit bargain is now you have to give us money or you have to bring business to America.
Well, for me, as an American, this is not good news because I like democracy And tell.
Me more about this. Yeah, I like the sound of it.
Yeah, but I'm afraid I'm.
Gonna have to be sold. Yeah.
Well, the thing about the brologarchs, and this is even different from oligarchs to stop.
Stop Okay if that's not trademarked brologarch. Nice.
So we've had oligarchs in the past in America. We've had Carnegie and we've had Rockefellers, but aside from making sure they didn't get regulated or taxed too much, they kind of stuck to their own business they just want to get rich. But the brologarchs really have an explicit political agenda and it is essentially anti democrats and almost monarchical.
So there you see them more as like they're in the King's court and the world has been returned to the more natural order of nobless obleege or something along those lines.
Well, they're going for no bless without the obliege. They want all the privileges and none of the obligations in terms of charitable funding, philanthropy, any sense of social norms constraining them. I mean, what they're all about is nothing can constrain me.
I mean, look what.
Happened when the EU tried to impose its own laws on Elon musk jd Vance not even the vice president yet rolls up on the EU and says, you leave our boy alone or we're going to pull out of NATO.
Wait that's what he said. You made this sound very crips versus bloods. Well there is dad e Vans rolled up on the EU out of his benz and went inside.
And it was like you'd me with the eyeliner and everything.
Right, craziness.
So they are explicitly but then what is the political philosophy. Is it just the great man theory that, you know, the irony of a populist movement relying on the great men to control all that happens.
It sounds a lot actually like the divine right of kings, but with a pseudoscientific spin. So that's where you get all the elon bros. Talking about being high t alpha males. That's just a twenty first century way of saying, God says I'm the king and you all need to bow down.
But don't I mean, at some level, don't you think they're just trolling people with that? Like you do you actually believe they think I have a heighspermut?
So I mean I feel, yeah, listen.
I don't know how we went off the rails on that, but that feels a little bit like how much of this is trolling and memes and how much of it for me? They feel a little bit like, Look, we had a Gilded age. It doesn't seem that different from the Gilded Age that ushered in industrialization, although now it's more on the digital side.
Would that be a charitable way of putting it?
Well, I think it's different from the Gilded Age in two important ways. One is the sort of the release of the oblige part of No Blessed Oblige. These guys are totally released from the constraints of social norms. That said, it was stigmatizing to sit on your wealth like a dragon on a horde of gold. You had to show that you were doing something for society.
Is that why?
So when you look at all those like National Parks of Rockefeller, or you look at all that that's why those guys did that.
Yeah, I mean they didn't necessarily have to be fans of humanity, but they cared about their reputations, and in order to keep a decent reputation, you had to be seen to do something, you know, throwing the public a bone.
As it were.
But isn't that what these oligarchs now? Isn't that what their first wives are for? Isn't that like what it seems like now, is they divorced their first wife and then their first wife is like.
Give this all the planned parentos?
Like?
Is that the is that the oblige that's coming out?
I only know about the case of Mackenzie Bezos writing that.
I think Melinda Gates also gives a true she.
Too, Yes, she is doing her part, but it almost seems as a like a middle finger to the ex husband's like, I'll show you the proper use of wealth usob.
Really yeah, so this so let's talk about though, when we look at the Russian holguards you talk about Putin is utilizing the wealth of these men, I guess to fund some of his endeavors or just the amassing of that money covers his own.
Corruption.
My understanding, I'm not a Russia expert, but my understanding from reading the work of people who are is it sort of like a pyramid schemer, a mafia operation where the Capo de Tutikapi sits at the top and takes a percentage of what the lower level henchmen are getting. So you know, he takes a chunk of Yuco soil, and he takes a chunk of gas prom and that way he stays the wealthiest man in the world.
Yeah, they're earners. So Vladimir Putin like runs herbal life like that's what they say.
Yeah, And for Trump, he looks at it as like I will take my power that I have in government and I will amplify it through industry.
But through industry.
Look, it's almost better to me that it's this explicit like I feel like, now we have a number on what this type of crony capitalism looks like. Elon gave two hundred and seventy million dollars to get Donald Trump elected. He made after the election, I think something like two hundred and ten billion.
So now we have a number on it.
We know what their access to government is worth.
Is that transparency?
Better for us to even know? Can we do anything about it if we don't even know?
Well, I think you make a good point. It's better that we know and that it not be happening sub rosa and you know in whispers that we can't really define in any way. It's it's all cards on the table now, and it's almost like it's being rubbed in our faces.
Right, how do you battle?
So when you have something that's the state power of the United States, which is utterly enormous, combined with the corporate power, I mean I always viewed government in some ways as hopefully a check on corporate power. But if it's a lubricant, what does that turn into?
And again I apologize, you know, I just realized.
You went right from.
Well, it's obviously something very dangerous because what we're seeing here is the total release of all democratic constraint and all pretense to social norms that used to constrain these people. Right, they're totally unfettered in their access to power and in their sense of what is okay to do with that power.
But were we kidding ourselves in some ways? You know?
I saw a gentleman who was trying to become the new DNC chairman, Gentleman Martin, I think is Amos, and he had said about money and politics, Oh yeah, we're going to get all that money out. You know, we're going to have our good billionaires, but we're not going to take any money from the bad billionaires.
And it reminds me.
I once said Nancy Pelosi on it. She said, money corrupts in politics, So what about the money democrats race? Oh no, that doesn't corrupt them. There's this sense that, oh no, it's only those actors that are bad. I mean, the oligarchs gained trillions during the Biden presidency. Yeah, so are we kidding ourselves that this wasn't in place? Just not maybe as stated as clearly, I.
Would want to move away from individualistic explanations of like good billionaires and bad billionaires and talk about like what do we as a society say We're not We're not going to let you get away with that, because historically that's been the only thing that's constrained the really rich. If you go all the way back to the Medici in the fourteen hundreds, they weren't necessarily good people, but
they were the richest people in Europe. And the reason we have the Renaissance and all of its great works of art is because their society wouldn't let them get away with just sitting on their hordes of wealth and enjoying it for their own benefit. They had to do something for their society.
Does that mean we're allowing ourselves to be bought off? Is the idea of being like, look, you guys, a mass, what you need to amass at the top? You pull the strings you want to pull. We need two parks, Like what how? And this gets to a larger conversation about labor and capital. How does American labor tap into that money stream? Because that money stream is built on the backs of American labor, yet they don't have access to it. What if we allow them their excess but rather than philanthropy.
Is there a way to.
Attach to make American labor also a shareholder in.
That, Yes, but you could say it's the hard way, so to speak. One of the wealth managers I spoke to in the course of studying offshore finance over seventeen years, he was a historian, and I mean he trained as a historian at one of the Oxbridge schools in.
The UK, and he said, one of the finest historian institutes.
And he was very candid about his role in making rich people richer at the expense of the rest of us. And he said, well, once that ball gets rolling, it becomes quite difficult to stop it short of like revolutions or mass general strikes. And I think historically that's what we've seen. We're at levels of wealth inequality unseen since
the Gilded Age. And you know what happened then, Well, we had a World war, we had a pandemic, and then we had the rise of fascism, and in between then we had a lot of labor action in the US. So if labor unions are able to muster enough power to stand up to some of these oligarchs, they could be a.
Force for good.
It's so dispariting to hear that same message for labor of like, you guys just need to get together and get better lobbyists. And there is something here that seems almost more difficult, which is this rise of populism mirroring this Gilded Age. You know, fascism was not blended with the Gilded Age. The Industrial age was. And so I don't know that we've we've seen this before and I hesitate to say that, but it does seem unusual.
And you know, what's really kind of surprising to me about this is that what's really needed here is a way for people to coalesce and organize themselves to stand up to these individual accumulations of power in the hands of the brologarchs.
But the law is not on our side. The law is basically now saying corporations are people.
Money is speech, And so how do you well, boy, I hate to see someone who studied this for so long.
To you go like, you know what's terrible to me? And I'm like, what, sorry, you study this.
Well, as you correctly point out, like where does the wealth actually comes from? Maybe it comes from labor. So if labor gets together and says we're not going to stand for this anymore, or if consumers get together and say we're not going to stand for this anymore, they're
way more of us than there are them. The problem is that the weird twist in the wonderful world of the Internet and social media is that rather than giving us a means to coalesce and come together, it's divided us into these little bubbles or camps that are at war with.
One another, which I'm guessing now is maybe the overt strategy. Yeah, because that's in many ways how they generate the income, because that the overt strategy of the algorithm is to conflict and outrage.
Just last week there was a scholarly journal article published by some political scientists in the Netherlands that looked at who generates the most misinformation on social media and they found it was really asymmetric. It's almost all coming from right wing populus and it's not an accident. That's their strategy.
Holy shit.
You know, for a second there, I thought you were gonna say me made me really nervous. Thank you so much for this. Offshore is the book. It's available now, Brook Herrington. We're gonna take quick break a little love that.
Hell everybody's got the shop for tonight.
Before we go, I'm gonna check in with your host for the rest of the week, mister Ronnie Chang Ronnick.
What do you got for the rest of the week, my friend John.
Before we lean into the Trump years, I'm gonna spend this week finally remembering the incredible four years America had under Joe Biden, a president of faith, compassion, and courage.
You uh, you know he's out office and can't give out any more pardons, right, you know that?
Oh? I see? I see.
Well, then I'll be spending this week talking about the Biden crime family and how only President Trump has the courage to take them down.
Thank you so much.
Trying to chang everybody.
Gright Brent here it is your moment to.
Jem I just want to say, you're a younger, far more beautiful audience that I just spoke to, and I want to keep.
It off the record.
At least change is a disaster. She's a crying lunatic and crying crying Adam Kinsinger, he's a super crime.
I never saw the guy not cry.
I talked about inflation too, but you know how many times can you say that an Apple has doubled and used to get into a stage coach. Now you get into a helicopter in times got like six seventy pounds of drug and they go as fast as you can walk. I go, but I would attack a karate champion get slightly repaired.
I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs.
Okay, I think this was better.
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