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Well, welcome a place you spent some time, Thank.
You, sir.
I have the fireplace. Never been on what I've been in.
I tell you what I have it on all the time. It's kind of humbly walking in here, absolutely, I mean for real. I had my brother Jimmy come in and you know, pick the rug and the desk and all that stuff and make a long story shure. And I come walking in like five o'clock in inauguration day. And I walked in. I said, jeez, I said, I've never seen Franklin Roosevelt. I'm admirer, but there's always George Washington small portrait there, and Abraham Lincoln and John Meacham, that
president's historian. Jimmy had called him for some help. And he looked and me. He said, because no one's ever inherited a world economy in as much disarray as he had.
And I said, oh, that's wonderful.
And then then I said, well, why Lincoln? He said, the country's never been as divided since Lincoln was president. But what I did was I wanted to be able to sit here at my desk and look out. And I only had two political heroes when I was getting involved and fell over there, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Yeah, I c I was a great admirer John Kenny, but I could never picture John Kenny to my kitchen table.
I could kind of picture maybe. And then the two people who I were got involved and engaged with is says our Chavez. Uh because I got not involved, but I supported verbally the farm Workers' union they were trying to organize in Delaware when I was running as a twenty nine year old kid. His granddaughter works for me. And then Rosa Parks, who's over here, and uh so I tried to I tried to make it kind of warm,
like uh I thought about now. The other guy never showed up on inauguration day, so I didn't.
Have to worry about it.
But it's kind of neat. And the things I've done in here, like for example, the moon rock over here.
All right, I'm a huge NASA fan, a big astronomy fan.
This is very cool. Well, this is cool.
That's an actual moon rock and one of the you know that rover they have up there. My name is in the back with other presidents.
It's really cool.
But I want to show you something really cool. Come on back here. Not many people come back this way, but come on.
I think you.
Oh yeah, Not only are we seeing the Oval office, we're also getting a rare tour of the President's private study. This is like the world's most dignified episode of MTV Cribs.
By the way, that is a wise painting by Jamie Wyth the son. And he told me that Kennedy family didn't like him. He's made him look too contemplative.
But just gotta smile.
I know, I think it's great. But anyway, and that's the house I was raised in, the scrant that's awesome, or as they say, Scranton Scranton. So I went and spoke at the Kenny Library a couple of nights. Last time I spoke there, I get handed this by Caroline Kennedy and it's that famous letter he wrote and this is the actual copy, and it's you know, why am I gone?
We chose to go to the moon in this decade because that.
Goal will serve the origins of measure by the best of us, and it goes on and on.
Well that's I mean, the just even that top line, no prejudice no hate in outer space and go. I don't know if you have any tattoos. I've got some from the Nassa Voyager, which was launched in seventy seven, the Golden Record, which had you know, science, music, art, but no politics, no war, no religion and other things that divide us. And so it's just the idea of hope through exploration. Unfortunately, before the President showed me all of his tattoos, it was time to go.
Thank thank you, sir.
I really appreciate your time and thank you so much for the stories and the oval tour. Mister President. Welcome to the Daily Show.
Well, welcome back to the White House.
Thank you.
It's very nice to be back. I was trying to figure out when the last time you and I had a conversation was, and I realized it was November twenty sixteen at a very diverse the Volley party that you hosted just a few weeks after Trump became the president elect. And I remember that you described that night as an Irish Catholic Vice president and a Muslim gold Star family celebrating a reception observing a Hindu holiday America. Well exactly
that's how I felt. I mean, I remember just feeling so positive and so much hope there and then as kh that was mister conn Yes exactly. Then I remember just four years of policy and vitriol under Trump, and now things feel more divided. So I was curious, how you feel that we can stay hopeful and how can we get the country to unify.
The truth of the matter. Is that ever more optimistic in my entire life about No, I mean it now, I tell you what. Look, if you think about it. The reason I had not I given my words a Biden. I hadn't planned on running again. I had lost my son Bo. It was a tough, tough time, and I wasn't gonna run at all for real. And then remember what happened in Charlottesville, when those folks came out of the fields at night with torches and swastikas, the white
supremacist and a young woman was killed. I spoke to her mom. Then President Trump said there were very fine people on both sides, And I give my word. That's why I decided I'm going to do this. But I was worried about doing it because I knew how bitter it would be. And so I got a phone call from my true story from my eldest granddaughter saying, we have a family meeting. You probably are aware of. It's around here. We have a tradition of the Biden family.
Any child can ask for a family meeting. I don't know if it happened, but to take it seriously. So my grandchildren, my four granddaughters and grandson, Both's children and Hunter's children came down on us Saturday and we sat and talked and they said, trying to commit. They said, we know you're thinking a run and pop, but you ought to do it. Daddy wants you to do it, talking about bowing and I said, well, it's going to be pretty tough, and they said, you got to do it.
And we decided to do it. And I did it for three reasons. One to restore the soul of this country. That's not who we are. We're a decent, honorable country that cares.
We really are we still are.
Second one is to begin to take care of the middle class, because the middle class does well, the poor have a real shot, and the wealthy do very well. And thirdly, to unite the country. And at the time people thought, well maybe the first two, but you never united the country. But look what we did, we got a lot done. No one thought I could ever pass the infrastructure bill. No one thought I could ever do anything about making sure that we took care of people
with disabilities and drug prices and whole range. No one thought we could do anything on the environment. No one thought we could do anything about same sex marriage. I mean we did not all of it, but a significant portion was done in a bipartisan way.
When I was a White House aid, I remember having meetings in this room on climate. They didn't always go so well. And I never would have imagined twelve years ago that something as sweeping on climate as the Infliction Reduction Act would have happened. So my question, really, and I was watching all of this unfold, is who or what created the political space for you to take that kind of action.
Young people, young people generation, that generation between eighteen and thirty five. Now, they're the ones that created the space. They had enough of it. They had enough of it. And so what I did was, when I trying to figure out whether I could put something together, I met with them. We had rallies, we had I mean, they showed up in the twenty twenty election. They showed up in the twenty twenty two election, and we passed the largest environmental plan in all of history, over three hundred
and sixty eight billion dollars. We got it done. And and what happened was Mother Nature let her rathb sand. Over the last two years, for example, I have traveled on helicopter over more forest area burned to the ground than the entire state of Maryland. That's how much has burned to the ground.
Floods, droughts, all the things.
And so people can't deny it anymore. They can't deny the fact. And I've traveled the world. I've gone to all the cop meanings around the world, meaning the meetings on climate. If we don't keep the temperature from going above one point five degrees celsius raised, now.
We're in real trouble.
That whole generation is damned. I mean, it's not that probly, really truly trouble. And that's why the first meeting I had with the so called G seven, the largest economies in the world, democracies in the world, the first thing we talked about was they want to talk about, was my initiative on energy, on dealing with moving toward For example, I called all them automakers and truckmakers, and I asked them to come to the South Lawn the first year and to try to talk them into doing something more
than going electric. And within five weeks all of them agreed they're going to go electric fifty by twenty thirty, and by twenty fifty all electric.
And I think we can do it.
You're also responsible for reviewing drilling and oil production. What would you say to those young people who want you to continue to be their champion but might not think that you're going far enough or fast enough on climate.
Well, first of all, we're going to fashion than anyone's ever gone. We're going to need fossil fuels for at least the next ten years. It's not like tomorrow we can turn it all off. Number one. And so in addition to that, we've things got really complicated when putin put one hundred and eighty five thousand forces into Ukraine, having a profound impact on their energy ability to be able to keep the heat on in the winner and keep things moving. And so we're gonna need fossil fuel.
What we have to do is we have to I've said no more drilling off our ocean. I mean the whole range. But there still has to be there has to be the ability to generate some energy. But we can get rid of coal much more rapidly. And by the way, for example, I was up in Massachusetts, the largest coal producing electric facilities in the nation. Well, guess what, we hooked it up to wind technology and so now and it's cheaper. We can do solar. We can do wind cheaper than we can do fossil fuels. So it's
a matter of transitioning. But it's not like you can cut everything off immediately.
You obviously understand the existential threat that young people feel when it comes to climate. Sure, how do you balance that with the immediate concerns of babysitting Congress or getting getting getting fifty one or sixty votes on some of this?
Well, look, I've been relative be careful here. Sure it's relatively successful, right, and working across the aisle, there is a maga Republican portion.
Of the party.
It makes up about a third of the Republican Party. I've had more than a half a dozen Republican senators I've known for years over the last two years come to me individually, and I promise i'd never mentioned her names, and I'll go to my grave never mentioned seeing No, I'm not telling you I've seriously I've never broken my word and saying Joe, I agree with you. But if I do anything publicly, they're going to primary and may
I'll lose. The Republican Party's going through a significant transition, and we're going to see in the next two years how they end up, whether the Maga Republicans control the party or we get back to conservative like for example, a guy as tough as can be is the majority leader of the United States the minority of the United States Senate McConnell. But he's straight, He's a traditional conservative.
He's straight. What he says, he does.
He probably don't even want me saying this, probably hurt his reputation. But there's a lot of people in the Republican Party who are traditional republic conservative Republicans that you can deal with. But you know these you know, the gentle woman from the state of Georgia and the mountains up there and other gates and anyway.
That's very diplomatic. I would have used different language.
But no. But there's an existential question that the Republican Party is going to have to face and it's going to determine what happens in the next couple of years. But my focus is just stay focused, focused on the things that matter. We've got to deal with the climate. We've got to deal with civil liberties and voting rights. We've got to deal with issues relating to economic growth. Look, in this period, I inherit it. I think it's fair
to say a gigantic mess economically and politically. Of course, we've created twelve million new jobs since I've been president, more than any president created in four years. We've generated so much to grow. We've created eight hundred thousand manufacturing jobs with the bill that became a bipartisan bill with no one thought could happen. The Chips and Science bill we used to in that's two percent of our GDP in research and development. That's why we're the nation we were. Well,
guess what we decided to start. We ended up being number eight or ten instead of number one. Well, now we're doing it again through the Chips and Science Bill. Guess what commitments for three hundred billion dollars in investments over the next ten.
Years to build these chips.
We invented the chips, we made them, We made them much more sophisticated we used to be anyway. So there's so much going on that the country's hungry to move, I think, and I'm confident we can do it.
It's reassuring to hear you talk about the ways young people can continue to get involved in that you feel like there's still bipartisan hope there if it's.
Oh, there is, by the way, I mean, look again, if we had had this conversation immediately after Trump lost, although I'm not sure he did, and I told you we were going to get more done in two years and almost any president's done period, and much of it in a bipartisan way, I think everybody would have looked at me, like, what's this guy drinking? What's going on here?
But we have, we have, and.
We've been able to the leadership of the Democratic parties, be able to hold the Democratic Congress together, and we picked up a few Republicans along the way, and I think it's beginning to bear fruit that it's hard to deny that it works.
Speaking of young people, the Supreme Court is considering striking down your student debt relief decision. What's the plane if that happens.
Well, first of all consumes and scholars. I've spoken to say, the people challenge you have no standing means the court is ultimately as much as they want to rule, they're going to I think they're going to have.
To rule that it was appropriate for what I did.
Number one. Number two, If you think about it, we had this PPP program, that is the program during the pandemic. People lost their businesses because they had to shut down. Restaurants closed, Bob Bah, and so we provided billions of dollars significantly more than helping students with their debt. And a number of the very people who criticized me in Congress actually got benefits in the program. You don't hear
them talking about it. Right, The average student who will benefit from my Student Loan Forgiveness program, as somebody making less than seventy ninety percent makes seventy thousand dollars or less. They're just trying to get out of the hole. They're just trying to get started. They're just trying to get up and running, and so it is overwhelming the interest of the economy. It's a fair thing to do, and it's going to generate economic growth. It's significant. I understand
them worrying. I understand. I don't know whether people realize a lot of parents realize how much of a burden this is. You get out of school, there were no jobs that you graduated because initially because of the pandemic, you got a debt that is most cases exceeding ten thousand dollars loan you got or grant you got, and it's really a gigantic burden. You want to grow the economy.
You want these people being able to go out and make a down payment on a home, be able to go out and start a business, be able to go out and be free to the debt so they can invest in things that they care about, And it's just so short sighted if they don't.
I wanted to ask you a slightly different questions. So my partner Josh and I have been engaged for the last five years, which really only means that every auntie and uncle that I have is beyond disappointed that there hasn't been a wedding yet. But Cardi b is going to marry us apparently officiate at our wedding, which would which would be nice. But my question for you, mister president, is you codified support for same sex marriage and interracial
marriages like ours. I'm curious what your evolution was like on marriage equality and what the federal government might be able to do to protect LGBTQ Americans, especially trans kids, who are dealing with all these regressive state laws that are popping up right now.
I can remember exactly where my epiphany was. Okay, I hadn't thought much about it, tell you. And I was a senior in high school and I wanted to get a job being turned out. The only turned out is the only Caucasian lifeguard in the projects in the city of Wilmington, the big swimming pools, and my dad was dropping me off to go in and get an application
in city hall. A woman through the Rodney Square it's called I remember about to get out of the car, and I looked to my right and two well dressed men in suits kissed each other, I mean, they give each other kiss and then one went looked like he was heading to the du Pomp building. One looked like he had to the Hercules Corporation building. And I never forgot to turn and look to my dad. He said, Joe, it's simple. They love each other. It's simple. No, I'm not joking.
It's simple. They love each other.
And it's never been. It's never been. It's just that simple. And I remember you may remember because you may have been here when I and our last administration with Barack I went on meet the press and they asked me about their show. I was telling them I visited a family in another state and I watched these two, this gay couple, raising two kids and watching them run in and throw their arms around daddy and so on, so and I told I said, They said, well, what do you think.
Russia asked me. I said, I think people should be.
Able to get married married. It doesn't matter whether it's whether it's same sex or.
A heterosexual couple.
They should be able to be married.
What is the problem.
So listen to your auntie and your uncle get married. Do it now, don't wait now. Transgender kids is a really harder day thing. What's going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful. I mean, it's just terrible what they're doing. It's not like, you know, a kid wakes up one morning and says, you know, I decided I want to become a man, or I want to become a woman, or I want to change.
I mean, what are they thinking about here? They're human beings, they love, they have feelings, they have inclinations that are I mean it just to me is I don't know.
It's cruel.
And the way we do it is we make sure we pass legislation like we passed on same sex marriage. You mess with that, you're breaking the law and you're gonna be home accountable.
Thank you, sir. I also can tell that, like some auntie or my mom probably texted you beforehand.
If no, no, I'm not trying to pressure me to no, no, but get moving, man. I don't want to you can't do it.
I know we're unlimited time, so I just want to ask you. Looking ahead, there are a lot of names floated. Uh, it's a crowded, crowded field. Who should be the next permanent host of The Daily Show?
Depending how you edit this program?
You yes, okay, that's a good answer, solid answer, solid answer. I don't think we need to edit anything. Then, thank you, mister president.
Thank you for the time, and I thank you, thank you again. Welcome back, Thank you.
Great to be back.
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