Hey, it's me Michael Costa. The Daily Show is on break for the holidays, but in the meantime we put together some special highlights just for you. We'll be back in the new year on January seventh with all new episodes.
America's democracy may not be the strongest.
But at least it's the oldest.
They're seems to be soldier of Jerontocracy.
We have the oldest leaders among rich countries, and we love all of them. Joe Biden, Donald Trump, this guy. What are their drawbacks to having our leadership? With one foot in heaven, I spoke to Mark Fisher, neuropolitics researcher at UC Irvine.
We know the brain function tends to deteriorate with aging. One of the first to go of all the cognitive functions is called executive function. It's decision making. And what can be more important for a political leader than decision making?
What am I going to have for freaking lunch?
I'm President of the United States.
What the heck am I going to have for lunch?
That's a hard decision, and I hope that I have a burger for lunch. I guess I've had this freaky misconception that old people are wiser and smarter than me, and it feels like what you're telling me is that that's not true and I should never trust them.
Oh, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that.
No.
I think that the experience that win gains over the course of life time extraordinarily important. But there are some measurable cognitive functions that do begin to decline over the age of sixties.
So even though you have more experiences, you are still getting dumber.
I'm a neurologist. Dumb is not a word that we use.
Okay, all right, I'll say it that and don't worry. So having a bunch of old brains in charge might be a bit of a problem, but this wise old neurologist actually has a solution.
Or Neuropolitics Center, we came out with a recommendation that cognitive testing should be done on all politicians, not just older politicians, all politics.
Woman man can raked.
Unsurprisingly, Trump says he aced his cognitive test already.
If you get it in order, you get extra points.
An individual has given a number of things to remember, and then after a period of time three to five minutes, they're asked to repeat that.
I mean, those aren't hard things to remember, right, person mom dead.
It's only one part of the exam, yeah, thank you. By itself, it doesn't determine a whole lot. I mean you have to look at the entire exam, and you have to look.
At them with personality.
I mean I have a really good personality.
Absolutely, thank you.
But that's not really that's really not assessed in noaltognify.
It doesn't need to be. Without seeing his test results, we can only guess how well or not well Trump's brain is doing it.
By a lot, including obam.
I'll tell you what.
But it did make me curious, could my brain be president? My name Grace, my date of birth June thirtieth, nineteen ninety five.
This first part of the exam. This isn't scored, so this is just identification material.
Okay, God, I would like to be scored on those two actually possible because I think I got them right. Do you have more difficulties doing everyday activities due to thinking problems? No, I have almost nothing to do on a daily basis. At the bottom of the very last page, right, I have finished on the blank line provided.
So this is a test of delayed recall.
Got it. This one is so easy?
Can I call my mom to just double check last question?
In the course of just a few pages, we've covered many cognitive domains.
Sir, did I pass?
Let's hear it? Brother, Come on, come on, you got it?
Look now, If only someone could go to Washington and get our elected leaders to take this test.
Okay, fine, I'll do it.
Hell, hey, how you doing me? Seea you too?
My name is Grace A.
Maxwell. I'm looking for a congress person. Well, I am a congressman.
So who does like your your botox or your work?
You look incredible, oct you. I appreciate it. I'm actually twenty seven.
Yes, most junior congress Person Maxwell Frost is the only person who would talk to me for this story. So how would you feel about having a cognitive test required for politicians?
I don't think we should have that.
Okay, why not you worried you'd failed it?
What is a cognitive test?
For example?
I can show you one.
Yeah, what are these? A rhino and a harp?
Congratulations, sir, you get to keep your position. They told me that if you screw this up that this office would be mine.
I'll be honest, I have to think for like just two seconds about what animal that was?
Yeah? Of course, in this baby politician's view, the issue with politics isn't old brains, it's the lack of young ones.
I do think it's an issue that, Yeah, young people aren't as representative. I don't think we should like boot out all the old people and just have young people running.
So you're not agist.
I'm not an ageist. One.
Do you feel like you would retire?
I don't know what I would retire, but I do think we need term limits.
Do you think if you stay in Congress for thirty four years you'll be able to bring Congress to term limits.
Because of how this place works.
Maybe, but my hops will have it way before that, So it's not hopeless.
We just need our young politicians to stick around until they'll be able to change the system, however long it takes. You know what, I.
Think, I'll vote for you.
You can't.
Why not?
Because I live in Orlando. I represent Orlando, Florida. If you move to Orlando, I could.
Go on a paid business trip to Disney World.
Leave my vote for Yeah. Yeah, that's illegal too.
Trump's promise in twenty sixteen to bring that manufacturing jobs was a major appear in the Upper Midwest, and in Trump's first year in office, the artists of deals delivered them a masterpiece.
Fox Con will invest in Southeast Wisconsin.
Electronics manufacturer of fox Con is opening its first major US factory in Wisconsin, investing ten billion dollars of their own money to do so.
That's right, fox Conn, the Taiwan based company that's good at making iPhones and great at making their employees jump off buildings. The fox Con deal in Mount Pleasant was as golden as the shovels Trump brought to the groundbreaking.
I think we can say this is we can say the eighth wonder of the world.
So to learn more about this eighth wonder of the world, I spoke with Alan Young, the business genius responsible for bringing fox Cohn to Wiscon See love business, love big business. I love great businessmen. You brought manufacturing to Mount Pleasant. When you love most about Wisconsin the cheese or the high rate of alcoholism.
It turns out Wisconsin, actually to our benefit, was the right choice and the vision really was to create what we call Wiscone Valley. The ten billion dollar projects later to create up to a thirteen thousand.
Job, all right, high tech job creation, local country bumpkin, Kelly galaher must be exciting.
Fox Con came to town. They promised us the world. Then that hp us because our village officials are morons.
Look, lady, I came here to do a field good puff piece about phone corporations creating jobs for farmers or whatever. Okay, are you telling me that's not happening.
They promised us thirteen thousand jobs and a ten million dollar investment. We got a few hundred crappy jobs. We bulldozed one hundred homes, moved people out, used eminent domain against them, and except for a few buildings that fox Con has put there, it's basically empty.
Well, you can't fault fox Con fault putting money into this town and trying to make something happen.
But they didn't put money in on it. Unfortunately, the village of Mount Pleasant decided instead of making fox khn by the land that they wanted for their factory are part time village trustees. They said, we'll do it for you. We borrowed nearly a billion dollars.
So a bunch of village idiots borrowed a billion dollars to get fox don't come there.
Fox Con comes.
In and goes, hey, we can give you guys, civilization, take you out of the farms.
Well, we like our farms.
What was fox Tohn promising to build.
Well, first they said they were going to build a large screen lcdtvs.
Amazing, I love those.
A few weeks later they changed it that they were going to build small LCD screens, the kinds that you get in the car, and.
So I love those two.
I love all screens.
Then they announced that they were going to build coffee robots.
Okay, but you know what, who doesn't like coffee?
That didn't happen either, And right now nobody knows what they do inside that building. Okay, it's three thousand square acres of land. You know how much three thousand square acres of land is?
Of course not. I'm not a dumb panel.
You should really go check it out.
Fine, I will. This simple villager wasn't making any sense. Allan and fox Conn are showed the residents of Mount Pleasant that will be bringing a study tech hop to its barren farmland. But instead all fox Conn built was a bunch of roads to nowhere, with the help two empty warehouses and a lame disco fall in the middle of an empty field.
Hell, I needed answers.
What the hell is everybody?
I'll tell us A thousand thousand jobs? Yeah, sorry, So just wondering, Well, the job's at the jobs there's fifteen thousand jobs. This can't be right. And even if there aren't any jobs or products or transparency, surely fox Conn has a plan.
I would say that over the past few years, everybody learned a few lessons. I think the storyline is happening. A story is a good one. It really is trail blazing and making pioneering decisions, even though it might not make.
Sense, even though it makes absolutely no sense.
Well, okay, absolutely no sense.
But right now I think we're in the chapter two or chapter three of the whole thing stayed.
Up eleven of the.
Oh well you don't want to get there right Well, the outcome was job operation. You really shouldn't care if you build potato chips or micro chips.
Potato chips or microchips, who cares? Just make something that's what people want for Fox come to make something in this factory.
It takes a village.
It takes a village to build a factory that makes nothing.
You got me there.
Ellen did a great job. It's showing the very thin line between genius business plan and scam. Okay, I think I see why you're so upset. You got catfished. Do you know what catfish is?
Yes?
I do?
But what?
Who?
What?
Why did they do this? If it's so bad for everybody? Why did this happen?
Well, it was really Donald Trump? Oh yes, it's the largest failed publicly funded economic development project in Wisconsin history, possibly in US history, Thank you wish.
In true Trump fashion, he made a promise, never delivered and left someone else holding the bag. Was there any way to turn this development disaster around?
More breaking news now Microsoft could be coming to Mount Pleasant.
This is a huge win for the village.
Microsoft came to town and they announced a three point three billion dollar investment project and two thousand full time jobs.
Okay, two thousand is quite a step down from thirteen thousand, but.
Those thirteen thousand jobs were never real.
What even making there?
It's going to be an AI data center.
Wait, but that if it's Aisent that's going to take jobs, They're going to replace workers. You're going to end up with less jobs than before.
Well, it's better than nothing.
Actually no, because no jobs would be zero. This will be negative jobs because it'll be taking other people's jobs.
All I know is that these are two thousand real jobs.
Goddamn villages is jobs?
Man, You guys talked about anything.
Else here in business. Not everything turns out the way you wanted to. But hey, with a little ingenuity and some American can do spirit, you too could turn thirteen thousand jobs into two thousand and put your whole village into debt.
Great Johnny, There.
Is no doubt that this election is exhausting, infuriating, and divisive. But to some, the endless cycle of insults and partisan attacks might actually be a turn on.
That's right.
The hottest new fetish is political humiliation, and this correspondent is ready to dive in to see political.
Shaming is the new sexy.
To find out more.
About this niche fetish, I traveled to the top spot for political shaming, Tampa, Florida, to speak to two of the top specialists in the field. Goddess Vivian Lee, a dominatrix who specializes in humiliating liberals, and Goddess.
Branded All have Small Pieces.
A dominatrix who specializes in shaming conservatives using her popular personas Evonka Tramp and Laura Hilbert. When did you notice that people were asking for this political shaming?
I put up my first video when Trump first went into office.
I had this terrible blonde wig that started off with Avanka.
They got a lot of exposure and they just flew up, especially on my phone line.
Request started rolling in from there, and I just kind of leaned into it and kept going with it.
So do you think that Trump played a huge part in the growth of this need? Oh?
Absolutely, it didn't exist before him, and I don't think it would really exist without him, right.
I mean, who knew that eighty year old men can make people so horny?
Oh?
I would count on that to pay my bills.
M hm.
So what do you concern it is want to be sexually humiliated about?
I definitely focus on what I would consider to be like the sensitive subjects like race based topics, feeling and adequate to black men, and wanting that may be rubbed in their face a little bit gay temptation, the fact that a lot of them have issues with like women of power.
What are you saying? Are you saying that rich white men are insecure.
And what turns on globals American anything? Camo again, they go absolutely insane for the Confederate bikini. We often end up discussing a certain politician's part.
Who is the popular one?
Right?
Sometimes it's Daddy to santistick.
Okay, it was time to find out firsthand what to expect from a political humiliation session.
So ring ring hello, Hello.
Troy, how are you tell me about you?
I am a news anchor.
No, no, I'm a little sissy liberal bitch and I'm calling for you to tell me I'm going to vote for Daddy Trump.
Okay, okay, I'm that was a.
Long line that you gave me.
I'm very conservative, as is my penis.
Stupid, stupid penis. You know what I think you need?
What do I need? A strap?
Oh?
That's what I think you need? Like a fanny pack, a big what's in the fanny pack?
Penises?
Real penises.
I'm going to put you in a cute little American flag diaper and a Trump T shirt and best little Mega had a boy could wear.
Hot.
Yeah.
I have a big fanny pack of penises on my head and I hate drag queens.
They're ruining the world with their fun.
Just trying to mind your own straight business, and these temptations are everywhere. You were once entitled to a wife.
Yeah, and now all.
Of these fems running around deciding.
Not to marry white and cell men.
It's a they need wives and mommies say thank you.
Daddy, Thank you daddy for letting me vote for chump, for letting me vote.
It's hard to be a straight guy.
Do you think that those involved get more knowledge on their own and opposing political views because of your services?
I do.
I think that I inspire them to want to at least look something up.
I mean, their penises are in their hands. I guess it would be awesome if you could take a step back and think to yourself, like, hmm, are my thoughts and opinions obnoxious and hateful?
Well, I mean you're dealing with shame, so maybe you have changed them. But they're a shamed They're just not going.
To tell me exactly, quietly shamed.
I needed to understand more about this fetish from a psychological standpoint, so I brought sex expert doctor Justin Lee Miller to the Museum of Sex to make him feel at home and ask if you knew why this fan was the one thing that crossed the political aisle right now.
There's some trauma connected to our politics, and something that happens in our fantasies is that it provides this opportunity to take control of a previous trauma. So there can be something empowering about taking something like shame or humiliation and then having complete control over it. There's also some sort of humanizing element that happens when people engage in this kind of kinky behavior. People can tap into deeper elements and aspects of the self.
Do you think that this fetish could help the country come together?
No, pun intended.
I don't have any data that could necessarily say that's the case.
Okay, we need the data, and since there is no official data on this topic, it's up to me to do the research to find out if political humiliation is the solution to America's problems just in time for the election.
I don't know.
A batch me more of a proboblem that's too hard, Okay, I don't don't. I don't know if I'm as slept boy for that policy or that policy.
If you haven't let me but me, let me but me Levin, What is your because you've been.
Going in circle? Did my dad result in a fix for the election?
Talk?
Was I turned on?
I'm not sure?
You know what, Maybe I should just vote independent? Not okay? Actually, you know what?
We might be getting somewhere else with this, But I guess no matter what happens in November, in this country, there will always be plenty of shame