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Hello, welcome to the Daily Show Ears edition. My name is Matt O'Brien. I'm a producer and writer on the show, and I'm here with a very special guests who drop by to interview a panel of undecided voters on the show. It's Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog. Welcome, Trying, Thank you, thank you.
Who are you again? That's a great question. Yeah, I work on the show, Matt o'donald, No no relation. You do work on the show. I'm a writer. You're a white middle aged man. You're a writer. Can we get some diversity in here? For God's sakes, all right, let's just go with it all, Triumph, let's get into it. I have Matt, Matt and I have worked together. Matt's just like Matt is a very well respected has been who used to work at the con and O'Donnell's show,
and the two of us did many reports together. And I just read that from a prompter. I don't remember him at all.
And it's led us here to this podcast.
Led us here to the neador of show business. Thank you for inviting me to record in a room smaller than slightly smaller than a handicapped bathroom stall. Seriously, am I taping a podcast or being held for ransom? This is where isis shot all their videos right, very exciting. No, Hiki Niki, it's nicest, doesn't have anything to do. This is the room where you euthanize all the correspondents who don't find loving homes. Right now. I love this place, great,
great room. Have you called David Ellison? Maybe he doesn't know that buying Paramount comes with a free shitty podcast studio that would put.
It over the top. Yes, guy dance, get sky Dance on the phone.
That's good. Yes, there you go that. I was a little improv from Matt.
I'm up on show business topics like the acquisitions.
See he is, there is diversity here. He's a writer who isn't funny. I can no. Here we go, here we go with the prepared jokes. Yes, no, you know what I love about the Daily Show offices. I've been here before, and you have a lot of office dogs, and I think that's wonderful. I love seeing all the office dogs around. It really made me feel at home when I took a shit on John Stewart's death. By the way, Is this the same room where you waterboarded John into coming back the very same How? Why the
fuck is he coming back to Comedy Central? I kid, what happened? Did his OnlyFans account not take off? I was enjoying the show when you had the celebrity the host honestly? Yeah, yeah, I mean it was like watching I Love the nineties. Seriously, I I for years, I've been biting my pause wondering what D. L. Hughley's politics are. Like. No, it's great, it's great. So no, but you're on the Daily Show now, So what's it like to work on the only Comedy Central show that isn't a Futurama rerun?
Well, it's uh, it's on the East Coast. It's close to my home, right, it's an honor and.
His Whitecastle. You know, you could be working there. It pays about the same.
At this point, I had moved out west to get away from working with Triumph, and yeah, so did code It.
It's his entire crew to the Left coast. Because Triumph is a New Yorker that paid off. I called then and I said, fuck that guy.
And he said, I don't know. Right away. From right away, I had a lot of pull back in the oughts. Anyway. No, you know, this is great back here on the Daily Show. So what's the topic of the show today. Republicans are bad or Trump is bad?
It's a little both. We try to hit both sides.
It must be tough figuring out which to do on what night, four nights a week. My god, keep it up, though, keep it up. No, seriously, you guys do do important work. I mean, the state of politics is such a joke. So it's just great that you guys have found a way to take all the humor out of it. That's a good joke.
That's a good, solid joke for me to pup on. And we're out and are good.
Yeah, we're good.
Well, all right, tryump. Thank you for unloading uh all of ammo on me.
What I do, It's what I do.
I don't know how I was forced into this. I'm certainly glad I was.
My only kid. It's all coming from a place of truth.
Yeah, you know, I know we've known each other for a long time. Yeah, and I can't disagree with any of it. We are now going to talk to the hand up here, asked Robert Smigel about the piece you did for the show We're Back with Robert Smigel, The hand up the ass of Triumph. They insult comic dog. Robert, of course is a legendary comedy writer, and gave.
Me my start. You let me write for Triumph, and I'd say, would you like a start? Miss it? I very much would.
So you probably didn't start doing politics until probably two thousand and four.
Right, you think you're right. I don't think I ever did politics until two thousand.
It was mainly it was it was things like bon jovies, pop culture stuff. Yeah, and we met through we met, so the the way it happened is believe or not. I was a production assistant at the Daily Show, Right, and we met. You were at the two thousand and four Democratic Convention in Boston. Yeah, I think you were shooting that Triumph movie.
I was shooting a Triumph movie, yes, for Columbia. I think that the Fairly brothers were producing it, and we shot a bunch of footage. I got thrown out of the DNC twice. I remember seeing one time when I crashed Bill O'Reilly's show. I followed Michael Moore in. He brought me in. Michael Moore did I was making fun of him, and he said, come follow me, and then they followed me in and I'm like heckling O'Reilly in
between commercial breaks and stuff, and O'Reilly's having fun. But then like the cops come in and they like they see that I'm not credentialed or something. And Michael Moore literally says, he followed me in here, like he didn't say he's with me, with me.
Yeah, that's the man you're looking for, exactly.
I have. I've never stuck my hand up that ass sir. That is I've never met that that asshole.
That hand is not find this whole thing childishary.
This is. Yes, I harassed security guards at auto automobile industry offices. Yeah, I would never make fun of someone of Bill O'Reilly's statue. I limit my harassment to security guards at major corporation's office buildings. Anyway, I thought we had great footage, but we showed a compilation to uh, the studio, and they just killed the project. Really Yeah,
it was weird. They were like, there's no story here, and I like had a whole treatment that was going to be a story that we were going to shoot later. We had the first thing we shot was the convention. It was like, so there, you're just grabbing moments, and that's a usually a good fishing expedition for Triumph because of course, I mean amount of people in one Yeah.
So you and I went to the two thousand and eight Republican Convention together and it was quite different because we were there with NBC, Yes, and we had like an escort taking us. It was like crazy compared to what I did did on my own for this movie studio. We were right on the floor, I mean right on the floor of the night convention and they're setting up Would you like to talk to the governor of Minnesota?
Would you like to talk to this person? We harassed Anderson Cooper made a great segment, didn't get thrown out. We went to a.
Wind lobbyist party and sang a song about abortion.
Yes, Sarah Palin song Sarah Brave good Times. Come on.
I think they had a live band, and you said, well, can I just borrow the mic first?
Yeah? Yeah, And I sang this song. And the whole joke was that I figured everybody wouldn't listen to the song lyrics, that they would just focus on the chorus. Sarah Pale I know sahbrate could times come on and they'd all get into it, and then in between I would sing, you know, not gonna allow abortion tonight, it's not right. Yeah, even in the cases of that, let's celebrate. But I feel like Conan made us cut that line. No, that hurt. That hurt was my favorite.
I'm not sure about the rape. I think there line okay, but these are huge, opulent seafood towers.
Yeah, yeahs dancing away not listening closely.
It was why did they say yes? I never understood why people said yes.
I know they have. At the two thousand and four Republican Convention, I was also thrown out. And this was really gorilla because my movie had been stopped. So me and like just three friends just got passes somehow, and I just brought in my own camera and I was just sitting there. And during George Bush's speech, I remember I had a Triumph, not me. Triumph was wearing one of those ridiculous Republican hats that had an elephant's trunk.
It was just an elephant's trunk on the people would wear it over their foreheads, and so Triumph I had Triumph screaming, you know for Bush cheering every time, and each time he cheered, the elephant's trunk would drop, so it was around his neck, it was around his chest, till finally it was between his legs and this long elephant trunk hanging between his legs and he's screaming at the top of his lungs and the cops finally noticed and detained me. Oh my god. Yeah.
One of the best moments of going to a political convention with you and Triumph is going through security because they make you unpack your bag on a table, so you have to take out the puppets.
Oh, the elephant hat.
You're laying out all these things that you're bringing, all the props, and he's very stern looking security guards or wanding them okay, yeah.
No bomb in this puppet. I remember. I remember one time, I think it was at that DNC. We really wanted to do this thing where Triumph had been fucking a poodle and he was stuck. They got locked like dogs do, and he's supposed to interview some famous politician, but he's still stuck in the poodle and we just could not
get the apparatus or the dog into security. It would have been the best thing ever to have Triumph walking through because we had a remote set up so that, like I could make Triumph talk by a remote control. We used it once on the Comedy Central show. We did like twenty years ago on TV fund House. But yeah, we had a remote control that where I could make triumphs lip lips move and talk without having my hand
up his ass. And we had him hooked up to this poodle and he's like, help somebody know what.
I feel like it would be quicker to just tell us which conventions you haven't been thrown out of, because the exactly Yeah, anyway, the point is, what were we talking about.
There's no point. There's no point.
There's never been a point. I met you at the two thousand and four convention. Ye doing all these shows, and I was roaming the floor with Stephen Colbert and you were talking to Stephen Colbert, and I think you just said something along the lines of like, hey, I need a thousand jokes in the next month two because the shows, and I think I I think I met just said hey, I'll send you some jokes. And I remember, hey, young Matt here, didn't.
We run into Steve? Didn't I run into Stephen outside the convention like online to get in one night, the night John Carey was making.
And that's when I remember you taking out all of these insane, ridiculous props for security to wand as you were going in. Yeah, everybody else had their briefcases and their documents, but I've got these ridiculous props.
Huh. Yes, I remember seeing Steven there covering for the Daily Show and he had me harmonize with him to the star spangled banner outside. There's footage of it. I have it at an't remember. Yeah, nobody's seen it anyway.
Yes, so we've been to you and I have been to many political conventions.
Yes, I remember the two thousand and eight one was a lot of fun. Then did we go in Florida in twenty twelve? Right to Tampa? To Tampa? Was that the time I had mister Met with me?
No, that was the spin that was that was the spin room on Long Island at Hofstra University. Was that a debate that was a debate, That was a debate, that was a Republican debate. Yes, and we brought mister Met and we photo bombed. Greta Van Sustron on Fox News I think at like one in the morning.
Yeah. Well, it's like after the whatever, the debate, and they're doing their wrap up analysis and she's talking to you know, Susan Estrich or some such pun for.
People that don't know. The spin room is this room after a debate where all of the pundits and political operatives gather in a room and talk to as many outlets as possible to get there.
Yeah, they set talking. They were holding signs representing the candidates.
So you can be you can get you can get twenty people in a half hour.
Yeah. But then I took to photo bombing, and I've had a lot of fun photo bombing, and that time, you know, Triumphs peeking behind Greta an Custern. Then he gestures and brings in mister met giant baseball head, and then he started humping mister Metts no behind Greta an Sustern. So yeah, I was proud of that.
I'm trying to think who played mister met oh man, I don't maybe chill emmy, I.
Don't think so, I don't remember. It's just some actor that we nobody else was willing to know. We needed to pay an actor.
Nobody it was the real mister met Yeah, all right, we're gonna take quick break.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to the Daily Show Ears edition. All right, so now let's talk. I guess about what we did for the Daily Show.
Yes, it was fun to be back on late night. First late night since. Yeah, since my appearances on Colbert. I did a so Conan went out of business a few years ago, right, and I took to working for Colbert. I did.
I successfully got the show canceled.
As the head writer. I took it to it's death knel. Right. I started the show, I finished you killed it.
I rearranged the chairs until it was under one.
I remember when I met you. I was like, I see something in this guy. He's the one feels like a finisher. And I spoke to John Stewart and the producer Jen Flans and they were very kind and anxious to have Triumph show up and in an election year. So we started with something that I don't really do very much as Triumph. I'm usually running around chasing people. Recently, I was at the Trump trial. Right outside the Trump Trial, I just taped it myself with some friends, some writers.
Josh Comer's Todd Levin, some of my best writers, and yeah, and we put it on my YouTube channel, Triump's YouTube channel. But I was very excited to come and have the opportunity to do the Daily Show, and so I did something that has been done on the Daily Show a few times, where they do focus groups where they take an actual panel of voters, whether it's Trump supporters or whatever. In this case, I thought it would be funny to do undecided voters, because it's really hard to believe that
anybody could be undecided after all this time. Point. Yeah, so as undecided, let's go around the room. Tell us your name and what your problem is. We've never had worse choices.
In my opinion, I don't like either candidates, same as other people said, up, not really crazy about either candidates.
Okay, I see some of you feel you need more information about the candidates, and I get it. We know so little about Trump and Biden apart from their campaign issues, their actions as president, their handling of the global pandemic, their criminal indictments, whom they've showered with at a very detailed description of Trump's penis from a former porn star, but we still don't know it's like, what else do you need to know? Or why the fuck are you
focusing on? Like I'm worried he's too old er, he's too mean. It's like they're their differences, you know, their differences on the issues are so profound that it's just comical to me that people are focusing on anything else.
And these guys have been political fixtures.
Now for We've known Trump for forty years. We've known both of them for like a total almost decades. Yeah, yeah, of the years we've known them, and it's older than you know, it's almost as old as they are actually, so yeah. So I just thought it was a really comical setup for Triumph to mock these people. And it's a little different than the focus groups that I've seen in the past, and that in those, uh, there's a lot of back and forth, right, you really get to
hear the opinions of these people. Triumph kind of he kind of does most of the talking. It's a one side of mostly you know, people get in little lines here and there, but.
For most parts, it's incoming fire for people for the most part, which.
Is not unlike a lot of Triumph remotes.
You know, that's kind of part of the fun of it, though, Yes, people as long as people are having a good time.
People having a good time taking it. Kind of like Triumph's interview with you. At the beginning of this.
Show, I was demonstrating, you take it on the chin for.
Ten minutes, you stick. You say a couple of things in between, but mostly you're just letting.
Problems is when you're fighting back, it really is rubber puppet, so you look ridiculous.
The best version of that that ever happened was again in two thousand and four. I was covering the Republican Convention just for my own enjoyment, hoping that I could get a movie together, and I was invited by MSNBC to do their after show. I forget what it was called, but it was hosted by Ron Reagan Junior and Joe Scarborough and they had as a guest the late great actor Ron Silver. For those who remember Ron Silva, he
kind of talked like this. He was in a very active Republican actor and anyway, he got very serious with me. It was really fun. It's always fun when somebody really wants to get into a debate with the rubber puppet and Ron Silver. We got in each other's face arguing, and I continually made fun of him and his political points.
Well, because on camera it looks like, you know, in person, he can see your face, yes, saying these things right to him, but on camera it looks like he's arguing with a rubber dog.
He is, well, no, he doesn't see my face. I was actually crouched under yeah, yeah, yeah. Well it's like a roundtable show, just like with this kind of table and on those I have to crouch under the table. So I'm like, you know, I don't know what would possess someone to say, well, I'm going to really give it to this dog here. He just really wanted to read. He felt like that he needed to be the Republican speaking up against all these other people. This is my moment.
Yeah, and so he didn't care if he was doing it against you know, Joe Scarborough or a latex puppet.
He wanted to argue that FDR was a bad president or whatever the hell. It was hysterical.
Well, so I guess that's indicative of It's interesting that early on that was where our discourse was starting to go, is people will argue now with oh god, yeah, I mean that arguing with the rubber dog puppet back then was I think kind of new, kind of now I feel like.
There's well, now there are people who will see the puppet and be humorless about it again, you know, I mean it kind of turned when Trump got elected. I remember going out for Conan and I think it was the last piece I did for the inauguration. Was yeah, right, was Trump was inaugurated and I had already done some Trump rallies for my Hulu specials that I did in twenty sixteen. But once Trump was inaugurated, there was a different attitude among his supporters, like fuck you were not
taking this. Like two different people grabbed the cigar out of Triumph's mouth and broke it.
Oh wow, yeah for real, just because everybody was the enemy at that point, anybody that wasn't.
And it was like stop fucking with us. We won, this is our day. Sure. Yeah. And and like there was a biker guy. There were a bunch of bikers there for Trump. Yeah, and one biker really got in my face and then.
I remember that, yeah, yeah, I remember that that guy was there. Was that there was The bikers were really great.
They and aged you. They went hardcore, yes, but one biker took it really seriously, like, what the fuck are you doing? Man, get the fuck out of here. And another one's like, hey, buddy, buddy, calm down, brother, brother, take it easy. It's okay, it's okay. We're just just a clown, you know, just just.
There's a great opening line in that piece about the sun.
Oh it was.
The there was there was not not many celebrities here, it was it was the sun was one of the many celebrities you decided not.
To show up. Yeah, great, so.
We did an undecided voter panel. Uh, and these, I mean, you're right, it's usually Triumph is a little bit of a fishing expedition.
You have the.
Jokes organized on a document kind of by.
Well, I had jokes on a document here, and that's always like kind of a mixed blessing because I like, I remember the first few I did at the Westminster Dog Show, I didn't have jokes, and it was a lot of improv and they went really well because it was so new and they was really funny. Classic piece. Yeah, the very first one, I mean they put it up for the Emmys. But then we did another one with Hollywood scores, and then we went back to Westminster and I was like, I think this time I should maybe
we should prepare some jokes. And then the jokes were so great that I was like, Okay, every time we do this, let's all get together and write jokes. And sometimes I have so many jokes that I don't give myself the space to relax and interact. In sure, sometimes even with this piece, I feel like it would have
been nice to play around. Like I remember when we were in Minnesota, we did like a bonus piece on our own, like we were there to do the convention, then we were there to interview Ralph Nader, and we had prepared jokes for both, and then we did another piece with protesters Democratic. We wanted to make fun of the Democratic post protest, remember, and we didn't really have jokes, and me and you just fucked around. Yep.
It was a nice remot, it was, And it was kind of it was sort of that makeshift sort of campground, I think a site or something.
It was like a cordoned off area where Democratic protesters were allowed to pro to, you know, assemble, and we just you know, we talked about some shit before we said jokes. But yeah, a lot of it was on the spot, and I remember Conan saying, oh, I like that one. You should do more. Yes, where you just relax and just feel more organic. The interaction is nice. Yeah.
All right, So back to the Daily Show piece. I thought it came out really well. I thought that people were really good sports about it.
Yeah. Yeah. A lot of.
People asked me and said, did people know it was triumph and and oh, yeah, you're always very good about I never want people it's not an ambush. Yeah, they should be in on the joke. They should feel and.
Even I mean, it's very rare that I go up to someone and not make the effort to ask them first if it's okay to talk to them, sure, matter who it is, pretty much anyone but Lindsay Graham. If it's a person who there's a bar of despicability that you know, if you can't reach then and those people are arguably way more fair game. Yeah, public figures. Yeah, And it's and also there's the press. Yeah. And I have an internal voice that tells me he's gonna say no if you ask, yes, ask for giveness. Yeah.
So after this, after after after the Daily Show, what what are you gonna do.
With the Puppet. I don't know. We'll see. We might do more on the Daily Show. That would be fun. Since it's an election year. I don't know. I'd love to go back and cover Ted Cruz's campaign again. I've covered Ted Cruz running for president, and I've covered Ted Cruz running for Senate, and it's his turn again. I would love to go back and harass some of the That would be fun to to hit some of the craziest congressional or Senate candidates. And then I got some stuff I've been doing.
There's also stuff online that people actually should check out.
Yes, I've been I've been doing some live shows. I do a game show on the road sometimes called Let's Make a Poop. It's a lot of fun. It's sort of a Jeopardy kind of game where the celebrity panelists have to guess the correct answer to questions, but they don't have to guess the correct answer. They have to come up with a funny answer, the correct funny answer, and it's really a lot of fun. And I did a show from San Francisco with weird Al Yankovic and
Rob Schneider. Amber Ruffin was there. It was a great night. That's online. It's on the Team Coco YouTube page, and it's also on the Triumph YouTube page. And I'm gonna come out with another one that I did recently from Chicago, where we actually got a former governor, Rod Blogoyevitch to sit in on the panel. Yes, and we spent some time in prison. He spent like six or seven years in prison, and then Trump commuted. Trump com commuted his sentence, and now he's a wondering what he's up to now.
He calls himself a Trump but crat now as if there's even as if that makes any sense. No, I told him, yeah, that's like, does he still have.
The legendary quaff the blogo god?
Yeah? Yeah, I said, you know what Trump loves about you is uh you know because here he was on Celebrity Apprentice with Trump. That's how Trump got to know him and like him. And he said, you know, I think Trump likes you, you know, because you both show no remorse or forehead.
All right, so you'll probably do some more of those maybe.
Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, there's that. And I'm writing, well, you know, I wrote a movie with Adam Sandler called Leo that I'm very proud of and yes, yes that's for kids, but parents do. All right, well check it out, check that out as well.
All right, well, I want to thank uh everybody for listening, and Robert Smigel and Triumphance Ould Comic Dog for I've rarely ever hosted a podcast, but I feel like I'm very good at it and I see a thank you, very a very strong future for myself.
Thank you, excellent, Josh, thanks a lot for me to poop one.
Yeah.
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