Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

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From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central is America's only source for new This is The Daily Show with your host Daisy Lighter.

Welcome, I'm Debbie Lighter. We have got so much to talk about tonight. Trump's first one hundred days get certified, rotten and fresh, the Declaration of Independence dies of embarrassment, and we'll find out why America's GDP is shrinking. Oh sad, big, Let's get right into it.

They'll be a little disturbance.

Trump's been in office for one hundred days, or as he likes to call it, longer than any president in the history of the world. It should be a week of celebration. But tell that to the economy. Economic alarm bells. A US economy contracting by zero point three percent.

The contraction in the economy first that we have seen in years.

In fact, the America's economy is shrinking.

Yes, the US economy is undergoing what economists refer to as a George Costanza. Now, obviously, the economy is a complex interaction of multiple markets, so it's difficult to point to any one factor. But it's all Trump. It's Trump it's Donald Trump. The fact is Trump just does not do well with the GDP unless GDP stands forget that pusse, which, sadly those numbers are also down. Milania doesn't live there anymore.

Somebody said, all the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of thirty dollars, you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.

Wow, check out mister Rogers over here. I can't believe in a span of one hundred days, we went from we will all be richer than we've ever imagined to everyone gets two dolls. All right, But if you're sad that playtime will soon be over for your children, take comfort that it's just beginning for the old commander and child.

The President came out swinging and dancing to celebrate one hundred days in office.

Comp had so much fun tonight. He had so much fun.

He seems like he's enjoying himself. Clearly he was having a good time.

And you can tell when he's on stage he's having so much fun.

He's dancing for that famous YMC eight dance. It's danced on. They've worked hard and had fun. Isn't that the pursuit of happiness?

No, no, Laura, it's not. We're not going to be eating cold beans huddled over a fire like Well, at least the president's happy. As long as he's back in that ass up, I think America is going to be a okay. By the way, that was the first time I've seen Trump dancing from behind, and I gotta say, don't do that ever again. Don't do that.

I owe the.

Front button apology. Anyway, it's no surprise that the main story on Fox News is that Trump is live, laugh, loving being president. But as we all know, the American media is just as divided as a country itself. So depending on which cable news network you watch, Trump's first one hundred days were either He's sick or I'm sick. One hundred days.

Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president in the history of modern polling.

Voters across America or weigh and saying yes, Trump, keep going.

Give me an assessment of Trump's first one hundred days one to.

Ten, well solid two nothing more.

On a scale of one to ten, twenty, Donald Trump deserves an.

F that would give President Trump an A, maybe even an A plus.

Fear and pessimism, thrilled and excited, no disaster.

It's awesome.

One thousand, three hundred and sixty one days to go of this journey.

Man.

I wish we could have ten thousand, you know, more days with President Trump.

Ten thousand more days. That is twenty seven years. I can't still be talking about Trump when I'm in my late forties. It's not that funny, but wild Cable News debated. Trump himself celebrated the big one hundred by inviting ABC News reporter Terry Moran to the White House for an interview, and Trump kicked things off by asking the same thing every kid does when a guest comes to the house. Want to see my room?

Hello? Everybody? Hell are you?

This is the Oval Office. This is an amazing space. I've added a lot to the space.

In terms of.

Beautification, in terms of modernization, modernization.

This looks like my great grandmother decorated the mantlepiece with her great grandmother's ashes. And I know that beautification is in the eye of the beholdification. But we can all agree that the phone core Golf of America map is pulling focus? Right? Is the Gulf of America having a bridal shower in the banquet room of an Hilton garden in because if it's not, get it out of here. But okay, you know it showed me a few more things in your room. And then I got to go join the grownups.

See Ronald Reagan. Here, you have Lincoln, you have Washington, Dellakove, that's Monroe, the Monroe doctrine.

Why is he up there?

I think the Monroe Doctrine was pretty important.

You know, it was his claim to fame.

Trump is always in the I forgot to do the reading mode.

Man.

That Monroe doctrine so important. My favorite part probably the doctrine. And doctrine, as we all know, is a female doctor. But you know what, we can't expect Trump to know anything about a president whose picture he put up. It's not fair. So let's give him something easier. Donald, tell us what the Declaration of Independence is. And remember this is the document in which we declared independence.

Of course, you have the Declaration of Independence.

What does it mean to you?

Well, it means exactly what it says. It's a declaration. It's a declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot, and it's something very special to to our country.

Look at Terry Moran's face. He looks like a teacher about to call the school psychologist. This is a great drawing stay right here, But of course he'd make that face. Trump said that the Declaration of Independence meant unity. Unity is the opposite of independence. How did Trump find the one time that unity in love is the wrong answer. What makes us even more sad is that the Declaration of Independence is basically the colonies filing for divorce. It's

Now we have this trade war with China that Moody's and other analysts say it's going to cost American families thousands of more dollars per year, and there is a lot of concern out there. People are worried. Even some people who voted for you, saying I didn't sign up for this, So how do you answer those concerns?

Well, they did sign up for it. I said all these things during my campaign. I said you're going to have a transition period.

Really, that's what Trump said. Trump actually said that, can we just check the tape on that.

When I win, I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one.

Thousand and forty seven.

But first prices will go so high you'll be sucking d for eggs.

Oh yeah, my bad, I misremembered. But the wildest part of the interview by far was when it turned to Trump's deportation of Kilmar Garcia, who Trump says doesn't need due process because anyone can tell that Garcia is in the gang MS thirteen just by looking at his tattoos, and.

You'll pick out man. But even the man that you picked out, he's got a key, said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked and on his knuckles he had MS. There's a wait a minute, Wait a minute, he had MS thirteen on.

We had some tattoos that are interpreted that way.

But let's move on.

Okay, let me just explain what's going on here? Garcia has tattoos on his hand and someone labeled a photo of them, trying to prove that they're actually a code. The problem is Trump thinks that the labels are part of the tattoo, and he is very, very insistent on it.

Let's move on.

Wait a minute, I way tear it, Terry, Terry.

He did not have their letter MS one It says MS one three.

That was photoshop. Don you want me to show you the picture. I saw the picture.

Well, a stotoshop.

Here we go.

Here we got photoshop. But don't look at his hand. He had amster.

If he did have tattoos, that can be interpreted that way.

I'm not an expert on them. I want to turn to Ukraine. I want to get to your cran. No, no, no.

He had m as as clear as you convey, not interpreted it.

Now I understand why he's so proud of that Gulf of America poster. He thinks Gulf of America has actually written on top of the water.

Makes sense.

And what is so crazy is that Terry Moran kept trying to change topics, but Trump wouldn't let him. I have never seen an interview where a reporter catches a politician in a gotcha, and the politician is the one who says, stop trying to move on. I am not done embarrassing myself. But I will hand it to Terry Moran. He held his ground to the point where it actually wore Trump out. And that's when we saw a moment of vulnerability from Trump.

He's got MS thirteen on his knuckles card. Okay, we'll take such a disservice.

We'll take a look.

You just say, yes, he does, and you know, go into some Honghous's contested you crain.

Why don't you just say I'm right up and down, left is right, Santa is real, and that is Trump at a nutshell. I can't prove the insane things I believe, so just go along with them. Don't believe your eyes, believe the photoshop. But I, I for one, will not believe the photoshop. Okay. I will go into the rest of the term with my eyes wide open, staring and watching. Oh God, no, no, oh, my eyes, my beautificated eyes.

Come gather round the diying embers of democracy and attend my chilling tale. The legend of a pale wraith who haunts the soul of an entire nation, a vampiric fiend with an insatiable urge to suck America is for Americans and Americans only. This is the twisted chronicle of Stephen Miller, what he does in the shadows. By now you surely know of the plague wrought by the bald monstrosity.

Map deportations, chaos and confusion, people detained and family separated.

It a toddler and US citizen deported in cages.

A Muslim advance is how democracy died.

But what of the beans hideous origins? I first became aware of the wretched creature through tales told of him in the American West, in a cursed land called Santa Monica. A festering evil village with not even that great of a ferris wheel. Even as a child, Stephen Miller struck fear into the hearts of the innocent. As his third grade teacher would later recall.

He was a strange dude.

I remember.

He would take a bottle of glue, and then he would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off, and then eat it.

Yes, while some creatures thirst for blood, this one had the taste for paste. But Miller's cravings could not be seated by glue.

Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.

He began studying the dark teachings of his era's most demonic figures, was soon penning mad screeds to the local newspaper about the horrors at his liberal high school.

We do nothing for American holidays, but everything for Mexican holidays. Condoms are available to students grade nine through twelve. We have a club on campus that will gladly help foster their homosexuality. Refuse to say the pledge of allegiance and classroom, we invite a Muslim leader to the school to explain the splendor of Islam. O Sama bin Laden would feel very welcome at sam On the high school.

Come on, buddy, save something for your manifesto. The still gestating monster was determined to recavoc anyway he could ha ha, whether it was jumping out of the stands into a girl's track meet to prove he was faster than them, or running for a student government on a platform of being a total dick.

Am I the only one who is sick?

And to be told to pick up more trash? I'm not plenty of By stepping out of the sunlight to run for office, Miller learned he it was perhaps more suited to lurking in the shadows, breaking the shackles of Santa Monica. Miller sojourned for a time at Duke University, once again beasting on every conceivable controversy.

Shows like Will and Grace and Sextacy promote alternative lifestyles, can a row traditional value work.

Christmas is slowly meting XI out from society. I for one, am of bend and I'm Jewish.

Smoky is not.

Nearly as dangerous as special interest groups have made it out to be. The real risk are the fascistic tendencies that prohibit smoke. Prisoners are afforded so many luxuries continue to worship with the altar of multicultural is so called affirmative action.

Sorry, feminists, I would say he probably wasn't much bun at parties, but I'm pretty sure he never got invited to any. Miller's facility with arcane meledictions soon caught the eye of America's greatest master of the dark.

Arts, joining us now from Rawleigh, Steven Miller columns for the Duke Chronicle student newspaper.

And so the Dicky torch was passed to a new generation. With the notoriety he had achieved, gross feratu insinuated himself into the entourage of some of the most repellent figures in America's hell mouth. During these years, he said nearly a thousand emails planting stories in writing media. They didn't all site well known white nationalists, but it was more than you would like. And then in June twenty fifteen,

Our republic is being destroyed now before a very.

Odd he conjured dark utterances for the new president's speeches.

This American carnage stops right now.

Bet him a constant dream of diabolical talking points.

I would never, ever, in a million years, allow my daughter to compete against a biological man.

Never unless it was a joke to make fun of how girls are lane. Obviously, ha Miller's ability to hold followers in his throll became the stuff of legend. We're getting a lot of texts from women.

Our audience at prime time believes you're some sort of sexual matadora.

Indeed, this thirty nine year old man doesn't look a day over thifty three. It seemed he could convince weak minds of anything, whether it was that his master didn't wear terrible, ill fitting clothes down Trump's a style icon, or that he didn't actually lose the twenty twenty election.

We have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result.

Okay, Miller's brief attempt at pretending not to be bold was taking it too far, but anything else so now the creature stands astride his defy Old Kingdom.

We don't know how this battle ends, but we know that we will be riding in this battle, in the struggle to say democracy with a real man.

And we must ask ourselves, is it truly he that is the monster? Or is it us? But no, seriously, he's the monster. It's like not even debatable. Won an asshole? A.

John meecho will be joining on the show, said John Away. Welcome back to Today Show. My guest tonight is a Bulle Surprise winning presidential biographer and best selling author. Please welcome John Meachama. You got some meet and heads in the audience.

Usually I get that reaction at assisted living facilities.

Right between murder, she wrote, and Jeopardy.

Oh, you're right in the middle. That's a good run. That's a good.

Grouping, would be a good place to be. Well.

Thank you for being here on such a celebratory, so exciting, so many things. You were once an advisor for for Joe Biden. You've written books about Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson. You're writing one now on Eisenhower. What inspired you to want to write so extensively about the US presidency? See for me, I'm intrigued, but I have a hard time because there just isn't a female lead that I can connect to.

Yeah, yeah, it's very and you and we've now proven we'll send anybody to the White House that is true.

Not just once, we've proved it twice, two times. Very impressive.

So the presidency is, as President Kennedy once said, the vital center of action. It's where the life of the nation is most dramatically manifested, both for good and for ill. Who knew for ill would be quite so formidable in this era? And so the human drama with the larger story of the populace of power, to me, is the

That's not hard. Don't get cocky that.

But did you see my first act?

Well I was going to mention that.

But I think that if we get things right just enough of the time in our own lives, which most of us do. You know, I get things wrong a lot, But when I get something right, okay. So that's what democracy is, because it's the fullest expression of all of us.

Do you think President Trump will get it right? In the eleventh hour?

One lives in hope?

Strong pause.

There was a long pause. There was a long pause.

Look, I think the best thing that's happened in these hundred days is the evidence of the public reaction to what's unfolding. And the numbers are not great, and so it may just be that, as Winston Churchill once said, you can always count on the Americans do the right thing once they've exhausted every other possibility.

Boy, have we ever from a historical standpoint, what is the significance of the first one hundred days? Is it really that meaningful or is it just a hallmark holiday for the media.

Well, Doris Goodwin and I have a we do action figures for it.

It's very exciting. That was funny.

One.

Yeah, thank you.

We'll sell them on the web. We'll put them up on the web later on the website. If that's still.

Up is It started out as a great undertaking. It was Franklin Roosevelt and the winner of nineteen thirty three, twenty five percent unemployment, a serious question about whether American democracy would survive, whether democratic capitalism could survive. You had totalitarianism taking root in Berlin and Rome in Moscow, huge question about whether democracy would work and endure.

Here.

FDR, the night he became president, the first of one hundred days, is having a glass of whiskey and going to bed, like we all should do. And an aid comes to him and says, kind of pretentiously, when you think about it, so, mister president, if you solve the crisis of the depression, you'll go down as our greatest president.

But if you fail, you'll go down as our worst.

And FDR looked at him and said, if I fail, I'll go down as our last. He understood the stakes of the hour, and so in those hundred days he did everything he could, just throw everything at the wall, trying to get the first new deal passed, and.

You know, the nineteen thirties and forties we live in the long shadow of that.

It redefined the relationship of the government to the people, not just the New Deal, but the Second World War. Something like we had federal spending with something like three point nine percent of GDP in nineteen forty one.

It was thirty percent during the war.

It went back down to about twenty two percent in our most prosperous years in the nineteen fifties.

And so, I know, we all want to think that it's just.

The private sector and it's just individual initiative, and we're all Horatio Alger. You know what, The government has a lot to do with this. The public sector has a lot to do with this. And to cut mindlessly is just mindless.

Yeah, you talk about after January sixth, your biggest regret about Trump, President Trump, I guess I should say to be respectful, we should, you know why, because there was this creepy tell me on it.

Well here this is actually this is a wasp point. Those are the kind I make.

So there was this creature in America for four years in right wing media named Biden.

Right Biden was doing this, and Biden was doing that.

We know what he was a president the United States, and so let's give him the title on the hope that perhaps the beginning with the little stability might hearken some sanity.

It's a small hope.

Okay, I'm with you on that. You one of your biggest regrets about President Trump is that you thought that he was a difference of degree and not kind. We're now one hundred days into his second term. How do you see him now?

Right?

So, I for the first four years, basically from twenty fifteen until after the twenty twenty elections, so not just January sixth, but the call to Georgia, the fake electors, the attempt to overturn an election. That and this is against my business model. When I say something is unprecedented, that doesn't help me as a historian. But this was unprecedented. No American president had ever done. Andrew Jackson had lost a much closer election. He hashtagged it, he called it

And I.

Didn't think the American people would do this again. I didn't think forty nine point nine percent would do it again. But you can't be for democracy only when you win. And so the question now is we're all facing this extraordinary test of citizenship, and he is, I think, knocking down a lot of the barriers, a lot of the guardrails, a lot of the institutions that are flawed and imperfect like all of us, but which have in fact served us well enough to still have a system that's worth defending.

Right, And that's a really important thing.

Here, right, is politicians all act on incentive. Lincoln said that all men act on incentive, and so people talk themselves into thinking in the twenty twenty four election that President Trump would represent prosperity. Well, eh, you know, my favorite headline of the week was Trump has planned to work around tariffs for car makers.

What does that mean?

Well, outer space, they brought the tariff aliens came and we're going to stand up.

Against these evil tariffs.

It was like, you know, so cognitive dissonance is an American characteristic.

But we don't have to quite that bad.

Right, I hope not. There has certainly been a lot of just him acting out, doing whatever he wants, flooding the courts, finding loopholes. Do you think in a way that this could act as a blueprint for Democrats moving forward?

Well, I hope not.

Yeah, because you're right, that was a bad thought, bad suggestion. Okay, all right, it's essentially not a better person.

Yeah that's okay.

Well you're from Kentucky to shame, Yeah, yeah, says the Tennessee Yeah.

No, I think here's what I do think is happening. I think that.

And I was not a great math student. So when a pendulum goes this far right, when it drops back, it doesn't go back to the middle. It keeps going. So you don't have of President Trump. Is not a recipe for us to have a president from the Brookings Institution next time, right, for some sort of moderate you know, we're all going to breason together. The pendulum will probably

A reaction, right, So it does feel like there is a moment of populism. So also with the popularity of Bernie and AOC. So you think that's an actual possibility. I think it's likely.

I don't know, there's likely, but but I don't know if it's likely. But it's we live in earl of Donald Trump's been president twice.

What's like?

What?

How can you.

Even predictions a post Cartesian world?

Do you feel like the checks and balances and the guardrails that have been woven into our democracy will hold on or are we going to need a bigger guardrail?

Well, here's the here's the thing.

It's actually and I use the image I shouldn't have, it's not an inanimate image. To call it a guardrail actually suggests that there's some non human force that's going to save us.

Institutions are human.

So when we say the courts, we should really say judges, right, yes, would we say Congress we should say congress people and senators. It's when we say universities, it's university presidents and boards. Right, it's us and we are going to get what we deserve. And that's a terrifying thought in many ways. But I do think what Harvard did recently is really important because fear is a really good starter for demagogues. It's hard,

We're definitely seeing cracks in the media ecosystem right now in terms of how they're covering the administration, the pressure, the aggression towards media in general. What would you like to see more from the media at large in terms of covering this administration.

I think we're all the media now. This is another question of terminology. There's a there's the press, and then there's the media. And anybody with a cell phone actually can now reach far more people than Cronkite ever thought about reaching, right, I mean, it's just anyone. So the notion of a gatekeeper, I think is pretty much gone.

To state the obvious. I think that the more you can say, the.

More you can just actually stand up for truth and just facts, I think is the best thing to do.

I remember, I know they were sweet.

They were sweet, they were a little cute, they were fuzzy, were a little tiny facts, And so just say and and the notion, this is one of the more troubling things this happened in the last decade or so, is the notion.

That facts are partisan.

Right, that the moment when the future vice president incumbent vice president said well wait, wait, we weren't going to do any fact checking rememb during the debate, So what if the moderators tried to say something we're not going to do as if okay, we're just suspending reality now, you know, right, And so I would I think investing as much as many resources as possible on saying this is accurate. This is not two plus two equals four. And just because President Trump says is equals.

You're better at math than you said.

That was sort of being a little bunch.

Yeah, I just just here's what's discernible, here's what's not And when you can manipulate that, which is part of the era we're living in.

Then you're moving from a.

Reality based universe to a full, full on reality show, but unfortunately that reality show becomes our reality d.

D as a revered historian, revered it's like.

Being the best restaurant in the hospital.

Do you think that we will look back on this time differently than the way that we're experiencing it right now.

It depends on how it turns out. If this is a if this is seasonal, then we will look at it as a case study in how the legitimate cares and concerns of a lot of people were manipulated and marshalled by someone who did not actually have their cares and concerns at heart, and it will be an example of how American democracy can veer out of a lane of reality based rule based order. If this is chronic, then it will be a great battle to tell the truth about this and to bear witness to know.

This is what is true.

Just because someone who got more boats than the other guy says that something is true does not.

Make it so that's the truth. I sure hope that we ve here right right out of this, and I appreciate you being here to help process this moment in time. You are you are a grounding force and give us a little optimism for the future.

Well, what's the alternative, right, I mean, we didn't, as John Belushi said, we did not give up when the Germans bomb Pearl Harbor.

I'm going to end it coming out later this year with introductions to the federal papers as well as don needs them. Everybody, we're any take a quick break.

We'll be ready show.

Michael Love will be.

Here tomorrow to half off our coverage. It comp's first one hundred days, so don't miss it now here. It is your moment of zen.

Elon.

I love the double head, but appreciate all I wanted to can do then get away with it. Well, this person and I say I wear a lot of hats.

That's true.

Even my hat has a hat.

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