Trump on Upholding Constitution: "I Don't Know" | Historian Rutger Bregman

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With your host John Steward, part the Daily Show.

Thank you, flame is John Stuart Man. Do we have a show for tonight? Later on I'm gonna be joined by our guest ruck Or Bregman.

He is my all time and I mean this all time favorite Dutch historian.

Yeah, that's right, you heard me.

Suck on that Hermann Vondel Jones, who is another dutchy story and that we.

Looked up backstage.

But first, and I'm so glad you were with us today, Let's talk about our beloved president. He's in as a suspect. He's in a bit of a tough situation right now since he ran on fixing the economy, and fixing the economy is very complicated, it's very tricky.

You need professionals.

But Trump is one of those guys who's like, I can do it.

I know what I'm doing.

He watched the YouTube video and he opened up the hood and he was like, oh, it's the wire from the carburetor and the no let me get holds on fire and.

Then his wife comes out.

He's like, I told you to call somebody, and then he's.

Like, you know, boy it Mary.

And scene.

Now you see why I'm not in many movies. The point being.

Yesterday, Trump sat down for an interview with NBC's Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, and the challenge was clear. The President had to find a way to persuasively take credit for the remaining good parts of the economy while suddenly assigning blame to Joe Biden for the bad on fire parts. Let's see how Trump threaded this rhetorical needle.

I think the good parts of the Trump economy and the bad parts of the Biden economy.

Nail did he went?

I ad it no attempt at persuasion or allegory or metaphor to Trump, good bye and bad.

He's a regular Shakespeare.

Maybe Shakespeare would have been better off with the Trump approach. Act one, Scene one, Romeo and Juliet. Hey, Juliet, it's Romeo. Let's and then kill ourselves.

And I want to thank my family.

Look, I'm trying very hard in this new Trump.

Flood the zone media ecosystem strategy to not get too high or low, to not take the bait to find things in my life that give me pleasure or peace. For instance, a quick story, I'm a niece eleven years old loves dolls. I was going to get her twenty or thirty of them for her birthday, just to see the joy of a child. You can't put a price tag on that. It gives me great solace anyway. Like I said, I'm not trying to take these interviews personal.

I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs that's eleven years old, needs to have thirty dollars.

First of all, I don't think we consider eleven year old's baby girls.

Second of all, you don't know what she needs. She'd been through a lot this year. How many dolls would you get her?

What is the appropriate number of dolls to get a beautiful baby eleven year old girl, Mister President.

I think they can have three dolls or four dolls.

It's just not that many dolls. I mean, she gonna have a small tea party with the dolls. But her dream had been a quasi realistic conclave re enactment with dolls.

That's what she wanted.

Fine, Fine, it's fine, it's fine. I'll just tell her the President of the United States said, no, you know what doesn't matter.

Dolls are not her only happy place anyway. She also loves taking standardized tests.

That's true, very erudite.

So I was thinking of getting her this wonderful baby's first SAT kit. It has all the scantron sheets and around two hundred and.

Fifty number two pencils. She's gonna go crazy. She is gonna love it.

They don't need to have two hundred and fifty pencils, they can have five.

Motherfucker, How dare you?

What kind of a man would deny this poor girl her full compliment of pencils for her dream standardized testing toy kit? Is that man a Ebenezer Scrooge, b the Grinch, c an Evil step Monster, or d all of the above?

Oh, that's right.

She can't answer because she's already used her entire pencil quota. But I have to say, like when Trump is talking about what people should do and get, you like dolls and pencils, Trump has such a depression era of view of what kids play with in twenty twenty five. Kids don't need twenty sets of those hoops you hit with the stick as you go down the.

Street, just one hoop is Jim Dandy.

But look, to be fair to Donald Trump, his austerity pitch to the American people is in line with the modest way in which Trump conducts his life. Trump has a monastic view of simple living that says, hey, what if Saddam Hussein's palace had a view of Central Park?

Were standing in my apartment of Trump Tower.

Some people considered to be the greatest apartment in the world.

And some people think it's what would look like inside Marie Antoinette's vagina.

It was notoriously well appointed.

I do want to hand it to Trump if you notice a very sparing use of pencils and dollars in that he.

Does walk the walk. Well, look, here's the truth.

If a Democrat had even hinted at toy rationing for American children, we'd have a full week of Fox special reports on the sobbing children of socialist America and a boom in gun toting patriots going.

You could have Joe when you pry it from a kung fu grip.

But at least we're finally getting to address in a substantive manner Trump's chaotic stewardship of what was the world's most stable economy, and how Americans are going to have to sacrifice financially and tamp down their consumerist impulse and that is what has driven so much of our economy, and I guess our waste. And I'm sure the President will use this interview with Welker to cheer lead the effort to a more finance actually responsible future for all of us.

We're gonna have a big, beautiful parade, military parade. We're going to celebrate over we have the greatest military tri people peanuts compared to the value of doing it.

We can't afford not to do it. Why don't you believe in me?

If you hadn't spent so much on.

Dollars in pencils, we weren't even talking about this. And see, but this is the brilliance of Trump. In the same interview where he says to Americans, sorry about your Christmas, suck it up, he talks about a ninety million dollars parade that just so happens to fall on his birthday and is totally worth it.

We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world, and we're going to celebrate it.

I don't know, mister President, if do you know how submarines work.

But.

Dragging them down Pennsylvania Avenue will.

Most likely void the warranty.

But this is why it's so hard to pin Trump down on everything, because to get to substantive policy questions, you have to face down the fire hose of his nonsense and bullshit that moves you off track, his frenetic nature. That means we all end up suffering from a kind of second hand ADHD, a viral cloud of his unfocused weaving that gives all of us brain fog.

Well, no more.

High sharks.

When I saw the President of the United States starting out on tariffs and ending up on dolls and parades and pencils, I thought, there's got to be a better way to help Americans figure out which of the things it's okay to get upset about and which things are just him fucking off. So I invented this chart. Let me show you how it works. First, we take something the president said.

Donald Trump says that he is directing the Bureau of Prisons to reopen Alcatraz?

And then we figure out is that okay?

Sure, it's okay.

It's the kind of thing that's okay to just let go. It's just a stupid thing to keep us occupied, to lose focus on his actual policies. It's okay not to take the bait, to not get sucked into it.

But why would you want to reopen Alcatraz? What the fuck is that? Why would you want to do that?

The president says, who wants to use the island to quote house America's most ruthless and violent offenders in this notorious federal prison had closed in nineteen sixty three because it was too expensive to run and repair.

It's now been a museum. What did Trump think? We're low on prisons?

What do you although?

I guess any opportunity for Trump to open a prison and simultaneously close.

A museum is too good to pass up.

But it'll take hundreds of millions of dollars or I don't know how many dollarsand pencils, but it's a lot.

Does does Doosee know about this? Does Alcatraz?

Alcatraz officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Because they run a museum. They're a museum.

They're not.

That's what they're they're not. They're not like tough talking wardens. They're docents with art history degrees.

The only person working there is busy fixing those machines that flatten pennies.

That the only person that wolds. And here's the crazy part about Trump.

He throws out these crazy ideas and then those crazy ideas have days of shelf life.

This is a press.

Conference today announcing a partnership with the NFL draft. But now the NFL guys have to just sit there and nod through all this Alcatraz nonsense.

Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate right. Alcatraz sing, sing, and Alcatraz. Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented some person almost got there, but they, as you know the story, they found his clothing, a lot of shark bites at a lot of problems. It's a big hulk that's sitting there, rusting and rotting.

What point.

There is a point that's done.

It's fine. I'm sorry.

The chart was supposed to prevent this kind of over emotional digression. This one's on me. I am not leading a chart based life right now. I apologize.

I can do better. I can do better.

Let's go again and.

Judge whether or not this is an important pronouncement or a brain fogging digression.

President Trump shared an AI generated image of himself depicted as the Pope on social media yesterday.

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's fine.

It's not the most presidential thing.

But Trump and the Pope do share the same taste in interior design.

So it was not the Worths hit and it's just the troll. It's not hurting anybody. I mean, Trump wasn't going to have it anyway, so it sounds like it's kinda.

I'm not gonna get distracted by it.

I'm not going But he can't really be the pope?

Can he can he be the Pope?

The last time a non cardinal was pope was back in thirteen seventy eight, when the Italian archbishop Bartolomeo Prignano, who had been a monk, was controversially chosen from outside of the College of Cardinals, and he became Pope urban the sixth. So will Donald Trump following the six hundred and forty seven year old footsteps of Bartolomeo Pregnano.

No, he won't. You see what you're doing with people?

Trump, MSNBC's gotawate valuable airtime fact checking your fucking nonsense time they could have spent frowning, sighing, and rolling the rush. Is there anything during this chaotic news cycle that maybe we should keep our eyes on.

Don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?

I don't know. Holy shit, that's not okay. But by the way, I don't know.

That wasn't a gotcha question. Should the president of all the Constitution am.

On millionaire?

That'd be the warm up question, like what color is an orange? Or name a planet with people on it. I mean, if you can't answer that the president's supposed to uphold the Constitution, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't even let you become a citizen. And before you might say, well they never told me, let me refer you back to a cold day in January. Preserve, Protect, and defend deserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the United States.

Were you even awake, preserve, de prectant defend.

I e uphold it's not optional.

It is not an opportunity for you to lawyer shop loopholes to our nation's founding document. You took an oath in front of God and those who are fighting against God. But the important thing is that here's the problem. The volatility of nonsense from consequential to truly disorienting is unfathomable. While we're chasing Pope and Alcatraz stories, the Trump administration

And then there's this Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Junior laid off nearly all workers at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

The program offers monitoring and treatment for first responders and survivors diagnosed with nine to eleven related health conditions.

I agree.

Do you know how bad you have to be to make the lives of sick nine to eleven responders worse. The Trump administration is now number two on the nine to eleven Evil Power rankings.

O Kind is still number one.

But you're closing the gaph, and trust me, there is nothing that you can do to distract me from making sure that those folks are gonna get what they've earned from the government.

The White House hosting this ai image of a buff Jedi Trump to Mark Star Wars Day on May fourth, while touting his immigration crackdown.

Here's the thing.

I know, I'm not supposed to get distracted, but he's not a Jedi in that picture.

Do you understand?

Trump is presenting himself as a Jedi, but his lightsaber is read And the only way you can have a red lightsaber is by infusing it's kyper crystal with the power of your agent hate, thereby corrupting it into.

A vessel for the dark side.

Therefore, Therefore, every one of those photos that Trump is putting out there, he is admitting. He is admitting he's not a Jedi, but in fact a Sith Lord.

And there are always two.

So the question is this, who is he working with? Why do I know all this well? I happen to have an extensive collection of Star Wars Action figures thirty to thirty seven of them.

Actually, some call them dolls.

I call them friends.

When we come back. Rucktor Bregman, don't go away. Hold on the talent show my guests tonight, fabulous kus. He is a historian, best selling author is a book. It's called Moral Ambition.

Stop wasting your talent and start making a difference.

Please welcome to the program.

Rucker Bregman, Sir, they go crazy for the Dutchess story.

Yeah, I know, well I have a lot of competition there, all the other famous dutchy story.

That's exactly vander Duncan had it coming for a long time.

Listen, a moral ambition is in this country obviously has been somewhat outlawed. But what do you how do you define moral ambition as something that people should be pursuing.

So it's pretty simple. It's a combination of two things. It's the idealism of an activist on the one hand, and the ambition of an entrepreneur. So it's the desire to stand on the right side of history before it is fashionable, and to really devote your career, your precious time on this earth, to make this world a much better place. You're trying to step into the footsteps of the great moral pioneers who came before you, the abolitionist to suffragettes, the civil rights campaigners, but.

Not as a hobby, as a vocation, yea, yeah, and.

You have very interesting The opening forward is so interesting. It's a story of a monk the happiest person in the world because brain waves tell us this. And you tell this story, and I think you're going to a place where.

You say, be the monk.

Yeah, and you basically go, this monk is wasting his life.

Yeah. Well, look, I mean he meditated for sixty thousand hours and then researchers put him in a brain scanner and declared him the happiest man alive, you know, because he had so much positive things going on there. And I read about that story and I was really angry, and it was like, sixty thousand hours in your own head and the world is burning. I mean, come on, there are problems to solve here. And look, I mean my favorite card that's the Buddhist monk's name. He's actually

But wait, is this guy now like getting shit talked all over there?

Anyway, The point is, I mean there are a huge amount of self help books out there that will teach you how to be more mindful, more relaxed, you know, be more happy. My previous book, Humankind was an attempt to restore people's faith in humanity, and at some point I saw these pictures on Instagram of people reading the book saying, you know, life is wonderful, don't worry, you know, stop following the news and just relax, And I was like, oh,

That's apparently, that's the thing now you're supposed to do. You go to the warm thing and then you go to the cold thing exactly when you what is the piece of advice that was missing from you from from the hug? How do you restore faith in humanity? And then get mad at them?

So look a couple of.

I want to restore facing humanity. Oh you people are.

Just going to life okay. So a lot of people will know me for saying some nasty things about billionaires. You know, I went to Dolphus, you went.

To dogs, Yeah, yeah, tell them what you said at Doubles, which I thought was a really interesting Well it was really short.

Basically, you know, stop talking about your BA philanthropy and pay your taxes instead.

Right over body, you get invited back every year, now, right?

Is that not really? Not really? But that was obviously, you know, nice to experience. But you got to ask yourself, like does this make a difference? In the book, I come to the conclusion that awareness is vastly overrated. Right. It's easy to go viral shouting text to rich or you know, destroy capitalism, kill the patrarchy. But the point is to actually do something about it, right, to really

What do you say to you? Because when I view the world of moral ambition or activism, I actually see it as pretty vibrant. That we may not know their names, but there are so many people that don't get the attention, that are doing what you're suggesting, but maybe without the access to the people that matter, like that don't get invited to Davos, but are doing the grunt work, like working in the trenches, trying to get their representatives to notice,

So I believe we live in a sort of inverse welfare society. So we've got the people in the so called essential jobs. We discover that during the pandemic if they go and strike, and then that's it is awesome for all of us. The other hand, we have huge amounts of people educated elites, you know, who went to nice universities, who have fancy resumes. If they don't strike very often, not all that much happens.

You know.

I've got one study in the book from two Dutch economists. Actually they studied forty countries and found that around twenty five percent of people in the modern workforce think that their own job is socially meaningless. These are, by the way, mostly people waiting.

How many twenty five percent?

Yeah, it's like I would actually think that'd be higher.

Well, it's quite a lot, John, It's five times the unemployment rate.

Is it really, Yeah, yeah, one out of four jobs.

Yeah, exactly. And these people, I mean, last week I was at Harvard.

Well look at you.

Well it's an interesting example where you meet a lot of bright young students, right who were generally idealistic, but then at the same time you know that about half of them will end up in what a friend of mine calls the Bermuda triangle of talent. So you've got consultancy, you've got corporate law, you've got finance, this gaping black hole that sucks up so many talents of people who

You're talking about Dutch historians.

People you know who went to university, who had some education, you know, who shot Field his responsibility to use their skill set to make a difference.

Do you consider them no, I say about what percentage? Do you consider our system then of education and economics a moral failure in that regard?

And is it?

Are there places where what you're talking about works? Is there an analogous situation?

There are places in history? I mean, is that the president? This actually gives me out. This is what's so great about job.

You know.

In the book, I talk a lot about the British evolutions. They were the most successful abolitions. They built this huge movement in the late eighteenth century and they can sited their project to be part of a bit of a cultural revolution. They wanted to make doing good fashionable once again. What really fascinated me about them is that they were mostly entrepreneurs. So nine or ten out of twelve of the British the founders of the British scientific debilition of

They were the ones who on their Instagram pages kept putting up the black squares exactly exactly.

I remember that.

Yeah. Yeah, and we've seen the same thing in the US actually, the move from the guilded age that the progressive era right and.

Now back again.

Well, but we could then go back against perhaps another right.

I what is going wrong because to my mind, the sticking point, and maybe this is semantics, but the sticking point doesn't appear to be people who are morally ambitious, but a system that is impervious to that, that is

Yeah? Sure, Look, I'm a guy who comes from the political left. So I'm all about systemic analysis. You know, I'm the guy who loves to shout like change the system. But then writing in this book, at some point I got this feeling that perhaps, you know, this can become a kind of excuse as well. Right, you can keep shouting like everything's wrong with the system, But systems they consist of people.

Right.

There's this beautiful quote from Margaret Meat who once that that we should never doubt the power of small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens change the world. And actually, people on the right wing side of the political spectrum they understand that very well. You know, Trump didn't come out of nowhere. This was a fifty year project. It started in the early seventies, probably with the Powell Memo for example.

You need the moral ambition to be fused with because on the right they fused it very well with their billionaires and their media ecosystem. Whereas on the right. It perhaps because it's not as homogeneous. It's been a more it's more difficult. Is the idea for these networks of morally ambitious activists to connect with the entrepreneurs and funders and move in that direction together? Absolutely, And that's what you're not seeing.

How Yeah, So I co founded an organization as well, called the School for More Ambition. Everything I earned.

With the books going into the moral ambition.

Yeah. Yeah. We like to see ourselves sort of the robin Hoods of talent. So Robin Hood famously took away the money. I know who they Well there for those who did that, I mean, that's a worthwhile on ever, right,

So what then is the incentive other than moral satisfaction? Is that do we need to teach kids that because that was Look the hippies and the hippies of the sixties and they were very idealistic, and then they all, you know, Reagan came along and they were all like, wait, I can work at a hedge fund, okay, And so what is then do you have to create then an incentive process for those folks?

How do you how do you get that talent?

So people are really cynical. We'd say, like, look, it's all about the money, right, These people are just setting out And I think that's probably true for some of them, but for you know, back to those Harvard kids, for a lot of them, it's also the status, you know, doing something that is actually cool that is interesting, because let's be honest, working at McKinsey is really boring, you know, creating the same PowerPoint every day.

Right, So I don't work there, so I don't know what they're Okay.

Well I've heard so, yeah, I think it's not just about the money. People are mixed bags, right, So status and what society values, like the kind of people we put in the spotlight, who can invite it to shows like this, that all that matters obviously.

Right, right, and is it what about sort of the everyday sort of quiet activism of living pleasantly, Like I think we shouldn't diminish though, for whatever your status is or station is that you can, within your own life make the changes that create at least a better local atmosphere. Because I think what you're talking about is, yeah, you know when you point to history, you're really talking about

Can I push back on that? So again, talk.

To this people push back so nice?

Well, maybe different as well. I mean there is this tendency to say things like less is more and smallest beautiful. I mean, in environmental circles, they have all these moment comme motments like don't eat meat, don't fly, don't have kids, don't use plastic straws. But then if you really focus on that individualist aspect of improving your life, like in the best possible scenario, well have reduced your environmental footprints to zero, You've basically turned yourself into a compost. Heap,

But are we like I wasn't even talking about like let's use less because I do think human progress is generally like people will do what's more convenient or more. That's just kind of how how they operate. I'm just I guess I'm just trying to wrap my head around what this means. Like it feels like saying to like college kids at a graduation, like you bastards, like you think you're going to go into these other jobs. No, go soft climate change?

Is that what this is?

That's basically it. Yeah, I mean.

This would be the greatest, the greatest graduation speech ever.

You just get up there and go listen. By the fuckers.

One of the things we're doing is we're starting a tax fairness Fellowship, So right, I mean, it was nice to shout to the billionaires, you know, Taxas Texas, Texas. Now we're actually trying to recruit you know, some of the best wealth managers, the best bankers, the best fiscal lawyers that.

They try this with, like the ESG, the and the investing or better. Was that just nonsense?

I mean that is like it's not like a thin layer of corporate responsibility right right, a corrupt, broken business model. I mean, come on, we've got to be much more ambitious here. We're not living in twenty fifteen anymore, where you can say, oh, I'm doing good by doing well.

Twenty fifteen and let's do it.

That's all the day. Yeah, No, that's not I mean, this is twenty twenty five. We have one side of the political spectrums, a total moral collapse. I mean democratic black sliding happening everywhere, especially people who have some privilege, you know, whether it's talent, whether it's you know, wealth, whether it's your network, use it. I mean people on the left except for so long, things like check your privilege, yes, check it and then use it. You know, have some skin in the game.

Right right?

And how is that working out?

Yeah it is?

Yeah, So Howard tell me.

About and just before we go, then so if people want to exercise this moral ambition. What is how do they get their foot on that ladder? Do they have to come to your institute or is there.

Yeah, so we're building a movement now.

Of you could be running the greatest scam in the issue.

Now to do this you have to come to the now.

Tuition is no, no, no, no, no no no, there's no two issue all right. We pay people to quit their job. That's how it works for real.

Yes, how much does that pay?

Well?

I mean currently we're paying like an averts Dutch salary. It's it's enough to live on for a couple of months. And then obviously, I mean we help people to.

You're really selling this, thank you, thank you.

Now it's honestly quite exciting. Right, we have now twenty four people in Europe who quit their job to fight big tobacco. For example, it's the most evil legal industry out there. They've created the deadliest product in the history of humanity. I mean, today we have this moral outrage about smartphones, right, smartphones that make you addicted TikTok on it. Imagine a smartphone that is so addictive and also kills you.

Yeah, note to self smartphone that kills you.

Awesome product launch.

So the point is like we have actually one of our fellows in our coord is someone who used to work for Big Tobacco, right sweet sides, and she knows everything about effective marketing is now using that skills to fight the industry.

Right.

Well, that's fantastic and it starts off there. And have you done it in the United States as well? Where this is right now purely European product?

No, No, we're starting here.

So we're starting here. Yeah.

I came to New York and September. We're building out here. It's really getting started now. We're launching our first fellowships. As I said, the fairness.

Fell and do you have some people that are that are lined up?

Well, people can apply, So go to Moral Ambition belt or do you want to quit your job and do something useful work?

The book is Moral Ambition. Get your application now.

Look, good workmen, We're gonna take a good book, fantastic do you take them? That is our show, ladies and gentlemen, very night before we go, We're gonna take him with your ros for the rest of the week.

Jesey lied to Jazzy. Come on, what what's.

Happening this week?

Well, it's conclave week, John, They're electing a new pope and I'll be in the room every day to find out what's.

Going on in the conclave room. That's I think the only let cardinals in that room.

Uh yeah, I know, dumb, dumb. That's why I spent weeks pre pairing to go undercover as Cardinal Cappuccino Pizzeria. I know this cardinal ship backwards and forwards. Go ahead, ask me anything.

Anything, okay, Cardinal Pizzeria. Who do you want to be Pope?

No, comprendo, I only speak of the Latin.

Nailed it?

Uh? Jesus would be proud? And who is he? All right?

Never mind? Does he like it?

All?

This week?

Here?

It is your moment?

Is that?

Actually? My wife thought it was cute, She said, isn't that nice?

Question about it? Actually I would not be able to be married, though that would be a lot I'd have to to the best.

So my knowledge, popes aren't big going getting married, are they not? That we know of?

No?

No.

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