Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage

Summary

The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Episode Summary

Title: Jon on Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America's Reputation, Economy, and Leverage
Release Date: April 29, 2025
Host/Author: iHeartPodcasts and Paramount Podcasts
Description: Jon Stewart and The Daily Show News Team cover today's biggest headlines. The “Ears Edition” of The Daily Show features full episodes, extended content, exclusive interviews, and more.

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Introduction

In this episode, Jon Stewart provides a scathing analysis of former President Donald Trump's first 100 days back in office. Through sharp wit and incisive commentary, Stewart dissects Trump's policies and their ramifications on America's reputation, economy, and international standing. The episode seamlessly blends humor with critical insights, making it both entertaining and informative for listeners.

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Trump’s First 100 Days Overview

Jon Stewart opens the episode by highlighting the exhaustion and frustration that Trump’s prolonged administration has caused nationwide. He sarcastically acknowledges Trump's proclamation of his first 100 days being "incredibly well" (02:44), juxtaposing it with the chaos unfolding across various sectors. Stewart mocks Trump's grandiose claims, stating:

"Trump's first hundred days, the most successful in American history... It would be like if America landed on the moon and killed Bin Laden in the same mission. Thought you could hide on the moon. Bin Laden. Get him, boys." (03:19-03:24)

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Economic Turmoil

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the deteriorating economy under Trump’s leadership. Stewart emphasizes the stark contrast between Trump’s optimistic projections and the actual economic downturn:

"Chaos and confusion from Wall Street to Washington. More than 6 trillion in market losses. Consumer confidence plummeting." (03:24-04:22)

He further criticizes Trump's personal financial gains amidst the economic slump:

"Donald Trump's net worth more than doubling. President Trump's meme coin worth about $2.5 billion... Amazon. Jeff Bezos is paying $40 million to license a documentary about Melania Trump." (07:09-07:50)

Stewart underscores the disparity between Trump's promises and reality, highlighting the negative impact on average Americans while Trump reaps financial benefits.

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Immigration Policies

Stewart delves into Trump's immigration strategies, particularly the aggressive deportation policies. He sarcastically references the administration's focus on deporting violent criminals:

"We're going to start the largest mass deportation in the history of our country... Hannibal Lecter is coming in. Lots of them." (09:00-09:13)

However, he exposes the administration’s flawed execution by pointing out the deportation of innocent individuals, including children:

"Last week's deportations included three American children, all U.S. citizens. One of them is battling cancer." (09:00-09:13)

Stewart uses biting humor to highlight the administration’s lack of understanding and empathy, questioning Trump's ability to manage such sensitive policies effectively.

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Foreign Policy and Ukraine Crisis

The episode takes a critical look at Trump's handling of the Ukraine war. Stewart highlights Trump's failed promises to resolve the conflict swiftly:

"Donald Trump did make a boom boom. A little boom boom... 'We are going to start the largest mass deportation in the history of our country...'" (07:09-09:13)

He mocks Trump's unrealistic claims of ending the war within 24 hours:

"I will settle the war in Ukraine... 24 hours. I will get it settled before I even become president." (12:16)

Stewart criticizes Trump's negotiation tactics, presenting them as ineffective and superficial:

"President Trump now claiming he was exaggerating with his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine on day one... Putin would maintain control of the territory he's taken since invading more than three years ago." (12:31-15:58)

The host underscores the futility of Trump's approach, juxtaposing it with the complex realities of international conflicts.

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Market Crafting Discussion with Chris Hughes

In a significant segment towards the episode's conclusion, Jon Stewart welcomes Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and author of "Market Crafting: The 100-Year Struggle to Shape the American Economy." Their conversation centers on the concept of government intervention in markets, which Hughes argues is essential for shaping economic outcomes beneficial to Americans.

Key Points Discussed:

1. Definition of Market Crafting:

   • Hughes explains that market crafting involves governmental and policymaker interventions to make markets work better, ensuring economic stability and prosperity.
   • “Government and policymakers are often shaping markets to make them work better, so they can shape the markets to make Americans richer, their economic lives more stable, even safer...” (25:12)

2. Historical Perspective:

   • Hughes traces the history of market crafting back to the New Deal, highlighting how strategic interventions have historically stabilized and stimulated various industries.
   • “In the New Deal, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation... got us out of the Depression by spurring the housing markets...” (27:12)

3. Critique of Trump's Policies:

   • The discussion criticizes Trump’s lack of strategic planning, especially regarding trade wars and tariffs, which have disrupted essential industries dependent on rare earth minerals.
   • “Trump is so arrogant, he thinks the leverage is his. It's ours. We the people...” (21:28)
   • Hughes emphasizes that Trump’s approach contrasts sharply with the structured, strategic interventions advocated in market crafting.

4. Future of Market Crafting:

   • Hughes advocates for continued governmental involvement to address critical issues like housing, childcare, and healthcare, arguing that such interventions are necessary for long-term economic health.
   • “We need a housing construction fund... an industrial policy for modular housing... We have the ideas, but we have to create the institutional reality to get it done.” (34:51-35:12)

5. Antitrust and Market Regulation:

   • They also touch upon the evolving landscape of antitrust regulations, noting that current shifts are more aligned with principles of competitive markets rather than influenced by Trump’s policies.
   • “There is still this sense that markets need to be competitive if they're going to work in a way that's in line with the long term history of American capitalism.” (40:48)

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Stewart: "Market crafting... It's not an Etsy, it's what are we talking about here?" (25:12)
• Chris Hughes: "Government and policymakers are often shaping markets to make them work better..." (25:12)
• Jon Stewart: "Market crashers... Trump is maybe the worst negotiator." (31:30)

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Conclusion

Jon Stewart wraps up the episode by reinforcing the critical need for structured governmental intervention in markets to ensure economic stability and growth. He juxtaposes the strategic approach advocated by Chris Hughes against Trump’s impulsive and detrimental policies. Stewart emphasizes that America's strength lies in its ability to craft markets thoughtfully, underscoring the importance of moving beyond Trump's short-sighted maneuvers to rebuild a robust and resilient economy.

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Key Takeaways

• Economic Discrepancies: Trump’s optimistic economic claims starkly contrast with the actual market downturns and his personal financial gains.
• Flawed Immigration Policies: Aggressive deportation strategies have led to the unjust deportation of innocent individuals, showcasing a lack of empathy and understanding.
• Ineffective Foreign Policy: Trump’s oversimplified promises to resolve international conflicts like the Ukraine war highlight his ineffective negotiation tactics.
• Importance of Market Crafting: Government intervention is crucial for shaping markets to benefit Americans, ensuring economic stability, and addressing critical societal needs.
• Critique of Trump’s Approach: Trump’s lack of strategic planning and overreliance on personal leverage undermines America’s economic and international standing.

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Additional Information

For listeners who wish to explore more, the episode features discussions on the potential for strategic interventions in various sectors and the necessity of moving beyond partisan divides to implement effective economic policies. Chris Hughes’ insights provide a comprehensive understanding of how thoughtful government action can stabilize and enhance market operations, offering a stark contrast to Trump’s disruptive strategies.

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Listen to the full episode on ParamountShop.com using the discount code "TDS20" for 20% off all The Daily Show products. Tune in to watch The Daily Show weeknights on Comedy Central at 11/10c or stream it on Paramount+.

Transcript

[Jon Stewart]

Introducing Instagram teen accounts. A new way to keep your teen safer as they grow. Like making sure they've got the right gear for writing.

[Trevor Noah]

Knee pads.

[Jon Stewart]

Check. And helmet. Done. See you, dad. New Instagram teen accounts.

[Trevor Noah]

Automatic protections for who can contact your teen and the content they can see.

[Chris Hughes]

Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24,7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. You're listening to Comedy Central from the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central.

[Jon Stewart]

It's America's only source for news.

[Chris Hughes]

This is the Daily show with your host, John.

[Jon Stewart]

Yeah. It's officially been a hundred days of Donald Trump. I'm so tired. It's aging this nation in Tom Hanks castaway years. But it is the Daily Show. I'm Jon Stewart. Tonight we're kicking off week long coverage of Donald Trump's first 100. Let's call them days. Let's get into it.

[Donald Trump]

May there be a little disturbance.

[Jon Stewart]

I was kidding. Energy. Ah. Imagine me with a white beard. But yes, tomorrow is officially the 100th day of Donald Trump's second first term. And you will be very pleased to hear it is going incredibly well.

[Donald Trump]

The most successful hundred days in the history of our country.

[Jon Stewart]

Suck it, Jefferson. Suck it, Lincoln. Suck it. Roosevelts squared. Trump's first hundred days, the most successful in American history. It would be like if America landed on the moon and killed Bin Laden in the same mission. Thought you could hide on the moon. Bin Laden. Get him, boys. Did you know people make that noise when they move on the moon? According to Trump, the most successful 100 days in the history of our country. Can anyone offer a counterpoint? Chaos and confusion from Wall street to Washington. More than 6 trillion in market losses. Consumer confidence plummeting.

[Trevor Noah]

Outrage over Musk and his department of government efficiency.

[Jon Stewart]

The showdown has legal scholars afraid that this might actually a constitutional crisis. Firestorm over the national security breach.

[Trevor Noah]

The Russia Ukraine war raging on.

[Jon Stewart]

Just 39% of Americans approve of the way Trump is doing his job. Lower than any past president. At the hundred day mark, he has the lowest approval rating of any president.

[Trevor Noah]

In the past 80 years.

[Jon Stewart]

Suck it, Herbert Hoover. Donald Trump's ratings are 11 points underwater. He doesn't care. He's not afraid of being underwater. Cause he's equipped with a flotation unit protective. A flotation unit protective accessory, or fupa. He has a fupa. Look it up. Look up what a FUPA is. I had to be told what that is. But I hate to break the bad news to Donald Trump. His lowered approval rating triggers the Chuck Schumer fight instinct. You remember, we're going to keep at it. Keep at it, keep at it until he goes below 40. Yes, he's below 40 now. You've got him right where you want him. Finish him. Schumer. Trump is going after free speech at universities. How will you destroy Trump now that he's below 40%? So we sent him a very strong letter just the other day asking eight very strong questions. Question one, why is this university different from all other universities? Wait, that's. That's the wrong book. Hold on. So while we wait for those strongly worded questions to work their magic, let's take a look at why so many people might be unhappy with Trump's performance. It might have something to do with the gap between what Trump promised and what he's delivered. For instance, the economy.

[Donald Trump]

America is going to be very rich again. And it's going to happen very quickly. I think our economy is going to roar. I think our stock market's going to do great. When I win the election, we will immediately begin a brand new Trump economic boom. It'll be a boom.

[Jon Stewart]

And unfortunately, I do think it's pretty clear that on the economy, Donald Trump did make a boom boom. A little boom boom. And oh, did Trump go boom boom? Perhaps Trump feels so positive because while the economy is headed south for most people, there have been some winners. Donald Trump's net worth more than doubling. President Trump's meme coin worth about $2.5 billion. Law firms committing about a billion dollars worth of free legal work for the administration.

[Trevor Noah]

A $10 million settlement with Donald Trump.

[Jon Stewart]

ABC having to agree to give $15 million to President Trump's library.

[Trevor Noah]

Meta's giving $25 million.

[Jon Stewart]

Amazon. Jeff Bezos is paying $40 million to license a documentary about Melania Trump. Free market. Honestly, like, no, the guy's making billions and billions of dollars. But seriously, $40 million for a documentary about Melania Trump? No offense, I'm sure she's a very interesting person, but PBS made the entirety of the Ken Burns Civil war series for $3.5 million. Shoah. Shoah was $3 million. I think obviously they wanted four, but they still got a good price. The entirety of the planet Earth series, 11 episodes, was less than that. $25 million. And I know Melania is a mysterious and private woman, but I guarantee you don't have to wait outside her house for weeks at a time, hoping to catch a rare nocturnal feeding on a striped South American toad. 40 million. So Trump is personally doing great in this economy. What about immigration? He made a lot of promises there, too.

[Donald Trump]

We are going to start the largest mass deportation in the history of our country. And we are going to start with violent criminals. We're going to get people out that are criminals and horrible people. Hannibal Lecter is coming in. Lots of them.

[Jon Stewart]

Lots of them. So many of them. It's like that Timothee Chalamet lookalike event, but for Hannibal Lecter's. By the way, wouldn't massing a bunch of Hannibal Lectors around the border be a solution for immigration? There was a line here yesterday. I don't. Now it's just shoes and empty Chianti bottles. I don't. So are we taking out the lectors? The worst of the worst. Last week's deportations included three American children, all U.S. citizens. One of them is battling cancer. Oh, my God. Are you what? That's who we're deporting. A kid with cancer. Trump really doesn't understand how the Make a Wish foundation works, does he? The cancer kid is the one who gets the wish. Trump. Oh, I'm sorry. The audience will go with you on a lot there, but there's are certain moments where I feel their physical pain, so that's not working out. What about religion?

[Donald Trump]

We ought to bring religion back into our country and let it get stronger and bigger and better. As I say.

[Jon Stewart]

Mmm, yes, Christianity. Bigger, longer, uncut, so I'm told, but fine. How's that promise going? J.D.

[Trevor Noah]

Vance was one of the last people to see Hope Francis alive, having a meeting with him the day before he died.

[Jon Stewart]

J.D. vance, don't you understand how Make a Wish work? Jessica Diane Vance. What did you do to this man? This Pope had literally touched lepers. He drank sewage water in slums and survived. All of it. 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Talking with J.D. vance and the Pope is like, God. Check, please. God, God, I can't. I can't do it. Get me out. I've been celibate 88 years. This is the longest 10 minutes of my life. Even areas that Trump promised slam dunk progress have abjectly failed.

[Donald Trump]

I will settle the war in Ukraine. I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours. I will get it settled before I even become president. If I win when I'm president elect and what I'll do is I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other.

[Jon Stewart]

Walmart. Why are you giving away the secret plan? That's the kind of top secret classified strategy you only divulge on signal group chats. I'll talk to one, I'll talk to the other. But Clearly, Wade, clearly, 24 hours has passed and no end. So what happened? President Trump now claiming he was exaggerating with his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine on day one. The President said, obviously, people know that. When I said that, it was said in jest. I'm going to end the war in Ukraine on day one. Is this thing on, by the way? I'm a little shocked Trump couldn't get it done. Given his Solomon like peace plan, Putin would maintain control of the territory he's taken since invading more than three years ago. Crimea will stay with Russia. The President said today the US Will make no security guarantees to Ukraine. Let me just try and absorb the specifics of the deal. I'm just trying to. So Russia who invaded a sovereign nation gets everything that they wanted and in return, Ukraine gets to give it to them. I'm obviously not a master negotiator, but I think I could have delivered that plan. Here's the kicker. After saying to Russia, well, what if we divide it where you get everything? Putin just kept bombing. And Trump is now reduced from the world's greatest negotiator to. Oh, come on.

[Trevor Noah]

President Trump called on Russia to stop missile strikes on Ukraine and made a.

[Jon Stewart]

Rare personal rebuke of Putin, saying, vladimir, stop. Vladimir, stop. It's in all caps. Vladdy, the commander in chief of the world's most powerful army with the nuclear briefcase on one side, the direct red phone to Moscow on the other, decided the best way to demonstrate the serious in which he took this heinous bombing was to open off brand Twitter and all caps. Stop. Concern face, concern face. Bicep. Party hat. Eggplant. Skull. Skull. And you'd be surprised to know that stop didn't work. Because Vladimir Putin is not a golden doodle. He is apparently a furry. But maybe it's not fair to judge Trump's negotiating skills based on the Ukraine war. He didn't start that war. We all know Ukraine did. By wearing that province. You knew what you were doing Ukraine, when you sashayed your pretty little Donbas all around the Black Sea. The real measure of Trump's first hundred days is the shrewdness he showed in the war he did start.

[Donald Trump]

My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.

[Jon Stewart]

Liberation Day. It was a devastating sneak attack launched from the Rose Garden. Fortunately, the country he snuck up on was ours. Tariff chaos. Markets in free fall. Everybody kind of caught off guard, flat footed on Wall street and elsewhere. Major retailers like Target and Walmart have warned shelves could go empty in a matter of weeks. The bond market melting down overnight. There's now a 60% chance of a worldwide recession. There's chaos, there's uncertainty. No one knows what's going on. Yes, and apparently plunging our nation into this dark economic abyss is all part of the plan.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, in game theory it's called strategic uncertainty. So you're not gonna tell the person.

[Chris Hughes]

On the other side of the negotiation where you're gonna end up. Right?

[Jon Stewart]

Right, right, right, right. But I'm pretty sure in game theory you are supposed to tell the person on your side, on your side where they're gonna end up so they don't freak the out. Or maybe it's all bullshit and Trump launched a trade war without any of the pre planning and preparation that needed to be done. And Besant has to go along with it because he's in the service of an impulsive man, baby, that you have to lie to so he doesn't turn his virus of vindictiveness onto you. How did you not know that other countries weren't going to fight back? Did you miss that page in the Art of War? Spoiler alert. It's on page one. China's retaliation now includes suspending exports of rare earth minerals and magnets to the United States. Those materials are essential to a number of American industries, including carmakers, aerospace manufacturers and semiconductor producers. China controls the refinement, the production of.

[Trevor Noah]

About 90% of the world's rare earth metals.

[Jon Stewart]

Elon Musk said that we're having problems with a magnet issue. The materials for the magnets for the robots come from China. Oh my God. The robots have no magnets. How will they hang up children drawings on refrigerators? They're magnet less. And we could have stockpiled magnets and rare earth materials like Japan did in a spat with China. But why bother preparing for a war that you yourself are launching? And really, how important are magnets anyway?

[Donald Trump]

Now, all I know about magnets is this. Give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets. That's the end of the magnets.

[Jon Stewart]

So we have the end of the magnets. The beginning of the magnets. Does it really matter? And we're in this position because we've been sold this idea of Trump as the master, the art of the deal. Only he can bring these nations to heel. It is all bullshit.

[Donald Trump]

I'm telling you. These countries are calling us up. Kissing my ass.

[Jon Stewart]

Trump told Time magazine that talks were underway and that Chinese President Xi Jinping had called him. China has shot back repeatedly, saying, no, they are not talking. The president said, I've made 200 deals. Time. You've made 200 deals, Trump. 100%. 100% bullshit. Here's how you know 200 deals. There's only like 180 countries. Unless he's making a deal. It's true. He can't. Unless he's making a deal with Trinidad and Tobag separately. All right, Turks, you're settled. Caicos, not so fast. Back of the line, Caicos. Trump is not only not the best negotiator, he is maybe the worst negotiator. And it makes sense when you listen to him talking about how he thinks of our economic negotiations.

[Chris Hughes]

The president said this.

[Jon Stewart]

I own the store and I set the prices. And I'll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to.

[Donald Trump]

If you think of us as a big, beautiful department store before that business was destroyed by the Internet.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. Why in God's name would you use a brick and mortar department store for your metaphor on our economic revitalization? I think of America as a tower records.

[Chris Hughes]

I.

[Jon Stewart]

The president put the CDs on the rack and I price them. If you want to listen to Bloodhound Gang, where else are you going to go? There's nowhere else to go. Or maybe that's just how capitalism works. The American president sets the prices and decides who's allowed to come into the store. And then other nations come back in six months and the whole country is a spirit. Halloween. What is he doing? But his negotiating skills aren't the real danger to this country. What's going to us up is his obsession with the concept of the leverage that he has.

[Donald Trump]

We have all the leverage. If you know what you're doing. We do have leverage because we're the pot of gold. Using my leverage. And it's a tremendous leverage and I used it before. Very well.

[Jon Stewart]

You don't have the leverage. That's the key misunderstanding here. Trump is so arrogant, he thinks the leverage is his. It's ours. We the people. And it took us 200. It's not more leverage. Why would you even think it is it took the people 250 years of striving to live up to a constitutional republic and rule of law. Painstaking equity that you are squandering, that is the crux of American exceptionalism. You just want to make us great. That's a downgrade. Our brand is not strategic uncertainty. And you are not the keeper of our pot of gold. You are a temporary leprechaun. And the more enamored, the more enamored President Trump you are with your authoritarian whims, the more that you turn our shining city on a hill into just another ordinary despot led sea level shithole. So if I could just put this, if I could just put this in negotiating terms, you can understand all caps, Donald. When we come back, Chris Hughes will be joining me. Don't go away.

[Chris Hughes]

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[Jon Stewart]

All right, sweetie pie, buckle up. Good job.

[Chris Hughes]

Or ring the bell on their bike.

[Jon Stewart]

Okay, kid, give it a try. Nice.

[Chris Hughes]

Or remember their elbow pads.

[Jon Stewart]

Knees too. Okay. Yep. There you go.

[Chris Hughes]

New Instagram teen accounts. Automatic protections for who can contact your teen and the content they can see.

Time is precious, and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24,7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

[Jon Stewart]

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest tonight, an economist, an author, also, by the way, one of the co founders of Facebook. His new book is called market the 100 year struggle to Shape the American Economy. Please welcome to the program, Chris Hughes. Sir.

[Donald Trump]

Thank you for having me.

[Jon Stewart]

Boy. The book is called Market Crafters. I don't even know where they're going to pull that up there, but it's fantastic. Just give us a quick off the top. What is, what do you mean by market crafting? It's not an Etsy, it's what are we talking about here?

[Trevor Noah]

So I'm making the case that government and policymakers are often shaping markets to make them work better, so they can shape the markets to make Americans richer, their economic lives more stable, even safer if they know what they're doing. And so this is A hidden history that we've got to pull on and recover if we're going to rebuild after the chaos of Trump in this moment.

[Jon Stewart]

Sir, I, I have to stop you right there. Are you suggesting that the American economy is not the free market capitalist nirvana that we have been told?

[Trevor Noah]

It turns out it's rip right? No, but I mean, for 40 years people did believe that markets were self regulating, that they would mostly take care of themselves. And they always use the I word, intervene. Government is there to intervene in markets, only in catastrophes. Usually like an emergency room, you know, you would come and you would fix things. But what I see in the history is that when things go well, market government is structuring markets to make them work better. So you can take semiconductors, where just a few years ago we weren't making any advanced semiconductor in the United States. Now we're making the cutting edge chips that are powering the iPhone. You can see it in climate, but you can also see it in financial stability and energy policy. So there are hopeful, inspiring stories which I think I need more. I think a lot of us need more in this moment.

[Jon Stewart]

Well, because we're out of magnets. We've been out of magnets, it's true. But you go back, it begins in the New Deal. The story begins with a great lesson of how individuals, just this one gentleman hired by Roosevelt, created the housing market in America.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, well, I wrote the book to talk a lot about public policy today, but I think to do that well, you've got to look at the past to see what worked and what didn't work. Because we can learn from the successes. Often we can learn even more from the failures. So in the New Deal, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was a national investment bank headed by this larger than life figure, Jesse Jones, whose story I love telling in the book.

[Jon Stewart]

It's fantastic.

[Trevor Noah]

He has so many different crazy things. He's a guy who grew up in Tennessee, goes to Houston, makes a million bucks by the time he's 30 years old, which is a lot in the 19 teens. And then he becomes the head of this investment bank which restructures and supports American finance, but more importantly gets us out of the Depression by spurring the housing markets that you mentioned by making direct loans to industry and then eventually birthing aviation and synthetic rubber. I mean, these industries really matter. They helped us win the war and.

[Jon Stewart]

Get us out of depression, in some ways won US World War II. The reason why I think this book is so timely but also so crucial that fiction that government doesn't pick winners and losers has always been used when government is being asked to enlist aid for people. Right. When it's asked to intervene on the side of people, politicians. That's socialism. Medicare, it's all socialism. You can't do that. That's not capitalism.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly.

[Jon Stewart]

Bullshit. Yeah, it is capitalism.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. I mean, the story of American capitalism is one where we bring the state's power to shape and manage markets. So take financial stability as a clear example. The Federal Reserve is charged with keeping prices stable, keeping people employed, and making sure the financial system doesn't implode.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

It has had a checkered history, but for the most part has done a pretty good job of delivering on that for investors and the folks who rely on it. And so I think what we need to do is learn from those successes. But think about what we could do on housing policy with a similar kind of institution, or how we could stabilize.

[Jon Stewart]

The price of groceries people. And not necessarily. And it's interesting how once they're involved in the levers of power, even the libertarian class become apostles to this new theory. This gentleman, Simon.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I mean, so Bill Simon was a Treasury secretary 50 years ago. Libertarian's Libertarian. He was honestly the hardest character to write about in the book because the book is a collection of 12 different stories of individuals, successes and failures. Simon, man, you go into the archives and this guy was just a total asshole. He was just.

[Jon Stewart]

You can tell that in the archives, boy, can't you?

[Trevor Noah]

In the letters that. I mean, he just absolutely had no interest in the state working to make markets better until. Until the energy crisis in 1973. And he ends up in the Nixon administration in the chair where he has to figure out, oh, there's an oil embargo and we cannot import any oil from the Middle East. Prices are skyrocketing. What are we going to do? And he does everything from control prices to make allocation decisions to actually creating a structure to make sure that there's enough home heating oil in New England so no one freezes to death. And the irony of I did all this research on this guy expecting to write a pretty critical take. He was pretty successful.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

So even libertarians, in fact have a strategic oil reserve. Exactly.

[Jon Stewart]

Is his.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve now has hundreds of millions of barrels and it's there to help us in case there is another kind of oil embargo event and even to some extent buffer the price of stability. So, you know, there are a lot of stories of Republicans believing in the power of market craft, but using a different language to justify it. But this is not. There's no partisan claim on the term right now.

[Jon Stewart]

So fast forward to today. Certainly Trump has been incredibly impactful on the market. But you used the word planning. I thought planning was a very interesting word to use because there appears to be very. You know, the Strategic Praetorian Reserve. Why don't we have that for rare earth metals before we launch a trade war?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

This doesn't sound like market crafting in the way that you understand it. It sounds like dart throwing.

[Trevor Noah]

No, I mean it's. A couple people have asked me, is Trump a market crafter? And he's the opposite. I mean he's market crasher. Market crasher, exactly.

[Jon Stewart]

That would be great movie. That'll be volume four.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly.

[Jon Stewart]

Market crashers.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but I mean there are ways to think about the problem that critical minerals. Larton. 90% of critical minerals. Minerals come from China. And there would be a way to think about stockpiling those, making public sector investments to mine those minerals here at home. And ironically, J.D. vance and some other folks in the party were talking about those kinds of ideas as recently as last year. Of course, now they're all loyal soldiers just, you know, following the.

[Jon Stewart]

Because he's brilliant, talented, most talented negotiator. Is this a situation where. How do you pull out of something that has already left the station? Can you. Do you know of any instances where market crafting was done not in response to an exterior crisis, but to one of our own creation? 2008 comes to mind because again, it was that sense of like Alan Greenspan saying, I'm sure the banks can regulate themselves. What could go wrong. Yeah. And it going south. Is this an instance where an intervention could take place that could remediate or help ease the crisis that we find ourselves in now?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. I mean the irony of Greenspan, since you mentioned him, is that he's got a rap as a deregulator and he did do all kinds of deregulation. The guy was also singularly obsessed with financial innovation. He genuinely believed that if we created these credit default swaps and the special purpose vehicles and all of these elaborate complex machinations, the financial system would be safer. And yet as we got obviously to 2008, turns out that wasn't the case. And when they allowed Lehman to just explode, it was part of this whole framework of like, well what can we do? We need some company just to go bankrupt. So everybody learns a lesson when in reality there's a long. There's a long history of threading the needle just 10 years before, the largest hedge fund in the world had also gone bankrupt. But there was a parachute and there was a way that wasn't creating a bomb in the financial system that allowed that institution to proceed through its bankruptcy proceedings in a way that, you know, the free market fantasy did not allow for Lehman. So there was a better way.

[Jon Stewart]

Why do they in those situations though? Always. Even the debate over whether or not to save Lehman or do what they did with Stearns, Bear Stearns and save those guys, or dump a shit ton of liquidity and capital into aig, but they did it all at the corporate level. Why is there no policy wedge to do the same thing for all the homeowners who got foreclosed on? Not because of the terrible doings of Lehman and Bear Stearns and aig. Why don't they put capital into those markets?

[Trevor Noah]

I think the simple answer is because we didn't have the institutions of market craft to do that. We had an institution of financial stability, market craft, go save those banks. But we had no institution in housing markets that could make it cheaper. Well, these days to make it cheaper to borrow in the housing crisis moment of 2008, 2009, it would have been about relief for people who'd already borrowed and couldn't make or even brought their.

[Jon Stewart]

Mortgages up to sea level so that there wasn't this default crisis.

[Trevor Noah]

Right. So we've decided that finance should be stabilized but housing shouldn't.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

That makes no sense. What we need is a housing construction fund to make it cheaper to build multifamily developer housing. We need an industrial policy for modular housing, the kind of homes that are built off site and then you bring them in and an apartment building can go up within seven days. We can do this. We have the ideas, but we have to create the institutional reality to get it done.

[Jon Stewart]

But this to me, this is project. And I'm gonna get the years wrong, I'm sure. 2029 for Democrats. There is no reason why Republicans and Democrats now agree that the state can intervene on behalf of capitalism. Now it's just a question or shape. Or shape it. We're negotiating now what to do it for. The Democrat plan should be market crafting for the real needs of people through childcare, elder care, education, healthcare, the shit that markets won't properly regulate.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, bring down costs. I mean, Americans have been saying this for years through the come on. Yeah, exactly.

[Jon Stewart]

And then they have the nerve to make us want to celebrate being able to negotiate the price of 10 drugs like it's insane. To me that we have created that market craft in pharmaceutical.

[Trevor Noah]

Absolutely, that's totally right. But let's also not forget that the tariffs are projected of this administration are projected to raise prices anywhere from two to $4,000 each year for the average American family.

[Jon Stewart]

That was kill. I was going to be like, oh.

[Trevor Noah]

That would be very expensive. But my point is absolutely, we should be able to get drug prices down. We know how to do that. That's a political problem. To get that done, we have made some headway in the ira. We've got a lot more to do. But at the same time, I think we've got to be very focused on communicating that Trumponomics is about raising costs for Americans. That is very clear. And it's going to push us straight into a recession. The only thing that's worse than inflation, unemployment. And that's straight around the corner. And we have to have an agenda to rebuild after that.

[Jon Stewart]

And it also to the utter antithesis of everything that you lay out in this book over these last. There is no infrastructure behind this. It is an economic policy by fiat, by whim and it is. I'm going to raise them 130% today on the tariffs. But there's nothing, no strategy underlying it.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I mean we could do. There is a way in some cases to do tariff policies, you know, smartly. You'd want to have it be targeted and say, hey, we don't want China to dump their EVs in our market. Something like that. You'd want to do it with, with Great Britain, the European Union, your allies, to do it. Well. And then you'd also want to pair it with public investment because you don't want to just make things expensive. You want to speed up the production here at home. There's a way to do that, to think about it. And Bidenomics has gotten a bad rap in a lot of cases. But those ingredients were there with a lot of the core elements around climate policy, chips and semiconductors. And Lina Kahn's work at the ftc, she was fantastic.

[Jon Stewart]

And you see it now, even when they say, oh, Apple has decided they're going to move all of their factories, they're going to move them out of China. And you think, oh my God, the tariffs are. And then they're like to India, they're not moving them here. So this is a shell game that corporations, they'll wait this out because there's nothing underlying it.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. I mean literally the boats that are coming from China are at half capacity right now because the companies are waiting to ship to see what actually happens. So there's an agility in these supply chains, which I think is important to realize. And so, I mean, but again, the question is, what are we going to do on the other side of this? Like, obviously we have to criticize what's happening right now, but all the time that we're doing that, we're not developing this positive agenda for the future. And at least the latter is mostly what I'm focused on.

[Jon Stewart]

And this is kind of a really nice framework to start out there. I also have to. So you haven't obviously been at Facebook in a very long time, but I'm still sure you're probably a pretty keen observer of the technocrats and, you know, all the guys from that world. Has anything that has happened since Trump took office surprised you in terms of the sort of libertarian, you know, the Mark Zuckerberg going, what do you want? $25 million, I'll never do anything again. Has their obsequiousness surprised you in any way? Is there anything about what's happening in that world?

[Trevor Noah]

I was a little surprised they didn't get a deal. You know, Mark visited the White House two, three times in search of a deal. And what kind of deal?

[Jon Stewart]

What would they get?

[Trevor Noah]

Well, the FTC has sued to break up Facebook. So as you know, I talked about this in an article six years ago. FTC filed. Sure, I'm glad you did.

[Jon Stewart]

That was a good.

[Trevor Noah]

The FTC filed. I thought so. The FTC filed suit a year later and it's taken forever to wind through the courts. But Mark Zuckerberg was on the stand not last week, but the week before, virtually every day. And the Trump FTC is prosecuting the case to separate Instagram and WhatsApp from Facebook. That's the agenda. And who knows? Google's been declared a monopoly twice in the past eight months, so.

[Jon Stewart]

But he doesn't like Google. So some of this is. Maybe they still. They haven't proven their loyalty enough. I think he enjoys humiliating Zuckerberg. I think he thinks Google was working against him because Tim Cook and Apple got a great deal.

[Trevor Noah]

I know, but I do think something has changed. It's not so much about Trump, but I think in the world of antitrust and anti monopoly, there's been a big shift because the guy who's running the FTC now, I think it's really interesting that he kept some of the merger guidelines from the Lina Khan time. They also actually filed suit against the ftc, filed suit against Uber last week for misleading customers. So what? Can you believe it?

[Jon Stewart]

Uber. Uber.

[Trevor Noah]

But my point is like, there is still this sense that markets need to be competitive if they're going to work in a way that's in line with the long term history of American capitalism. I think that's a big shift in antitrust and anti monopoly doesn't have anything to do with Trump. So, you know, I'm not giving him any credit for it, but it is, it has a lot more to do with, with Lina Khan and a new, more emergent set of approaches to antitrust that's more in keeping with its own.

[Jon Stewart]

And there is. Listen, Lina Khan had fans on the right. J.D. vance was a fan. Josh Holly was a fan. Right.

[Trevor Noah]

So over almost a dozen Republicans, Republican senators voted for her confirmation.

[Jon Stewart]

Yeah. So it's interesting. Thank you very much for being on Mark.

[Chris Hughes]

Thank you for having me.

[Jon Stewart]

I gotta tell you, it's available now. Chris Shoes. Chris Blake. We'll be right back after this. Fantastic.

[Chris Hughes]

Introducing Instagram teen accounts. A new way to keep your teen safer as they grow. Like making sure they always have their seatbelt on.

[Jon Stewart]

All right, sweetie pie, buckle up.

[Trevor Noah]

Good job.

[Chris Hughes]

Or ring the bell on their bike.

[Jon Stewart]

Okay, kid, give it a try. Nice.

[Chris Hughes]

Or remember their elbow pads.

[Jon Stewart]

Knees too. Okay. Yep. There you go.

[Chris Hughes]

New Instagram teen accounts. Automatic protections for who can contact your teen and the content they can see.

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[Jon Stewart]

Hello, everybody. How are you? That's our show for tonight. We're gonna have full coverage all week of Trump's first 100 days. Jordan Klepper is going to handle tomorrow. Desi Elytic on Wednesday. Michael Costa on Thursday. No skips. All bangers. That's a music term I learned yesterday. Explore more shows from the Daily show.

[Chris Hughes]

Podcast universe by searching the Daily Show.

[Jon Stewart]

Wherever you get your podcasts, watch the Daily show weeknights at 1110 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime.

[Chris Hughes]

On Paramount plus.

[Jon Stewart]

Paramount Podcasts.

[Chris Hughes]

Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 247 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to five pets, you can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.