SCOTUS Torches Trump's Tariffs, Iran War Looms & MAGA Co-opts Team USA Hockey Win

Summary

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Episode Title: SCOTUS Torches Trump's Tariffs, Iran War Looms & MAGA Co-opts Team USA Hockey Win
Date: February 24, 2026
Host: Jon Stewart
Guest: Professor Michelle Dickerson

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Episode Overview

In this February 24th, 2026 episode, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show team take an incisive, satirical look at America’s political and cultural landscape. The key focuses include: the Supreme Court striking down President Trump's tariffs, the looming threat of war with Iran, and how MAGA supporters spun Team USA Hockey's victory over Canada into a culture war talking point. The episode ends with an in-depth interview with Professor Michelle Dickerson about the origins and erosion of the American middle class.

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Key Topics & Discussions

1. Opening Banter & Snowpocalypse

• The team jokes about the blizzard making it nearly impossible for people—even weather reporters—to be out and for the audience to arrive.
• Light riffing on commuting in severe NYC weather, including nods to Tauntauns, Star Wars, and city dog problems.
  • "This blizzard made it nearly impossible for even weather people to take selfies or even be seen. Hello. I mean, when the plows get stuck...the plow got stuck." (Jon Stewart, 02:14)

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2. State of the Union & National Malaise

• Jon sets a somber tone regarding America’s current divisions, referencing emotional turmoil due to government-sanctioned violence, political corruption, and cultural outrage (e.g., backlash over speaking Spanish at the Super Bowl halftime show).
  • "It's a feeling that we are one nation divided, under siege. That perhaps we've crossed a Rubicon of this great American experiment..." (Jon Stewart, 03:17)

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3. Team USA Hockey Victory & Its Politicization

• Highlights the fleeting unity of the country after Team USA's win over Canada, immediately undercut by MAGA’s culture war spin and overt nationalism.
• Satirical commentary on how the right frames the victory as proof of American supremacy, drawing Cold War and masculine culture themes.
  • "This victory proves that our system of government is far superior to Canada's. As they say in hockey, game, set, and match." (Correspondent, 08:33)
  • "It's not a hockey term." (Desi Lydic, 08:56)
• Mocking the triviality of rivalry with Canada and the manufactured outrage over innocuous national differences:
  • "Don't we in America have enough real enemies? Now we gotta pretend like Canada's way of life is incongruous to the West? Yeah, those completely best neighbors our nation has ever had." (Desi Lydic, 07:28)
• Humorous and crude riffing on "nuts," “black rod,” and misunderstanding of parliamentary vs. presidential systems.
• Undercutting the idea that sports victories prove the superiority of American systems.

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4. War Rumblings with Iran

• Turns instantly from hockey triumph to reporting the U.S. is days away from war with Iran.
• Lampoons the rushed, vague justification for conflict—namely, the threat of Iran building a bomb soon—contradictory to previous Trump boasts about obliterating Iran’s nuclear capacity.
  • "So the kind of obliteration that somehow re-obliterates almost immediately. Yes, no one has ever seen that before." (Jon Stewart, 14:52)
• Satirizes how war rollouts used to be slow and media-engineered, now, seemingly, just happen overnight.
• Calls out the cycle: destroy a nuclear program, then threaten war to force a new deal, undermining the old one Trump scrapped.
  • "Donald Trump is on the brink of war with Iran. To either obliterate the program Trump had previously obliterated or to force them into signing a deal like the one Trump had pulled out of." (Jon Stewart, 16:02)
• Desi wraps it up in pure cynicism:
  • "It's all in chapter nine of Art of the Eating Your Own Asshole..." (Desi Lydic, 16:16)

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5. Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Tariffs

• Announcement: Supreme Court, with Trump-appointed majority, rules Trump's international tariffs unconstitutional.
• Stewart and Lydic mock Trump’s wounded response:
  • "They're just being fools and lapdogs for the rhinos. They also are, frankly, a disgrace to our nation, those justices. They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. I think it's an embarrassment to their families. You want to know the truth?" (Trump/Impression, 19:18)
• Explains the Court’s deliberate, months-long process before the ruling.
• Despite the ruling, Trump vows to double down and raise tariffs globally to 15%. Stewart likens Trump to an uncatchable Roadrunner:
  • "We had him. We had him. He always gets away like the Roadrunner. We gotcha." (Jon Stewart, 20:36)

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6. America’s Surreal Foreign Policy Moves

• Ridicules Trump announcing a U.S. hospital ship is going to Greenland, despite Greenland's universal health care system and neither ship being seaworthy at the time.
  • "Greenland doesn't need a hospital ship. They've got universal health care. We need a hospital ship. Where's our hospital ship?" (Jon Stewart, 25:11)
  • "We're trolling Denmark. We're going to war with Iran. We're abandoning Ukraine. We're charging everybody 15% more. We're pushing away our closest neighbors, ostracizing ourselves from the entire oh my God, we're Punch. America has gone from being a shining city on a hill to being the weird, smelly monkey nobody wants to play with." (Desi Lydic, 25:55)

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Memorable Quotes & Comic Highlights

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|-------|---------| | 03:17 | "It's a feeling that we are one nation divided, under siege..." | Jon Stewart | | 08:33 | "This victory proves that our system of government is far superior to Canada's. As they say in hockey, game, set, and match." | Correspondent | | 14:52 | "So the kind of obliteration that somehow re-obliterates almost immediately. Yes, no one has ever seen that before." | Jon Stewart | | 16:16 | "It's all in chapter nine of Art of the Eating Your Own Asshole..." | Desi Lydic | | 19:18 | "They're just being fools and lapdogs for the rhinos…very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. Embarrassment to their families." | Trump/Impression | | 20:36 | "We had him. We had him. He always gets away like the Roadrunner." | Jon Stewart | | 25:55 | "America has gone from being a shining city on a hill to being the weird, smelly monkey nobody wants to play with." | Desi Lydic |

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Interview Segment: Professor Michelle Dickerson

Topic: Why (and How) the American Middle Class Was Invented—And How It Can Be Saved
[29:08–47:01]

The Government’s Role in Creating the Middle Class

• Dickerson explains the middle class’s rise wasn’t organic—it was “created” by post-WWII government policy, including New Deal programs and innovations like 30-year mortgages.
  • "Our political leaders after the Depression and World War II decided…to create the middle class. It didn’t just crop up like weeds…" (Dickerson, 30:40)

Home Ownership & Systemic Inequality

• Before the New Deal, 30-year mortgages didn’t exist; high down payments and short repayment terms made homeownership rare.
• These programs excluded Black Americans, leading to a persistent wealth and homeownership gap:
  • "Homeownership gap—it’s been basically a 25% gap between white homeownership rates and Black homeowners forever…[]Because…our laws allowed [housing discrimination]." (Dickerson, 32:57, 33:13)
• Discussion of redlining, blockbusting, and legal discrimination.

The Erosion of Middle-Class Foundations

• Markers of middle class success (affordable homeownership, stable jobs with benefits, accessible education) have been systematically undermined since the 1980s.
• Politicians, instead of uniting the middle class vertically (against wealth concentration above), have convinced people to blame each other horizontally (blaming immigrants, “the other”).
  • "They have convinced lower and middle income Americans to look horizontally to blame…once you convince people to shift blame horizontally, they don’t look up vertically…" (Dickerson, 37:26)
• Both parties are critiqued: Republicans for horizontal scapegoating, Democrats for promoting the gig/subsidy economy without fixing core problems.

Proposed Solutions: A “Middle Class New Deal”

• Policies should focus on one achievable marker at a time—college affordability, affordable (not just home) housing, reforming exclusionary zoning.
• Critique of the mortgage interest deduction as a subsidy for the rich; suggests eliminating it to benefit actual middle-class people.
• Calls for revising school schedules to better align with working families’ needs.
  • "Why are we still pretending like we’re a bunch of farmers? We don’t need to have the schools opening at 7 or 8 in the morning and then shutting at 2 or 3…" (Dickerson, 43:09)

The Need for Middle-Class Unity & Effective Representation

• Explains that both unions and political representation have weakened, leaving the middle class fragmented and politically powerless.
  • "If the middle class unites…and looks up, not sideways, they’d be a formidable voting bloc." (Dickerson, 44:44)

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Notable Quotes from Interview

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|-------|---------| | 30:40 | "Our political leaders after the Depression…decided…to create the middle class." | Michelle Dickerson | | 32:57 | "Homeownership gap,…25% gap between white homeownership rates and Black homeowners forever." | Michelle Dickerson | | 37:26 | "They have convinced lower and middle income Americans to look horizontally to blame…once you convince people to shift blame horizontally, they don't look up vertically." | Michelle Dickerson | | 44:44 | "If the middle class unites…that means that, ooh, we're looking up now we see where the problem is." | Michelle Dickerson | | 43:09 | "Why are we still pretending like we’re a bunch of farmers?…Why can't our representatives be the lobbyists for the middle class?" | Michelle Dickerson / Desi Lydic |

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:49–03:06: Opening banter, blizzard jokes, audience commendations
• 03:06–04:04: Somber reflection on national disunity and tensions
• 04:04–12:05: Team USA Hockey victory and the right-wing media’s culture war response
• 12:05–16:37: Rising tensions with Iran and satire of the war rationale
• 16:37–20:59: Trump’s tariffs, Supreme Court ruling, and Trump’s reaction
• 21:22–26:35: American policy confusion, hospital ship to Greenland, and further absurdities
• 29:08–47:01: Interview with Professor Michelle Dickerson (middle class policy history and solutions)

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Tone & Style

The show is sharply satirical, with quick banter and biting cultural commentary, but injects sincere reflection and substantive analysis during the interview.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode delivers The Daily Show's trademark blend of humor and hard truth, puncturing the absurdity of the week's political posturing and culture war games while drilling down into urgent policy questions around America’s fraying middle class. Jon and Desi deftly move from hot takes on Trump, tariffs, and war to a deeply illuminating conversation with Professor Michelle Dickerson. For anyone trying to understand how America got here—and what could change—the episode is both irreverent and essential listening.

Transcript

[Ninjalux Cafe Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Ninjalux Cafe, the three in one machine that makes espresso, drip coffee and cold brew. No barista skills required.

[Comedy Central Announcer]

You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central. It's America's only source for news. This is the Daily show with your host, Jon Stewart.

[Jon Stewart]

Hey, everybody, welcome. Welcome to the Daily Show. My God, I'm Jon Stewart. We have got a phenomenal show for tonight. Author Professor Michelle Dickerson is going to be our guest tonight. Very delighted to have her on the show. But first, let me give it up for the staff and crew who were able to make it in here tonight to put on a program and.

[Desi Lydic]

And I'm not going to forget you guys. And our audience.

[Jon Stewart]

Made it out tonight.

[Desi Lydic]

Clearly our audience tonight have gone the wrong way on the decision tree. Delighted they're here.

[Jon Stewart]

Should we risk life and limb to

[Desi Lydic]

see a show we could see on TV in just a few hours in our homes? Why not go out in this hip breaking weather? You know, I don't know if you guys in the audience noticed, but snowy outside, bad out there. I mean, this blizzard made it nearly impossible for even weather people to take

[Jon Stewart]

selfies or even be seen. Hello. I mean, when the plows get stuck, the plow got stuck.

[Desi Lydic]

You know, I commute this way.

[Jon Stewart]

This is. This is how I. I always commute.

[Desi Lydic]

Tauntau, By the way, under Zoran Mamdani, tauntauns are free. The rise of free. And we have a fresh layer of 2ft to cover all the tauntaun shit in the streets. We were this close in New York City to having the snow and the dog shit gone.

[Jon Stewart]

Like this close.

[Desi Lydic]

And then God was like, you know what New York City needs? I'll allow you to cover the dog shit. But let's get to the big news of the week. As you know, tomorrow night is President Donald Jar Jar Trump's big State of the Union speech. But no matter what Trump says, folks, it's not going to change how we in this country are feeling. This country is in such emotional turmoil right now. The government sanctioned and executed violence in Minnesota, the rank corruption and profiteering of elected officials and their families, the manufactured outrage over, God forbid, an American performing at halftime in the super bowl in Spanish. It's a feeling that we are one nation divided, under siege. That perhaps we've crossed a Rubicon of this great American experiment and that we slowly and inexorably are sliding into the abyss of fallen and broken democracies.

[Jon Stewart]

But then, doctor, crossing comes Jeff Hughes wins it. The golden goal for the United States. What? We're back, mother. I know the powerful elites remain unaccountable, but he put the thing behind that other guy. This country sinking into us. That's bull we can't recover from. But the vulcanized rubber disk went past the Lord of the Net. It was so unifying. There is nothing that can take away from the joyous moment as all Americans celebrate this incredi. Wait, what the. Is that FBI Director Cash Patel? Why is our FBI and why are they putting a medal around the neck of FBI Director? Is Cash Patel a make a wish man kid? Is that what this is? How did. Why is that. I mean, listen. And I'm not trying to diminish his condition.

[Desi Lydic]

Listen,

[Jon Stewart]

listen.

[Desi Lydic]

There is currently no cure for crazy eyes.

[Jon Stewart]

Crazy eyes. For when you want to turn every

[Desi Lydic]

picture into some sort of meth fueled mugshot. Are you telling me? I was going 90 and a 35. But I gotta tell you, MAGA especially is going crazy for the victory.

[Correspondent]

American pride, power and patriotism on full display.

[Comedy Central Announcer]

This is time for America, not you whining little clowns.

[Desi Lydic]

Masculinity and celebration. These are things that like, have been completely and totally sanitized from our arch feminist culture, our estrogenetic culture.

[Jon Stewart]

First of all, what a super weird year hockey is having. Like in four months to go from nobody gives a shit about hockey to. Well, I like to watch them. 2. Only hockey can save us from a dystopian extrogenetic future. Perhaps the strangest part is how this

[Desi Lydic]

victory in a hockey match is being perceived on the right geopolitically. Gotta go all the way back to 1980 when we defeated the Soviets. This felt just as sweet because I guess since we don't have Russia to kick around anymore, Canada, they're practically communist

[Correspondent]

and they're cozying up to the Channel.

[Desi Lydic]

Hockey is all that they have. And we took that away. That's all they got.

[Jon Stewart]

What's with the Soar winning? Why are we such dicks?

[Desi Lydic]

And by the way, don't we in America have enough real enemies? Now we gotta pretend like Canada's way of life is incongruous to the West. Yeah, those completely best neighbors our nation has ever had.

[Jon Stewart]

I think what? I think we had like a little

[Desi Lydic]

fight about beaver pelts in like 1789.

[Jon Stewart]

Since then, it's both sailing. But for more on Team USA's victory over Canada and what it means, we go live to Desi Lydick. Desi. This victory is great. Great victory. But they're making this thing out to

[Desi Lydic]

be kind of Miracle on Ice. Yeah.

[Correspondent]

Cause it is.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Woo.

[Correspondent]

We did it, John. Usa. Usa. Canada got canucked in the face by the red, white and blue.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Woo.

[Ninjalux Cafe Announcer]

Yeah.

[Desi Lydic]

No, it certainly was a great victory for the US Hockey team. No doubt it was.

[Correspondent]

Yeah, but not just the hockey team, John. Same way we defeated communism and the Miracle on Ice. This victory proves that our system of government is free. Far superior to Canada's. As they say in hockey, game, set and match.

[Desi Lydic]

It's not a hockey term.

[Correspondent]

So offsides, get the rebounds.

[Jon Stewart]

Okay, whatever.

[Desi Lydic]

I just don't know if our political systems are really all that different from Canada's.

[Michelle Dickerson]

What?

[Correspondent]

Are you kidding me? Our democracy separates executive power from the legislature with a president appointed by an electoral college, while they, their democracy appoints an executive based on the outcome of which governing party has the majority. And as we learned on the ice yesterday, that system sucked.

[Jon Stewart]

The system seem actually pretty similar.

[Desi Lydic]

I mean, don't both the US And Canada have bicameral legislatures?

[Correspondent]

Yes, but American senators are elected while Canadian senators are appointed. Just like how Canada got appointed to our nuts.

[Jon Stewart]

Bitch, That kind of came out of. Came out of nowhere. That's comprehensive and filthy, Desi.

[Correspondent]

Aw, thank you. Here's another. In America, we have electoral districts, but in Canada, they call their districts ridings, which is fitting because Team Canada was riding our nuts.

[Jon Stewart]

Bitch, please stop saying nuts. I will not.

[Correspondent]

I will not. And by the way, another reason we're better. America's Congress has a sergeant at arms, but the Canadian Parliament has an usher of the black rod. And speaking of ushering of the black Rod.

[Jon Stewart]

No, no, no, no, no, Desi, no.

[Correspondent]

Yeah, yeah. I didn't like where that was going. Yeah, same way the Canadians didn't like where my nuts were going.

[Jon Stewart]

Girl, come on. All right, all right. Just don't. The cold weather has changed them. Look, the game didn't change the fact

[Desi Lydic]

that Canadians still have a better health care system than we do.

[Correspondent]

Yes, okay, I thought so too, until I saw the scoreboard for profit health care 1, universal Canadian health care 0.

[Jon Stewart]

USA. No, but that doesn't. That wasn't even the final score.

[Correspondent]

What was the final score?

[Jon Stewart]

Did you even watch the game?

[Correspondent]

I watched Deez Nuts. No, I did not watch the game.

[Jon Stewart]

So why are you celebrating in the team's locker room?

[Correspondent]

Oh, I'm not in Milan. I'm at a Planet Fitness. My God, anything to get away from my family on a snow day.

[Ninjalux Cafe Announcer]

Please.

[Jon Stewart]

Desi Lydic, everybody. All right, well, there you go. So there you have it, folks. We have defeated our new enemy Canada on the ice and vanquished them to the penalty box of history. Now America can live in a golden

[Desi Lydic]

era of peace, prosperity. The United States could be on the brink of war with Iran.

[Jon Stewart]

What the. They don't even skate. What possible conflict could we have with

[Desi Lydic]

people in street shoes?

[Jon Stewart]

Is this real?

[Desi Lydic]

The drumbeat of a possible war with Iran growing louder. The largest assembly of U.S. forces in

[Comedy Central Announcer]

the Middle east that we've seen in years.

[Correspondent]

One report is saying we are days away from days away from war.

[Jon Stewart]

Usually when we get into war in

[Desi Lydic]

the Middle east, there's a Marty supreme level press rollout.

[Jon Stewart]

Months and months of endless promotion, interviews, manufactured intelligence. They got weapons of mass destruction swap,

[Desi Lydic]

until finally we acquiesced to the war just in the hopes that the selling of it will stop because it seems vaguely charming. But this war, one day it's nothing and the next day we filled their waterway with giant ships. Why? What's the urgency? Special envoy Steve Witkoff has this warning about Iran's nuclear power. They're probably a week away from having industrial grade bomb. Oh my God. An atomic bomb by Monday. Oh shit.

[Jon Stewart]

When was this interview taped? Do they already have the bomb? Is it five business days to the bomb? Do Muslims get weekends? Do they work through.

[Desi Lydic]

I gotta say, a week away from having the material for a nuclear bomb. I'm a little surprised to hear that. You know, I thought I remembered someone saying something about that nation's nuclear program being. What was the word I was looking for?

[Guest or Interviewee]

Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.

[Desi Lydic]

That's right. I remember Trump saying we totally obliterated their nuclear program and yelling at people who questioned it, which makes me wonder how obliterated was it?

[Guest or Interviewee]

It was obliterated like nobody's ever seen before.

[Desi Lydic]

So the kind of obliteration that somehow

[Jon Stewart]

re obliterates almost immediately. Yes, no one has ever seen that before. We obliterated that building.

[Desi Lydic]

The building we are currently standing on. Yes, that is correct.

[Jon Stewart]

So is our plan now to re

[Desi Lydic]

obliterate their nuclear program every few months or is there a longer term strategy? Taking the armada to offshore Iran is to put pressure on Iran first and foremost to come to the table to negotiate around nuclear weapons.

[Jon Stewart]

Oh, I see.

[Desi Lydic]

The old carrot and stick our peace

[Jon Stewart]

through strength will force Iran to make,

[Desi Lydic]

let's call it an Iran nuclear deal. I think I remember that phrase from when we made a nuclear deal with Iran.

[Jon Stewart]

Whatever happened to that?

[Guest or Interviewee]

I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

[Jon Stewart]

Oh, right.

[Desi Lydic]

Trump obliterated it.

[Jon Stewart]

So just to be clear, Donald Trump is on the brink of war with Iran. To either obliterate the program Trump had previously obliterated or to forced them into signing a deal like the one Trump had pulled out of.

[Desi Lydic]

It's all in chapter nine of Art of the Eating your own asshole.

[Jon Stewart]

Your own. Usa.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Usa.

[Desi Lydic]

Usa.

[Jon Stewart]

Is that how Hitler started?

[Desi Lydic]

Suddenly people are just like, usa, usa. But obviously, there is no more solemn response. I segue into more serious. But obviously, There is no more solemn responsibility for the President of the United States than the decision he makes to put Americans in harm's way through armed conflict. So as the President recently took to the podium, this burden of history clearly heavily weighing on his soul.

[Guest or Interviewee]

I made a speech at a factory. They made steel products. And I said, how are you? Nice to meet you. How's business? President, I'd love to kiss you. This is a very powerful man. I don't want to be kissed by that man.

[Desi Lydic]

You can always tell when a story is true when it contains a character who refers to Trump as, quote, president, just President, not President Trump, not Mr. President, just President. But I'm sorry I interrupted your story, President, what else did this very real person say to you?

[Guest or Interviewee]

He said, sir, I want to kiss you so badly. And I said, no, thank you.

[Desi Lydic]

Yes, yes. All the steelworkers want to kiss you and your unbelievably tariffs.

[Jon Stewart]

We'll read all about it in the

[Desi Lydic]

official history of your presidency. Team of heated rivals. Ooh.

[Jon Stewart]

As America stands on the precipice of

[Desi Lydic]

armed conflict with Iran, Donald Trump is single mindedly focused on preserving his wildly unpopular tariffs that somebody finally had the balls to say were illegal. After months of anticipation, the Supreme Court today ruling that the President Trump's sweeping tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers act are unconstitutional. Wow. A court composed mostly of his own party's appointees has struck down the constitutionality of Trump's go it alone tariff regime. That's bound to cause him some introspection.

[Guest or Interviewee]

They're just being fools and lapdogs for the rhinos. They also are a frankly disgrace to our nation, those justices. They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. I think it's an embarrassment to their families. You want to know the truth?

[Desi Lydic]

When a guy who had sex with a porn star right after his wife had given birth tells you you're an embarrassment to your family,

[Jon Stewart]

I think you have to take that seriously. But the Supreme Court didn't come to this decision rashly.

[Desi Lydic]

The Supreme Court took months to make this decision. They had oral arguments back in November. They took 10 months working through all

[Sponsor or Advertisement Voice]

the thorny legal issues associated with this

[Desi Lydic]

case, trying to thread some type of needle.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Lots of nuanced legal issues that the court has to thoroughly consider.

[Jon Stewart]

The court put in the work. And that's why this decision will stand

[Desi Lydic]

the test of President Trump doubling down on his trade policy, saying that he will raise global tariffs to 15%.

[Ninjalux Cafe Announcer]

Mother.

[Jon Stewart]

We had him. We had him. He always gets away like the roadrunner. We gotcha.

[Desi Lydic]

Me, me.

[Jon Stewart]

It's so dispiriting.

[Desi Lydic]

You know what we need? We need one of them stuffed comfort monkeys that poor Punch has. Poor punch. Although. And no disrespect, but clearly there is probably something wrong with that monkey.

[Jon Stewart]

Please, I say this.

[Desi Lydic]

Hear me out. I understand, and it's adorable, and he's breaking my heart.

[Jon Stewart]

But that being said, who are we

[Desi Lydic]

to question the wisdom of the tribe?

[Jon Stewart]

No, I'm just saying they're the ones that know him best. They've decided he's problematic. What the. You know better. You know monkeys better than the monkeys? Is that it? All the little monkey experts all decided in the middle of a blizzard to come here tonight. And these monkey. Let me tell you something. Who. No, all y', all, let me. Who are we to question their lived experience for our parasocial attack? I mean, look, they decided the moment. The elders, the juniors, even that stuffed monkey looks like, hey, I don't want to be here. I could be living the life of Riley in a nice bedroom in Westchester. Instead, I'm being dragged through the gravel in the middle of Ichikawa. I'm sorry. I'm standing by this. Sometimes it's gonna go from funny to mean. That's just what happens. That's just what happens. And by the way, oh, it's all cute now, but when puberty comes, that is not gonna be a happy stuffed monkey. Trust me. Trust me. It's comfort now, but he's wifing it later. Trust me. How dare you people substitute your wisdom

[Desi Lydic]

for those other moments? I was doing this all weekend. My wife was gonna be so mad

[Jon Stewart]

at me

[Desi Lydic]

all weekend. I just kept going. But there's gotta be something wrong with the monkey, right?

[Jon Stewart]

Not funny.

[Desi Lydic]

Anyway, the point is, folks, We're on the brink of war with the rollout. I gotta work on the segue.

[Jon Stewart]

I'm sorry.

[Desi Lydic]

Okay. We're on the brink of war with Iran. The point is, folks, we're on the brink of war with Iran. Russia still bombs Ukraine with impunity. And yet Trump is out there kissing dudes over tariffs and saving his most vicious rhetoric for our own Supreme Court.

[Jon Stewart]

Can the State of the Union get any more surreal?

[Guest or Interviewee]

President Trump mystified a lot of people over the weekend when he announced a

[Desi Lydic]

US Hospital ship was on its way to Greenland. What?

[Jon Stewart]

Greenland doesn't need a hospital ship. They've got universal health care. We need a hospital ship. Where's our hospital ship? But like most things Trump, it's even stupider than that.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Both of the American hospital ships, Mercy

[Desi Lydic]

and Comfort, are out of commission, under repair. Comfort isn't even in the water. Look, I'm no expert boat, Kai, but

[Jon Stewart]

they are supposed to be in the water. Yes. What are we doing? We're trolling Denmark. We're going to war with Iran. We're abandoning Ukraine. We're charging everybody 15% more.

[Desi Lydic]

We're pushing away our closest neighbors, ostracizing ourselves from the entire oh my God, we're punch. America has gone from being a shining city on a hill to being the weird, smelly monkey nobody wants to play with. I think that's why they don't want to play. I don't know why, but I don't know if you can make a stuffed monkey big enough for all of America to he is that monkey.

[Jon Stewart]

When we come back, Michelle Dickerson will be joining me in the studio.

[Sponsor or Advertisement Voice]

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[Jon Stewart]

Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest tonight. Thank you. My guest tonight, a University of Texas law professor and author of the Middle Class New Restoring Upward Mobility in the American Dream.

[Desi Lydic]

Please welcome to the program, Michelle Dickerson.

[Jon Stewart]

Thank you. By the way, for some odd reason,

[Desi Lydic]

tonight's audience in the middle of a blizzard packed with Texas people.

[Jon Stewart]

Welcome,

[Desi Lydic]

ladies and gentlemen. There's been some sort of weird nonverbal communication between the Texas people. I don't know if that is a call to violence or perhaps camaraderie, but isn't that odd you came out. And by the way, thank you for coming in a little early because of the weather and all that, so we

[Michelle Dickerson]

really couldn't miss it for the world.

[Desi Lydic]

Oh, thank you so much. I'm delighted you're here. This is such music to my ears. This book, a middle class new deal. I want to talk to you about one of the, I guess, misunderstandings maybe about our middle class is that it didn't, it wasn't just happenstance that created the middle class. It wasn't just the invisible hand that that did it. Government really played a role. So. So walk us Through a little bit of that.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Well, I would even say they played a role. They created it. Our political leaders after the Depression and World War II decided, do we really want to bring back all of the servicemen? Because it was mostly men at the time into an economy that had barely recovered from the Depression. And so they made the conscious decision to create the middle class. It didn't just, since I have a lot of Texans here, it didn't just crop up like weeds in a field after a Texas storm. Right. It's there because we created it.

[Desi Lydic]

So let me just translate very quickly. It didn't just pop up like a bagel store in Besson. Would that be okay?

[Jon Stewart]

But that's exactly right.

[Desi Lydic]

And there were little things that I found so interesting. Prior to the New Deal, if you wanted to buy a house, you couldn't get a 30 year mortgage that was amortized. There were these. And you had to put down 50% or even more to even get in the game.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Yeah. And not only could you not get a 30 year mortgage, they didn't exist.

[Desi Lydic]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

And so when everyone sits around now talking about, well, you know, home ownership, you ought to be able to buy. Well, when people had to put down 50% and you had maybe a 5 to 10 year repayment period, very few people could own a home. And so Congress allowed banks to create the 15 to 30 year mortgage, which is why I argue in the book, and when I talk about it, that if Congress wanted to fix the problems that are going on now, if they wanted to restore the middle class, they could, because they created the middle class with things like, you know, creating a 15 to 30 year mortgage problem.

[Desi Lydic]

Right. Now, is it that. That the programs that we have now are not sufficient to do it or that we shifted the way we do it? So now they might say, well, so in this they establish what the Federal Housing Authority. Now, let's also be clear, these programs were for almost exclusively white people.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Right.

[Desi Lydic]

Which is why we see such a gap in wealth and equity that still exists. Yep.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Homeownership gap, it's been 20, basically 25% gap between white homeownership rates and black homeowners forever.

[Sponsor or Advertisement Voice]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

And also the wealth gap is largely driven by the lack of housing wealth in most black households.

[Comedy Central Announcer]

Right.

[Desi Lydic]

And by the way, that's because of, again, not the free market. That was a manipulated market as well. You talk about redlining and blockbusting.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Well, and that, and the other thing is, you couldn't be approved for the FHA guaranteed 15 to 30 year mortgages and so if you can't get the mortgage loan, which is cheap, it amortizes, then you're stuck in the really bad private market, which means that you pay too much. And then you live in a neighborhood where your homes aren't going to appreciate in value as much. Because, you know, up until the 19, you know, late 1960s 70s, racism was legal. I mean, our laws allowed.

[Desi Lydic]

There were covenants even when it was. If it wasn't explicitly legal, there'd be homeowner association covenants.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Exactly right, yeah. That would say you can't sell your home to certain types of people. And we know who those certain types of people were.

[Desi Lydic]

But you use, I think, to great effect your parents rise to the middle class and the way that they overcame that. But it was unusual and they had to work harder.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Exactly. And so one of the things that I try to do in the book is to show how my parents became and remained middle class, to then show why it's so hard now for young people to do the same thing. It was harder for my parents because they were becoming middle class in the 1960s, 1970s, and they were teachers.

[Desi Lydic]

They were teachers.

[Michelle Dickerson]

And they were teachers, but they knew they had to get a college degree. So at that time you could actually get a, what I call a good job, full time, 40 hour a week job that paid you enough to support your family without a college degree. Not true now, but if you were black, then you really needed to get the college degree or else you were really going to be fighting obstacles. But yeah, my parents were able to go from being. My mom grew up on a farm. My dad's parents, My father's parents were laborers, but they were able to go to college. They didn't have to drown themselves in student loan debt.

[Desi Lydic]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

They worked hard, they got up every day, they followed the rules, they bought homes. There was racial steering from a lot of the real estate agents, but they were able to buy homes.

[Desi Lydic]

And you couldn't go on Zillow. It wasn't like, you know, your parents could look up on the Internet and go, oh, that's a good school system.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Exactly.

[Desi Lydic]

They had to take the word of whoever it was that was pushing a certain.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Yeah, I mean, the agents are trying to push them into neighborhoods where the schools weren't high quality schools. And my parents again, understood, you've got to put your kids in a school that at least puts them in a position. K12 school that puts them in a position that if they want to go to college, they'll be able to go to College.

[Desi Lydic]

So you have these tentposts of the middle class which is home ownership at reasonable down payments and reasonable non escalating. You know, you make the point in the book that back then mortgage rates were not tied to anything so they could jump and you know crazy ways. So you know these mortgages that relatively flexible jobs that would give you pensions and health care and would allow you some stability to go along. Are those the tent posts that we're now missing and how did we end up missing them?

[Michelle Dickerson]

Well, I'll answer the last part first and then talk about the. I call them markers in this book. Yes, the last. The reason, the reason we've lost them is because political leaders, and I mean at all levels, local, state and federal, have refused to exhibit the will to save the middle class. They have the ability, there is nothing

[Desi Lydic]

they fetishize more though I can't. How often do politicians just say I'm about lunch pail sitting around the table and all that. So how have they missed that? The mark between their rhetoric and the reality of what they're doing.

[Michelle Dickerson]

So I don't want to say what I thought they.

[Jon Stewart]

In fact, if you want to, you can curse.

[Desi Lydic]

These people have heard everything tonight.

[Jon Stewart]

I went after a day. So I went after a beloved monkey today.

[Desi Lydic]

But no, what do you think?

[Michelle Dickerson]

I think they have convinced lower and middle income Americans to look horizontally to blame. So we're doing tribes. The reason that you can't buy a house, the reason that you don't have a good job is because that person over there is taking your job from you.

[Desi Lydic]

Immigrants.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Immigrants or you know, diversity is now a bad word because it doesn't mean what it was supposed to mean. Just sort of have lots of different people from different walks of life. And so once you convince people to shift blame horizontally, they don't look up vertically because if you look vertically you see that the only trickle economics that we're seeing now is trickle up. So wealth and income is trickling up from middle class families to the top. But if you convince people that your enemy is horizontally, then they don't notice that there's a whole lot of wealth and income that's going up to others.

[Desi Lydic]

I'm curious what you think because I would, if I were judging this on party, I would say the Republican Party would convince about horizontal but the Democratic Party would convince you that this deregulatory or what they would call like neoliberal economics works, that it's become a subsidy economy or a gig economy. We'll retrain you, we'll do all that. Have they also failed in their political will or in the programs that they. Is it a design flaw in those programs?

[Michelle Dickerson]

I think they just haven't been paying attention. So one of the things I say in the book is that it's not just the middle class is suffering because of one thing, they're suffering because of everything. So if you think of the markers of the middle class, they can't afford. You can't afford to buy a home, right. You have a job, but it's not a, what I call sort of good job. It's not 40 hours a week full time with benefits, where you are called an employee and not a contractor.

[Ninjalux Cafe Announcer]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

We've gutted unions. People can't afford to. You can't get sick. Right. Because if you get sick and you can't work, most people don't have savings.

[Desi Lydic]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

So it's not one little thing. It's just a series of paper cuts since roughly the 1980s. But to follow up on your point about subsidies, if we actually said let's people let people work in the gig economy, if you want to pick up a little money, that's fine, but you shouldn't have to piece together three jobs. Three gigs. Three gigs, yeah. Because you can't find a 40 hour a week full time job where you are called an employee and you have the benefits that go along with being an employee in this country.

[Desi Lydic]

So this brings us to. Because I think that diagnosis is exactly right. So what is the medicine? What is the remedy? How do you reengage a middle class new deal? Is it just about recreating those FHA programs or the GI Bill in a different form? What's the way that it could be done?

[Michelle Dickerson]

Well, what I always say, I want each local politician and I want each voter to pick one thing. So if you want to focus on college, college, let's make sure that people can afford to go to college and not have to drown themselves in debt.

[Desi Lydic]

Mm.

[Michelle Dickerson]

So pick college if you want to. If you want to focus on. Because actually now I don't spend as much time talking about home ownership rates because people can't even can't find affordable housing to rent.

[Desi Lydic]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

So if you were living in a neighborhood, particularly a gated community type neighborhood, and you were saying things like, oh, well, we can't change our homeowner association rules because those people may move in and we need to make sure that we keep these exclusionary zoning laws because you have to have a 3,500 square foot home on an acre lot with A huge setback. I mean, anytime you have those kind of rules in place for housing, what you're saying is we don't want the middle class to live here. And so the argument.

[Desi Lydic]

So they're now zoned out.

[Michelle Dickerson]

They're zoned out. Exactly. Because the developers can't build a small home because the zoning rules don't allow it.

[Desi Lydic]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

And the last thing, and my favorite thing to always attack, which usually puts me in like the same company with like the Cato Institute folks, which more libertarian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is the mortgage interest deduction it needs.

[Desi Lydic]

Right. Because that helps people that already have something.

[Michelle Dickerson]

It helps certain people that already have something. Most people, the middle class, they don't itemize their deductions, so they actually get zero benefit from the mortgage interest.

[Desi Lydic]

They're doing the. Easy for them.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Right, exactly. And so what we're doing is we're subsidizing the housing expenses of rich people. And so a lot of what we're doing, I would love to see sort of big, bold, broad things like, you know, an FHA or program like that. But what I would really want people to do is look at what we're doing now. What can we eliminate the mortgage interest deduction?

[Desi Lydic]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Exclusionary zoning. What can we do? Another thing I talk about a lot in the book is the typical school day is not aligned at all with the typical workday for parents.

[Desi Lydic]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

So if we want to make it easy for a lower middle income family to be able to function, why are we still pretending like we're a bunch of farmers? Right. We don't need to have the schools opening at, you know, 7 or 8 in the morning and then shutting at 2 or 3. People have to go to work.

[Desi Lydic]

Right, right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

And then you have the whole summer off. Well, that's lovely. If you. Since I picked on Texas before. If you summer in the Hamptons.

[Desi Lydic]

Right, right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

But. But it's not.

[Desi Lydic]

So don't pick on Jersey Shore.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Okay.

[Ninjalux Cafe Announcer]

All right.

[Desi Lydic]

Jersey Shore's still cool.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Okay. Still cool.

[Desi Lydic]

Thank you.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Yeah.

[Ninjalux Cafe Announcer]

All right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

But it's not so great if you actually have to work during the summer.

[Desi Lydic]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

And you gotta figure out something to do with your kids. So the thing that I want political leaders to do and voters to do is to ask, what could we do? What change could we make that could make it easier for the middle class to attain one of those marks?

[Desi Lydic]

Mm. And to get that. And it strikes me as to run on a middle class New deal would be a banger for voters. I mean, it strikes me as more People than not are trapped in that sort of. That pinch between, you know, childcare and health care and elder care and education and government creating common sense kinds of programs for that. So it strikes me as odd that that hasn't been the focus there has, like, on the more populist areas of the right and the left, but not so much, full stop.

[Michelle Dickerson]

And I think the reason it hasn't is because can you imagine how powerful it would be if the middle class unites?

[Desi Lydic]

Right.

[Michelle Dickerson]

So if you have horizontal unity, that means that, ooh, we're looking up now we see where the problem is. So I actually sort of understand why no one wants to have all of the middle class to unite, because that would be a formidable voting bloc.

[Desi Lydic]

It would be incredibly formidable. And it strikes me as. As unions get weaker, isn't. Isn't our representation supposed to be our unions? Like, aren't they the ones who are supposed to be. Why does it always have to be that, well, you guys have to get together and have meetings and come up. Why can't our representatives be the lobbyists for the middle class? Like, it strikes me as insane that that's not the case.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Well, and particularly since we've gutted unions. I mean, since the 1980s, they've done everything possible. If the state right to work laws don't kill them. The. I mean, I'm not going to refer to the United States Supreme Court the way that others have.

[Desi Lydic]

You're the nicest person on the show,

[Jon Stewart]

maybe even in the whole building,

[Desi Lydic]

maybe on the entirety of the west side.

[Michelle Dickerson]

It's because I'm from Memphis.

[Desi Lydic]

Very, very nice. They mind their business in Memphis.

[Sponsor or Advertisement Voice]

That's true.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Exactly. They have to be polite.

[Desi Lydic]

Absolutely. You have to be very polite. Because what they've convinced everybody is that capital is more important than labor.

[Ninjalux Cafe Announcer]

Mm.

[Michelle Dickerson]

And what I would say is they've convinced everybody that rich people are more important than everybody.

[Desi Lydic]

They've earned it.

[Michelle Dickerson]

They've earned it.

[Desi Lydic]

Right, right. Instead of it being just a lot of it being happenstance and luck.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Hello.

[Desi Lydic]

True.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Yeah.

[Desi Lydic]

Well, it's a fabulous book, and I just think it's such a great prescription. And everybody interested in reconstituting a healthier. Because if you build a society on a stronger tentpost, on stronger foundation, we all benefit.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Everyone's better off.

[Desi Lydic]

Because they always say, like, oh, no, help the rich. Because the rising tide lifts all boats. And you're like, well, not if you don't have a boat. Then it's just water and you drown.

[Michelle Dickerson]

Then you're drowning.

[Desi Lydic]

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. The middle class new deal available now. Michelle Dickerson.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Quick break everyone.

[Jon Stewart]

Thank you.

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[Jon Stewart]

Hey, that's our show for tonight. Desi Lydick will be your host all week. Here it is. Your moment is end.

[Correspondent]

A spokesman said the lighting in the briefing room was dimmed to signify what he called Dark Maga.

[Comedy Central Announcer]

Explore more shows from the Daily show podcast universe by searching the Daily Show. Wherever you get your podcasts, watch the Daily show weeknights at 1110 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.