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The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Trump’s Domination Politics, at Home and Abroad with Fareed Zakaria
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Hello. Welcome back to the weekly show podcast with Jon Stewart. My name is Jon Stewart and we have been gone. God knows how long we've. We've been gone. I can tell you how long we've been gone. I'm, I'm back at my podcasting desk and there are what appear to be three dead insects. You would think that I would have come up here and cleared those out, but yeah, I took a nice break. But boy, did the world not. There is so much going on that is dispiriting and needing of framing and I'm delighted to have Fareed Zakaria is going to be joining us on the show. So much of this is about what exactly is the theory of power for this Trump administration? Is, is there anything that we can figure out that kind of gives us a coherent directional worldview as to where these guys are going or is it just literally big, small? I think it's more complicated than that. How does Iran and Venezuela fit into all that? You know, all, all these different things. We will, we will try and run through and, and get some through line that could maybe help us feel slightly less vertigo from what we feel from the bouncing around between we are going to invade Greenland and also is that delicious oil? I think I'm going to have to, to, to take over your country and drill it. So I'm going to. I haven't talked to this fella, used to come on the old Daily show constantly and, and I haven't been able to talk to him in quite a bit. So I'm delighted to have him on the program today. Mr. Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's Freed Zakaria GPS. And so, folks, in a world that has so many now plates spinning in the air and a constant stream of what appear to be really close to cataclysmic events and catastrophes, we bring in a gentleman who's been doing his program, keeping an eye on all this sort of thing for 18 years now. Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria J GPS and as we spoke earlier, you were the most frequent guest that we had on the Daily show back when I still had to work every night, which, God bless you, figured that early on Fury, didn't you?
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C
Well, it was a huge pleasure, honestly. But you, you asked me to do it when I was very young, and it was based on my first book, actually, which was all about illiberal democracy, you know, democracies where elected rulers start to abuse, elected leaders start abuse the rule of law and, you know, individual rights. In those days, I was talking about places like Pakistan and the Philippines, not the United States of America. And it was a huge pleasure. And of course, it leaves me wondering, you know, what happened, John? What am I, chopped liver? Why have you forgotten me?
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Oh, let me, let me tell you what happens. So I disappear for nine years, raise a couple of kids, and then I decided to come back once a week. I don't have time for any guests. I don't, somebody shows up, you got.
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C
To see you now, you got to look young and hip and like I'm, you know, I'm old news.
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B
I don't, somehow I think this face, you know, I'm ready to play Tevia in Fiddler. I mean, with this face, it's, you'd be good. None of this is working. Farid, what a, what a great way to, to jump into it, which is, you know, you, you make your bones on this idea of illiberal democracies and all the ways in which these more authoritarian rulers use the mechanisms of democracy to create systems that are actually eroding it and corroding it and the infrastructure of it to the point of somewhat of a collapse. And, and you jumped my first question, which is, are you seeing now the things that you viewed in, in Philippines? And I don't want to be, you know, alarmist or hyperbolic, but, boy, it's hard not to view this country as, you know, the polite way to would be, I guess we are now a subsidiary of the Trump Organization, which would look at it more benignly. And the, the less benign way would be they've been using these illiberal techniques in test kitchens in the Philippines and all kinds of other places. And now they've brought this new MCRIB to the United States and they're applying it here.
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C
Look, there's no question that that's true. When I was writing about it, when I coined the phrase illiberal democracy in 96, 97, I was looking at places like Pakistan, the Philippines, Slovakia, Turkey. Under Erdogan, you could begin to see it happening. And I always thought that this is not going to affect the developed world as much. I did actually in my book, have a chapter or two about America, but I thought it was sort like a tendency, a danger that we were becoming too enamored of the idea of these charismatic leaders. But what I didn't expect is that the institutional framework of Western democracies would be as fragile as it is. And in this case, actually, the United States is in worse shape than other places. So if you look at in Europe.
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B
Explain that we're in worse shape than places like Pakistan and Slovakia and Turkey.
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C
No, no, no, no, no. More than in places like in Europe. So look at Giorgio.
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B
I see.
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C
Yeah. Giorgia Meloni comes to power in Italy and she's a fire breathing, right wing populist, but she's contained by the institutions. Her policies have actually not been as radical as people thought they would be, partly because there are lots of institutions, both within Italy and within the European Union that. And she's basically not torn them up. In the United States, we have the oldest constitution in the world, which is great in many ways, but in some ways it's kind of old fashioned. So, for example, our Justice Department does technically sit entirely under the President. That is not true in Europe. All their Justice Departments are independent agencies. So what that means is that what we developed after Watergate was a set of norms. The President wouldn't ask the Attorney General to prosecute certain cases, but those are all just norms that we developed after Watergate. And Trump just broke them all. And he just said, look, there's no law that tells me I can't do this. Similarly, he's correct when he says there's no law that says my kids can't do all the business they want and take advantage of the fact that they're my children. And, you know, all these things were norms. And what it's turned out is that we need more actual laws that constrain executive power in particular. And the challenge here is the Supreme Court has become so pro executive power that I think we're in a very bad fix. Because you can see the problem as you described it. The Trump presidency is basically knocking down norms, in many cases violating laws. The TikTok ban should have been implemented. It was a congressional ban.
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That was a law. Congress made it a law. And he's done rescissions, he's pulled money back. So that's my question to you because we talk a lot about how Trump has blown past norms or you know, let's say Maloney goes into Italy, but she's more constrained. But I think what Trump is demonstrating is that even these laws, it's not so much that the system has been constraining individuals, is that the individuals themselves believed in that system as being the most viable and most stable and most productive. It would be the most prosperous. It's one of the reasons why America has done so well is because by laying out rules of the road and adhering to it, we've earned credibility and trust that we weren't going to be ruled by the whims of, of mercurial and volatile leaders. Trump, I think, has made a different choice. I think he's shown the weakness of liberal democracies, almost not in norms, but by the idea that if you control. What did he say about the Supreme Court when they, the Supreme Court came in and said, you can't do that and what was his response? How are you going to enforce that? Right. So it's not, I think Trump is actually, it's worse than, oh, he's blowing past. It's why I wasn't so bothered by, oh, he fired some inspector generals when he blew past norms. I kind of soft pedal that this is a different, this is a different thing that is now being accomplished. This isn't about norms. It's exposing the weakness of the enforcement mechanisms of the laws that a powerful executive just decides to ignore.
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C
Yeah. And that is in some ways at the heart of the problem of the American Constitution. Because I would argue that one of the things that the founders really could not have imagined was these political parties that are so loyal to the party and to the president as the head of the party that they completely abdicate their institutional loyalty to Congress.
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B
Right.
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C
So Madison always believed that congressional power would always be a check on executive power because Congress wants to retain its own self interested for self interested reasons. Retain power. No. Mike Johnson is happy to be the errand boy to Donald Trump because at the end of the day, he knows that the way he's gonna stay in power and get elected is by being Donald Trump's errand boy. So if you have a system like that, you actually don't have the checks and balances. The checks and balances are completely notional or similarly, as you point out, with the court. I think what Trump is doing, for example, on the tariff case is a fascinating use, again, of this kind of illiberal democracy, where he's intimidating the court and saying, we are doing this for national security. We're getting tons of revenue. All these deals have been done. You will undo the whole reputation and a set of relationships I have and deals I have made. Well, yes, but what you did was plainly unconstitutional. I mean, literally, it is in the Constitution, in a line, not by implication or inference. There is a line that says foreign commerce will be regulated by Congress. Tariffs were regulated by. And by the way, they knew what tariffs were. This wasn't the reason we had. The American Revolution was tariffs. When people talk about the Tea Party, what was that? That was a tariff on, you know, which they called a tax and a tariff interchangeably.
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Yes.
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C
On tea coming in from.
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From Britain, which of course was. And the tariff was paid by Britain and not the American people. And it raised so much money and we were so powerful.
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C
But by the way, that means. That means the whole American Revolution was a misunderstanding. If only we had realized that we were. That we in America were not paying the tariffs. It was the poor Brits who were paying it.
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Why did we revolt? Right? It was. It was making us. It was making America great again. Again. But. But the thing that. It is not hard for me to foresee a world that even if the Supreme Court says those tariffs are unconstitutional, that he will not get rid of them. Or Congress, which is now a vestigial organ, will just say, or. Or they may do the, you know, a different thing and say, okay, they have. Certainly they control the Senate and they control the House, and they could pass them if they wanted to, but they abdicate responsibility because they don't want to go on record for anything.
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But I don't think he'll do it, John, because I think if your inspector's general point is an interesting one. So, you know, he comes in for day one, he fires all the inspectors general. Now, congressional law allows the president to fire the inspectors general, but there's a procedure in the law which is you have to give six months notice.
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He didn't follow procedure.
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C
There has to be a specific charge of complaints against each inspector general, and he fired them all without cause. I think that for Trump and for the people around him, and I think this is very much part of the Heritage 2025 project. It is important as an act of principle to violate these laws, because they believe these laws are incorrectly constraining executive power. So I think what Trump will do is he will deliberately not go to Congress to get congressional authorization because he wants to make the point, I, as president, am gonna retain the right to do this. And it'll be some made up jumble of emergency national security. Lawyers can argue anything and he'll come up with. But if you look at the way in which he handles the rescissions, as you said, it's absolutely clear that you can't just stop spending money that Congress gave. But they want to do.
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But he did.
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Right, because they wanna make the point that we think all these constraints are bullshit. We in the executive branch can do whatever we want. What I'm puzzled by is, do the Republicans going along with this not realize that one day there will be a Democratic president?
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B
But I think what they believe is that because you will find that Congress suddenly grows a spine again when a Democrat takes office. I think what they're not understanding, and maybe they think of the Democratic president won't push this to the extent that he does, is that final step to that, which is. And what we were talking about earlier, which is you and what army, motherfucker?
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Right?
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Like, right. How are you going to enforce this? And that's where I think the line is being drawn in the most dangerous place.
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It's the Andrew Jackson line. You remember when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sioux Indians who were being displaced or Cherokee. Yeah. And Andrew Jackson is supposed to have said, you know, Justice Marshall has, has made his ruling now let him enforce it.
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That. That's exactly right. And that. And Stephen Miller has made this case explicitly. You know, he's gone out and he does that, you know, whenever he talks, I always imagine like, like dark clouds start to arise over there and like the theme from the Exorcist starts playing. But, you know, his point is, hey, we see the world as it is, and the world belongs to the strong and the strong. And, and this gets to. And I want to talk about it. It's a more generalized theory of power, because right now they're trying to find a coherent governing philosophy that they can sell the, you know, the Don Row doctrine or these different things. We're gonna. We strengthen our hemisphere and that's what makes America great. And all these different things, what I believe they have decided is kind of a more old school theory of power which is coerced compliance is ultimately better than alliance. That common cause alliance will not get America the the prosperous future that coerced compliance will get us. And you see it everywhere. We're going to get Greenland or we're going to do it the nice way or we're going to do it the hard way. So even if he strikes a deal to buy it or to do these other things, it is obviously at the point of a gun, I don't think. And you know, we'll tie this all together because I have something I want to ask you about in terms of Iran and Venezuela with all of that. But would you say that the bet they are making is that one that we want to take the world back to those systems where might makes right. If you have the larger navy, you get to take it. And just blindly ignoring how volatile and violent and ultimately unsustainable that kind of world was.
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Absolutely.
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So I mean most people don't realize what a sharp break it took place in international relations after 1945. If you look at the 100 years before 1945, you see every two years there's a war of conquest, there's aggression, there's annexations. I mean France and Germany went to war three times between 1850 and 1945. Twice they dragged the whole world into it. The shift then from 1945 to this rules based international system that the United States basically it was Franklin Roosevelt's dream. Harry Truman implements it. And what you have since then is remarkable. There's almost no war of conquest that has taken place. There's almost no annexations. There are almost none of that that has taken place. Of course there have been violence and conflicts, but it's a remarkable break. And why did it happen? It's because the United States conceived of system that was not this traditional realpolitik law of the jungle. It was let's try to create a world in which everyone has an incentive for peace. Let's create an open economy so everyone can grow and prosper. And they have this much more dark macht politique. It's like the 19th century German view of how to be powerful. And the only thing I would point out is didn't do so well for.
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B
The, for the Germans, but that's for Fareed. America created that world 80 years ago. Now, that world wasn't perfect and it certainly mistakes were made in terms of how liberalized globalization was and how you balanced your industry with other things. But it was remarkably successful. But in their vision, that world, the 80 years post World War II were the suckers bet for the United States that we are the victims, first of all, that we are the victims of that we were the most prosperous country out of anybody during that.
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C
And remain the most prosperous and remain the most prosperous.
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But the second thing is we created it. That was our design. And they're acting like that is the world that was created to take advantage of us.
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C
Right. Trump says the European Union was created to screw the United States. We basically encouraged the Europeans to come together because we didn't want them to fight wars again. We thought that they would understand the advantages of commerce and it worked brilliantly. But the point you make, John, which is very important is the whole MAGA premise is that the United States has gotten screwed over the last eight years and particularly the last 30 or 40. Right? Here's the data. About 25 years ago, US and European wages were roughly the same. Today, US wages are 50% higher than European wages. About 15 years ago, the Eurozone economy and the US economy were the same size. Today the US economy is 70% larger than the eurozone economy. If you look at one company, Nvidia, it has a higher market capitalization than the entire German stock exchange. So it's like, what world are you talking about? The United States is more dominant today than it has ever been. We have some issues with inequality and things like that, but those are issues of redistribution. How do we organize and divide the pie?
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Right. But not of prospering.
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C
We've created more wealth in this world and we've got the dollar underpinning the world. So the fundamental, to me, the fascinating thing is that the whole vision is premised on decline, decay, sclerosis, even the Venezuela thing. As you say, what they want to do is go from being the global hegemon that set the rules, that created the system, that maintains the system, to a regional bully. We give up to Putin, Ukraine, we give up Asia to China and we get to boss over Venezuela and Mexico. Isn't that great? And it's like such a shrinking of American power.
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B
And it also, what, what it says is this administration believes we will be more prosperous having total dominance and a more colonial view of South America and kind of removing Europe and, and what we gained from that alliance. And even the ridiculousness of, you know, we need to take over Greenland so that Russia and China don't take over Greenland. You're like, isn't that what NATO is for? We formed an alliance with, it's like saying we will fight alone to control South America instead of fighting with all of our allies to have a mutually beneficial position in the entire world. And how is that more prosperous for us?
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C
Think about the difference, as you say, you put it right. They think coerced compliance is better than the kind of messiness of this alliance between democracies because it's zero sum.
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B
They have to have a zero sum, right?
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C
So look at the coerced compliance. So China, we have something like 50 greedy allies in the United States and most of them are the most powerful, the richest countries in the world, you know, the Europeans, Japan, Australia, China has one treaty ally, North Korea. Let's throw in Russia.
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B
That's really true. Yeah.
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That is the only treaty ally they have.
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B
I thought they had trade treaty allies, though. They do have, but not defense.
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You know what I mean? They like, I mean, you know, let's throw in Russia and let's throw in Iran.
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Right, Right.
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Think of that like they've got three, we've got 50.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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We move that up, we want to piss them. Right. So that we can have Greenland, which we already have, basically. We have base there. We could put more bases there. We could talk. It's. It's as though they don't want. They think that alliances are weak. It's better for them. It's the same thing they're doing with immigration in the United States. Rather than trying to. Are you, Are they really trying to tell Americans that the best way to get criminal, undocumented people in this country out of this country is to show up in force at a target wearing masks with guns? They want that feeling of boot on the neck. It's for some reason the, the goals that they want are so much more easily accomplished if they didn't have that sense of. And we must dominate and humiliate you if you are our foe, including if you didn't vote for him.
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C
Yeah. The theater is very important. As you well know. Obama has probably still deported more people than Trump. In other words, if you look at it month to month.
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B
But they did that. It was a different.
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C
They.
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B
They did do it at the border.
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C
Exactly. And they did it in a very different way. But that's my point, which is, yeah, in one case they were almost trying to minimize the theater and maximize the effectiveness. In this case, they're actually trying to maximize the effectiveness even if the numbers aren't what they want to show that.
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B
This is what we are doing.
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C
Right. I also think back to your Greenland point. It's a very important thing to understand that their view of wealth and economic growth is weirdly old fashioned. So they think Greenland has minerals in the ground. It has all this stuff. You can always buy them, you can always lease them. You can always, like, you know, the idea that the country that has minerals underneath its soil is going to be rich as Croesus. It's like that. If that were true, all of Africa would be rich. You know, think about Israel, South Korea.
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B
It is a colonial mindset. Yeah.
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C
These countries have nothing. And what do they have? They have smart people. You can always buy this stuff, you know, from around the world. Think about the oil revolution in America. The Chinese kept going around Africa and trying to lock up oil and natural gas deals. The US did technological innovation and invented fracking. It turned out ours was a much more successful thing because it's fundamentally knowledge driven. Theirs. They've got to make corrupt deals with African dictators. In a weird way, Trump is more like that Chinese mentality. That's why he loves the Venezuela case.
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B
And a colonial mentality.
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A
A.
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B
It is a king's mentality. And the strange thing about it to me is think about the damage you do to our world. Standing by, going in and taking the resources from Venezuela to. To get more oil. Right. Who's the largest oil producer in the world? It's us. It's already us. So to do that. But what are we doing when. When we push that, we're sending a message to the world that if you're, you know, it's sort of like the old Peaky Blinders thing. Big, small. If you're big, you can do this. So here's what we may be trading off. We get to take a bigger cut of Venezuelan oil, and China looks at that and goes, oh, well, then I guess we get to take a cut of quantum chips in Taiwan. And what do you think is going to be more important in the modern world? What's the trade off for us, Fareed?
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C
Yeah, I mean, one way to think about what they're doing here is for Trump, it's clear. I just read this book, the Gods of New York, which is New York in the 80s. You'd love. It, actually, is really fascinating.
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B
That's when I moved on.
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C
And Trump is a huge character in it. And you can look even then, every time he did a deal, his absolute imperative was, how do I squeeze everybody in every possible way to screw them and get the best deal I can for myself? There was never a thought about, instead of a transaction, how do I build a relationship? And any really great businessman will tell you, businesses are built not on a single transaction, but on building a relationship.
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B
And he burns bridges like nobody's burned bridges before.
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C
And this is what he's doing in each of these tariff negotiations. His point is, I'm going to screw you, I'm going to squeeze you, I'm going to get the. You know. And there's something sort of strange about not realizing that American power since 1945 has been built on this unique thing, that we have built so much goodwill and trust among the richest countries in the world. International relations theorists all predicted that at some point, Germany will go nuclear, Japan will go nuclear. They're too rich, they're too powerful to allow their foreign and defense policy to be subcontracted to the United States. But it never happened. And it never happened because we were honorable about saying we're taking everyone's interests into account. And as you say we made mistakes and all that, but compared to other great powers that dominated the world, the United States has been remarkable in having this enlightened self interest. And it took 80 years to build that level of trust. And my great fear is that, as you say, for kind of almost misguided notions of economic wealth, we're squandering it. Because what are we going to get? First of all, the Venezuelan oil is a bit of a mirage. Most people don't realize. They talk about Venezuela having the largest oil reserves in the world, 300 million, where that number comes from. Hugo Chavez one day crippled the estimate of Venezuela's. Chavez is a bit like Trump that way. He likes big numbers.
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B
Numbers.
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C
So.
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B
So it's also apparently not the type of grade of oil that's easily got. It's much cheaper to. It's not something that even the oil company like. I don't know about that stuff.
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C
Yeah, yeah. I love the classifications ours. The stuff we produce is called light sweet. And this is, this is heavy crude. So who wants that? Yeah, and, but, but also they are, right now they're exporting of the world's petroleum. They are 21st, so they're going to be able to do more. But the whole idea of some gold mine, which is why the CEO of Exxon in front of the television camera, stealth, Trump, Venezuela is currently uninvestable, which means if you want us to invest, the US Government is going to have to give us guarantees. This is the new form of capitalism that we're embracing.
- [32:20]
B
And you saw Trump's response to that was everybody wants to be a part of it, but I think I'm going to cut Exxon out of it because they were too glib with their answer. And what I don't understand about the MAGA movement or the Republicans right now is that somehow they believe as poorly as maybe some of our institutions had performed over time and the kind of reform that they needed in the various things is that replacing that with the whims of a mercurial megalomaniac and, and malignant narcissist is the key to a more stable and prosperous American future. Rocket Money, you still paying that only fan subscription you told your wife you'd cancel? I feel, you know, you need Rocket Money. You're paying for subscriptions you don't remember signing up for. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. Monitors spending, helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money, you can track your subscriptions cancel with just A few tabs. How many of you I, I am losing money left and right. Of these Rocket money is the thing that can set you straight. How many of the cars you don't drive anymore still have satellite radio? For God's sakes, stop wasting money on things you don't use. Let rocket money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at Rocket Money.com TWS that's Rocket Money.com/TWS. MAGA is steeped in kind of the mythology of American creation and they're really going in hard on it. J.D. vance says, you know, the heritage American is really the most important American. They have more say in this land. We're not a creed. We're. We're a people, right? But the Constitution very clearly says no, I think, I think we're actually a creed. And that creed is that the consent of the governed that we are given unalienable rights by a creator. And, and those rights carry weight in whatever governing system that we place in there. And this is the thing they fetishize, they put it on their buses and they don't tread on me and they've got the gads and flags and all that. They're clearly though giving fealty to someone operating utterly outside of that system. But here's where I think it really gets interesting. Other countries we exported that people want to govern themselves. And when you go in and you start to exploit their resources and do it explicitly so or say we're what you unleash in the people that you are exploiting is a cycle that we have seen play out numerously through history. And I'll use Iran and Venezuela as the example. It's a 70 year cycle in Iran. Think of this as the Lion King. It's the cycle of life. Farid so in Venezuela, we just started the cycle. We couped the leader, we arrested him. Whether that's justified or not, we'll save that for a different day. We're going to go in and we're going to take their oil. People would say like, oh, Americans don't want that. That's like Iraq. It's not like Iraq. It's like Iran in 1953. We and British Petroleum did the same thing in Iran. Mosaddiq. We removed him and what did we do? We replaced him with a pro Western leader and we got all those resources. And how long did that system hold up for? 1979 because the resentments that we created within that region exploded into. It's the reason that the mullahs were in power in 79. And now the mullahs rule with their iron fist. And now they're in the cycle where they're about to turn over that country. And what's going to happen then? My guess is the Western powers or somebody's going to come in and install somebody else. And the cycle, how do we not see that? How do we not see that what we are starting in Venezuela is going to sow the seeds for the volatility and danger that we had already sowed in Iran in 1953? We're just repeating the same stupid cycle.
- [37:02]
C
For the United States, for America. It's always been very hard to understand other people's nationalism. In other words, we are very proud nationalist patriots. But then when you go to Vietnam and they're like, we want our country. We just don't understand that. We're like, no, no, no, we are going to give you a better system. We go to Iraq and they're like, get out of here. And we said, no, no, no, you don't understand. We're going to set up a wonderful democr. The Shias and the Sunnis will live together. And I actually, as an immigrant, I think we do mean well in many of these cases, but we seem to have no understanding that other people have nationalism, too. Other people. You know, there's this famous moment, it may have been apocryphal, when Mountbatten, the last British viceroy, is talking to Gandhi.
- [37:56]
B
You know, I love a good Mountbatten anecdote. Throw it my way, yeah.
- [38:00]
C
And he says, Mr. Gandhi, the British just leave India, it's going to be chaos. And Gandhi looks at him and says, yes, but it'll be our chaos. And that's what I think most people don't understand. Sometimes people prefer their own chaos to a foreign imposed peace, a foreign imposed order. And what Trump is doing is actually igniting nationalism and anti American nationalism in places that have really never had it, like Canada, like Denmark, you know, like the Nordic countries, like Sweden. I mean, I'm talking to these people and there you can feel that underneath they're trying to be polite. There is a deep resentment at the way they're being treated. And what are we doing this for? I mean, that's, to me, the most bizarre part. We're creating all these enemies out of allies, for what? The notional idea that we'll have more bases on Greenland, which we could have had anyway.
- [39:01]
B
It's, I, I think it's the kind of thing. And I, you know, nationalism is, there's so many connotations about that, that some people, you know, view differently. I, I think what we're missing is, which is so strange again because of, of how much we just lionize our own origin story. People yearn to breathe free. Self determination is inherent in the human condition. And I don't understand how we believe that so deeply in our bones for our story and yet somehow think Venezuelans don't feel the same about themselves. They may not like the Chavista, they may not like Maduro, the, their, that election may have been screwed, but they want the ability to determine their own future, not this paternalizing. We would never accept it.
- [40:04]
C
Yeah. And, and in fact, you know, even in Venezuela, I think it's important for people to understand Chavez was hugely popular. He won the first election.
- [40:13]
B
Well, that's the difference between him and Trump, these populist movements.
- [40:19]
C
And the truth is there are a lot of people who still believe in Chavez and believe. So that's one of the reasons why this could get very. If they actually try a regime change, this would be very complicated because there are still first of all a lot of people with guns who are not going to give up power easily. But there are also a lot of believing Chavez followers and then there's drug traffickers in cartes. So the whole thing is much more complicated. Which is why the sad truth is this is probably going to look like essentially the most expensive arrest in human history of Maduro, which got rid of him, got American oil companies some concessions into Venezuela and left everything else intact. The entire repressive apparatus of the regime, the Defense minister, the interior Minister, will all stay exactly as they are. Because otherwise you're opening a Pandora's box.
- [41:17]
B
And we're jumping into one of the things that creates such instability in South America and Central America is our interventions right into their politics is what created a lot of these more extreme left wing movements. Right. So now they bounce back and forth between right wing authoritarian strongmen and left wing authoritarian strongmen. And the thing that prevented that type of pendulum swings, which is the type of thing you see in like Pakistan, where it, it'll go from a military junta to, you know, a corrupt kind of democracy to back. It's kind of that cycle. What prevents that is our system of constitutional checks and, and balances. And what we're saying is we'd like to throw that out to get a system more like theirs. They're setting the United States up for that.
- [42:13]
C
So the really interesting question, John, that I would put to you is if you assume all the things we're saying are true. The part that's most difficult to understand for me is why are Americans, or at least 40 to 50% of Americans okay with this? You have a situation where it's absolutely clear that one party, that the president right now is accumulating powers on a scale that no president has done in decades, maybe ever. You have a situation where laws are being violated, norms are being violated. You have a situation where he's intimidating the court, intimidating the Federal Reserve, and yet he doesn't lose much support from his base. And I think he's decided he's governing for his base. And so what it leaves me thinking is, is about half the country really okay with illiberal democracy, with the idea that, you know, it's okay to abuse individual rights, minority rights, separation of powers, all that. And what does that mean for the future of democracy if half the country doesn't really. Doesn't really believe in liberal democracy?
- [43:29]
B
No, they believe in. It's okay if it's our guy. You know, look, this is all very Lord of the Rings, you know, but it is. You know, everybody believes in liberal democracy until they get to hold the ring, and then suddenly it's a very different scenario.
- [43:44]
C
And to be fair. And to be fair, the left has also done this sometimes, you know, but.
- [43:48]
B
Not nearly to the extent.
- [43:50]
C
Not nearly. Yeah, there's no both sidesism. But it always worried me when Biden would do these student loan, you know, waivers using executive power. Like, you know, that stuff like, just because you want the outcome, you cannot want the outcome so badly that you violate the processes of liberal democracy. That's the whole point of liberalism and liberal democracy, which is the process is very important. You don't get to just make your policy happen any which way. And what Trump is showing you is the real cost of that.
- [44:24]
B
But I think there's also something to be said about. Look, the system that we have in place is so complex and Byzantine that in many ways there is always a clause or something from the sergeant of arms or whoever might jump in there or the parliamentarian to prevent us from doing anything. But it's also complex enough that if you really dig down into emergency powers and you could do anything, right. The difference is, generally it has been at some level of consensus and not at the whim of an individual, and a mercurial one at that, with absolute silence and no pushback, even from those in his party who would disagree. This is an absolute, utter takeover of the apparatus of a political party. And you asked why they would go along with it. And the reason is because they believe that the left is the enemy. Not that they are a competing sort of worldview or any of those other things. That they are an enemy. They are their enemy. And the dopamine hit that they get. This is an algorithmically driven kind of. Look, populists are popular for a reason. They sell a story of you being forgotten and of a country in decline and of a people that have been abused and victimized. And this man, what does he say? I am your vengeance. I will fight for you. And they don't give a shit how he does it or how punitive he is. And if that means threatening to arrest the Fed chair, so be it. That guy's corrupt anyway, and he's our enemy. And so this plays to the passions and prejudices of your base. And. And that's how it's all done. Look, they're selling a story that the reason you can't. The reason why eggs are expensive is because some Somalis in Minnesota with a Medicaid program. Yeah, not that. Not that we spend a trillion dollars on, like, military equipment, soon to be $1.5 trillion. Or. Not that we subsidize corporations and they suck a lot of the prosperity out of this country. And they don't distribute it in any way within the country, in any way that resembles fairness. None of that matters to them, Fareed. And so until they think there's some par. What's the. I guess I would put that question back on you. What do you think they think the peril is some larger goal of constitutional bureaucracy? Like what? Why wouldn't they love him? He's. He's basically saying, if you're for me, you can go to the Capitol and beat the shit out of a policeman with the flagpole of a Confederate flag, and I will praise you and pardon you, but if you try and block a street and you're clearly don't have any idea what you're doing, we can shoot you in the head. So why wouldn't they love that?
- [47:45]
C
You know what your point makes me think about is the degree to which maybe during the Cold War, American politics was constrained, was disciplined by the reality of the ideological contest between the Soviet Union, the need for America to be this beacon of freedom and democracy. There was a sense in which Hubert Humphrey once said this, that. That he thought that the reason for the civil rights movement was there was a foreign policy reason. We had to show the communist world that America was in fact, the shining city on the Hill. And since then, I think what's happened is honestly, we have no competition. We've become so powerful. It's exactly the opposite of the maga narrative. We have no check, no constraints. So I think at some level, the power has gone to our heads and the power has gone particularly to somebody like Trump's head. Look at the way he treats other countries, right? The only reason you can do that is because you're so powerful. You're unconstrained. You don't have to worry that they're going to go over to the communist side. There's something here that feels very much like it's about the arrogance of power, the ability to act in unconstrained ways. And I kind of wonder whether the reason when we were powerful in the past, there was this check, there was this sense in which you had to put forward your best front boy.
- [49:16]
B
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- [51:35]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:36]
B
So we had to demonstrate that our system actually was. So rather than our actions being a sort of function of absolute power, maybe it's that the worldview right now is not communism versus capitalism, but woke versus unwoke, sort of. The idea is multiculturalism versus singular monoculture, and that now we have to demonstrate not the higher values of the constitution, but we have to demonstrate, I guess, a more violent form of sorting. And the reason why we're not mad at Russia is because we view them through that prism. They're white and Christian, and they're defending, you know, Western civilization not in the sense that we think of the Enlightenment, but of, you know, a more orthodox, white, Christian version of that.
- [52:35]
C
Yeah, exactly, exactly. The cultural divide that has. That has developed now is one in which I think, for somebody like J.D. vance, Russia are actually the good guys. Right. As you say, they're white, they're Christian. In fact, Putin often makes the point of. Putin is culturally a neoconservative. I mean, he's against all the licentiousness of Western liberalism. So, by the way, is Xi Jinping.
- [53:00]
B
And it's why they don't like Europe. Europe's too atheist and. Right. They don't want any part of that.
- [53:06]
C
Exactly. They worry that the kind of acids of Western liberalism will change their societies as well. And so in many ways, the Russ and the Chinese are not just balancing against the west geopolitically, but they're balancing against them culturally because they don't want these forces of modernization and liberalism to infect their societies. But the twist now compared to the Cold War is they have allies within the west who feel the same way.
- [53:36]
B
Right.
- [53:36]
C
They have. You know, this is what's so different about this moment. Where we've faced adversaries in the past, we faced ideological adversaries, geopolitical ones. But what's strange is we now have within the west very important strong forces that kind of agree with our enemies. And that's what is such A kind of. That's what makes it so difficult to navigate foreign policy. Because you watch Trump on Russia and Ukraine, and it's pretty clear everyone tries to find some rationale. He hates the Ukrainians. He likes the Russians. He hates Zelensky. He likes Putin. Zelensky is the guy who got impeached in his first term. His solution to peace is, I'm gonna squeeze Zelensky, try to get the Ukrainians to make all the concessions they can, hand it over to Putin and claim peace and say, hey, I got peace. Can I please get the Nobel Peace Prize? His problem so far is Putin wants more. Right. This is a very strange moment for the American president to be acting not as the lawyer for the embattled European democracy, yearning to breathe free, but for the dictatorship that is the aggressor. That, I think has never happened.
- [54:51]
B
But Fareed, if. If you look at it through the prism that you're talking about.
- [54:55]
C
The cultural one.
- [54:56]
B
Exactly, the cultural one, but also in terms of the one that you were talking about when the battle was democracy versus communism and we had to demonstrate democracy. Well, if that's not the battle anymore, then we don't have to demonstrate that democracy works. But this is where I think it gets. It gets darker, that it means that the actions that are being taken are not the whims of a mercurial maniac, but are much more purposeful, that changing it to Department of War is much more purposeful. Not backing Ukraine is not necessarily about, well, they never got the dirt on Biden that I wanted. It really is about. No, no, no, no, no. We're not the great democratic leaders, like, you know, the people that we lionized in the old days. We are now Putin, Netanyahu, US Erdogan, and. And Xi Jinping. And that is what we are demonstrating, because now we can police the purity. I mean, I don't know if you've seen some of this Homeland Security iconography that they're using. One homeland, our one of you, all of them, like it is. So it's. At this point, it's not even implicit of fascist iconography. They're just. It's just a direct translation.
- [56:26]
C
And. And so much of it, I don't know if you've seen. This is like 50s nostalgia. You know, they have these photographs of kind of old cars and pristine beaches. And it's so fascinating because the whole thing is the politics of nostalgia. You know, there's this one moment where in Nikki Haley and her trying her best to do a MAGA imitation when she was running. She tweets something like, wasn't life so much simpler when we were growing up? And I was thinking to myself, so when would that be?
- [56:56]
B
Right?
- [56:56]
C
Like, so you put it roughly speaking, I think for Nikki Haley it would be the mid-70s, right? And they're like, okay, the United States, right? We lost our first war in history. The president was beached and had to resign. 100American cities were engulfed in ruinous race riots. Oil prices quadrupled in one day. And then we had. The economy was so bad we had to renate, we had to create a new name for it. Stagflation.
- [57:25]
B
We had whip inflation. Now buttons we had to wear parade around.
- [57:29]
C
Those were the happy halcyon days. I think there's something fascinating. It's almost like I think we have an evolutionary need to forget bad things that happen and we remember the past in a kind of misty eyed way or something.
- [57:44]
B
I think nostalgia is one of the things that Nikki Haley or any of those people, and I've always said this is when people say, it's never been like it was when I was a kid. And you're like, right, because you were a kid, you were a child. The reason why you loved the world then is all you cared about is when that ice cream truck was coming back.
- [58:02]
C
That's right. Like your parents paid the rent, right?
- [58:04]
B
That's all you gave a about. So of course that nostalgia and it's so fascinating because it's. And, and now that like, like Elon Musk either tweeted this out or like reposted it or did some. But it was literally that exact thing you were talking about. It was 1950s Rhodesia and it was a picture in black and white of like this pristine, you know, looks suburban looking and you know, South Africa. And it was the chaos and darkness and all that. And you're like, you do know in Rhodesia how they got that right? Like, do you understand? And I used to think like, oh, they're hypocritical, they don't understand how. Now I realize, no, they're saying, this is how we do it. Colonialism. You take it by force and you extract those resources cheaply. And that's how you create and you police who gets to be there.
- [59:03]
C
Right?
- [59:03]
B
And you can create these utopias.
- [59:07]
C
Yeah, that when I saw that, I know the tweet you're talking about and I saw that and I thought to myself, you know, Elon Musk is so smart. But it's a perfect example of how these tech geniuses somehow seem to either lack any sort of historical understanding or any common sense. Like, you look at those pictures and as you say, my reaction was, you do understand that that world on the left, that is that beautiful Rhodesia was true for 3% of Rhodesians who were white, who were tyrannizing the 97% who were not. And that's why you could live like that.
- [59:46]
B
That's right.
- [59:46]
C
The same is true in South Africa. And by the way, I grew up in India, where, if you had looked at the British enclaves in Bombay and Delhi and Calcutta and Madras, they looked gorgeous. But if you kind of went and looked at rural poverty in India and looked at where all the money was being extracted, in a way, I mean, it's sort of weird to me that they wouldn't. That somebody as smart as Elon Musk would not think to himself, how did this come to be?
- [60:17]
B
But it's almost. It's not even how it comes to be, because that would. That would entail an empathy for those that have been exploited. And they don't roll that way. What I'm saying is they believe that's the way we should do it. If we have the opportunity to exploit to our benefit, we should do it. I think what it's missing is the real politic of it, which is to sustain that level of exploitation requires a tremendous amount of resources. And the further away you do it from your center of power, the harder it is to hold the forces of entropy and chaos from exploding. And that's the thing. I'm not even. I don't even want to appeal to their moral center. I don't think it exists. I don't think they look at Rhodesia and think, oh, that probably was a little fucked up for the other people who live there. But what they're not taking into account is how unsustainable it is. Because let's go back to the Constitution. People want to be free. They don't want taxation without representation. They have rights and they are going to fight for them. And if you are the one holding them back, you are the one they're gonna fight.
- [61:43]
C
And understanding that and building a foreign policy that was based around this idea that take Latin America. We went in, we exploited it, we toppled regimes, and then we came to realize the point you're making. So for the last 40 or 50 years, really ever since the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, both parties decided, let's have a different approach to Latin America. Let's partner with them. Let's try to. We'll figure out a way to help them restructure their economies, we help them transition. Almost every Latin American country in the early 80s was a military junta. They all became democracies by the 90s, with the exception of Cuba. That whole process of partnering, integration, cooperation, law enforcement cooperation, drug cooperation, ended up making the United States much more influential in Latin America. And it produced Mexico, now is half a middle class society. There's no migration from Mexico into the US Anymore because there are jobs there. All these good things happened. But it points to the dilemma you're describing. This is complicated. It's messy. You have to treat countries that are really not your equal line like your equal. You have to give them respect and defer to them sometimes. And yet it has worked miraculously well with throwing that all away for this much older version of power and coercion, which doesn't work. It's a sort of weird thing, right? Everybody there was this caricature which is that everybody in America thought that if China, you know, kept doing what we were saying, China was going to become like America. But what's really happening is America is becoming more like China. We are becoming admiring of China's methods of running the economy, right? State run capitals, controlling the population, of buying, you know, mineral rights around the world. It's like we are becoming them.
- [63:52]
B
And it's such a strange bargain for a country like ours to make that has so benefited from a world order that we ourselves created and the subterfuge of coups. Not only is it exhausting, not only is it sort of undercutting the values by which we think we stand for, it's not sustainable. And it's, it's a much more volatile system. And by the way, a constitutional republic is not really the best system by which to graft an imperial leader onto. So let's say he builds his giant ballroom with all the gold trimmings and he knocks down the wall like the next guy can just undo it. Because that's kind of how, you know, and when you start going into these systems that they're setting up of resentment, I don't know that we're going to be able to get that back back. I don't know. I don't know how other countries would be able to trust us knowing that one person who just decides to push it as far as you can push it can just come in and what did Trump do? Pulled out of 60 treaties the other day.
- [65:05]
C
Yeah, you know, it's a, it's a, it's something that's true in personal life as well. As well. Right? Like real deep abiding trust takes decades to build.
- [65:15]
B
Right.
- [65:16]
C
It's a lot of hard work. Rupturing trust is very easy because. Exactly as you say. Because after this, every European country, every Canadian, the Australians, they always know the Americans could do this again. So I kind of have to hedge. I kind of have to have an insurance policy. I kind of have to have a way out, some kind of diversification. And that's the tragedy. We had been so reliable that the world never thought that our allies never thought they needed an insurance policy. They needed to hedge against, you know, against our becoming crazy rogue imperialists. And now they do.
- [66:04]
B
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- [68:42]
C
We are leaving them leaderless, we are leaving them disunited and leaderless precisely because their strength came from being part of a whole, right? They individually, none of them, many of them are pretty strong, you know, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh largest economies in the world. But what gave them the power was that we were all together, we were united. So we'll end up in a kind of multipolar world, which is like the 19th century world, very unstable, very volatile, prone to war miscalculation, except this time we have nuclear weapons. So not a happy scenario. Also not a world in which freedom has as much capacity to expand. And to my mind, what is strange about all of it is we took something where we were at the center, where we were the rule setter, where we were the agenda set, and we've turned it into something where we've got this little box of the Western hemisphere which is by the way, the least important of the three main regions in terms of even our own trading. Our main trading partners are in Europe and Asia. But I tend to think, John, that maybe it's just, again, I'm an optimistic immigrant. This is not going to last. This is not going to last. Americans don't like this, I don't think. I think the idea that America stands for nothing, stands for no higher ideals. The idea that the United States is just a bully, that it's going to literally, consciously emulate the ways of old fashioned imperialists, that is going to essentially become a version of Putin's Russia. I don't think this is popular. I don't think people like it. I think that we are going through a bad phase in American history and I think there is going to be some, at some point the fever breaks. And I think the problem is, I've.
- [70:46]
B
Been hearing that for a very, very, very long time.
- [70:48]
C
I know, I know, I know, I know. And I, and this is why I said to you, to me, the biggest puzzle is that the fever hasn't broken. But I, but you know, sometimes these things takes longer because of, it's, because.
- [70:59]
B
It'S too flattering to, I think that nostalgia that you talk about to a group of people that feel, and by the way many of them feel rightfully let down that the systems that we talked about that created the prosperity in the world did leave them behind and our system was not fast enough to catch up. And we did have a problem with not gaining control over immigration. None of these stories is completely invented out of whole cloth. The thing I worry about is the narrative that we're describing is one that makes perfect sense to what we observe in the world. But as we saw, you know, let's take Minneapolis as an example. I look at that video and I see something very different than what apparent. I mean, when the president, United States, an hour afterwards, just come out and say, that's a domestic terrorist. Who's. That was a terrorist attack, trying to murder an ICE agent. And I'm like, pretty sure that, you know, you know, someone said like, she was a well trained operative in a domestic terror attack. And you're like, like, well, someone's trained in that. But it's not her. It. It's the officers. They're the ones that are tr. They're the ones that. It seemed like getting back to our point, there were a lot of different ways that they could have accomplished deescalating that situation beyond killing the person, but they chose that. And it was a choice. Somebody was criticiz. I see people criticizing liberal saying, right, so it's okay that she tried to murder that agent. You're like, no, we're not saying it's okay that she tried to murder an agent. What we're saying is from what we saw, that's not what she was trying to do. But we have two different interpretations. So my view of what are we doing in the world, I wonder, did they view it as, see America's back? And that's. Oh, yeah. And that's how they.
- [72:57]
C
Yeah.
- [72:58]
B
And that's how they digest it. I hope that this, it feels alien to me. It's surprising that someone, an authoritarian move like Trump's normally a populist, is more popular than he is.
- [73:13]
C
Yeah. I mean, and, and that's the hope again, you know, that he's governing to his base.
- [73:17]
B
Right.
- [73:18]
C
Which he's doing very well. But he is losing, you know, the, the majority. Not a huge majority, but it does say, I mean, his approval ratings are in the, in the, the high 30s at this point. But what you have to hope then is that the next Democrat, or honestly, frankly, a Republican, like a John McCain type Republican would come up and say, look, we're proud of the things we've done. We are proud that we were the richest country in the history of the world. We were also the most generous country in the history of the world. And I want to save the lives of the poorest people in Africa if I can do it at 1% of the federal budget. Right. There's, there's. Sometimes I worry the Democrats are too scared to make the argument that, you know, there's something honorable and noble about the kind of things we were doing.
- [74:06]
B
Oh, I, I think they're too scared to make almost any argument at this point. And, and they don't have the. The wherewithal. And I think what I see in the Trump administration is I, I think at times they even have some worthy goals. But when they have a choice, you know, Trump says we could do it the easy way or we could do it the hard way. I think what they like is doing it the hard way, because the hard way is a way of showing power.
- [74:32]
C
Exactly.
- [74:32]
B
There is a way for them to do immigration enforcement in this country that doesn't involve beating the shit out of people in target parking lots.
- [74:39]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, by the way, that is the place the Democrats should be, because, as you say, the Democrats totally mishandled immigration over the last 10 years. Biden, it was a disaster. You don't want to be supporting massive illegal immigration. It's wrong. It's bad. Right. And so the question is, how do you get at this?
- [75:00]
B
That's right.
- [75:01]
C
And is there a way to do it that is more consistent with our values and yet is very effective and very hard line? And, I mean, look, as a legal immigrant, I in particular don't like the idea that you can cut. You can cut the line, as it were, but, you know, there's a way to do it that's consistent with our values.
- [75:18]
B
And there's also, I think, you know, there's the sense that, yeah, if people are murderers and rapists and all that stuff and they're still in the country. Yeah. Get them. Like, overwhelmingly, Americans support that. And if that is what they were trying to accomplish, they could do it. But in the manner that they're doing it, it's almost as though they want the confrontation and they want the provocation. And so everything is done in the most, you know, egregious manner they can possibly think of because they want the fight. And that's what you said, and that's what makes me think, oh, you know what? This isn't even incompetence. This isn't mercurial whims of addicted. This is the plan, right? What their end game on that is, I don't know.
- [76:06]
C
And it's sort of the opposite of what the whole point of liberal democracy is. You know, this is kind of like highly mobilized societies charged to find internal enemies. And it feels very different. The whole point of liberal democracy is you live in your house, the government respects your privacy, nobody interferes with your. You have your wonderful private life, civil society builds. That's what it used to be. And that's what the whole idea of capitalism and liberal democracy was.
- [76:38]
B
And American democracy. The craziest thing to me has been watching the don't tread on me crowd flip over to. You obey and you comply. That's what the founders want, an idealization of state power. That's right.
- [76:53]
C
That the president should be the one doling out, I'm going to give Nvidia this contract. I'm not going to give it to Exxon because you wasn't nice to me. And now the Swiss can have lower tariffs because they gave me a gold bar. I mean, that is that state power of a kind that no president has ever wielded.
- [77:13]
B
It was only, you know, maybe 25 years ago that Francis Fukuyama wrote the end of, you know, what was it? The, the, the, the end of history. The end of history. And that. It was that democracy, liberal democracy in particular, had triumphed over history.
- [77:30]
C
And now it looked like that at the time. You know, it's funny, it's like, it's like that's the thing about life is, you know, this is what gives me hope, John. Nothing stays the same. So that's what we have to hope.
- [77:43]
B
To the ramparts. Fareed. Zakaria. Fareed, thank you. Boy, what a, what a lovely chance to catch up. I, I've really enjoyed it. I hope I get a chance to see you again. Freed Zakaria, host of CNN's Freed Zakaria GPS Good luck over there at CNN. I don't know who's buying it next, but I hope that, that they believe in you and that you stay on and, and keep going from your lips to God's ears. All right. Well, actually we have, we haven't talked in a while, but I'll see what I can do. Fareed Zakaria, thanks for joining us.
- [78:19]
C
Pleasure.
- [78:23]
B
Fareed. I haven't seen him in a dog's age. He, he was the, he was the most frequent guest on the Daily Show.
- [78:32]
A
You can see why. Yeah.
- [78:33]
B
And now he's. I wonder if they, you know, what happens when they, when they sell cnn. Do they sell it for parts? Does he get just like left out on a curb. And then anybody can drive by and just pick it up.
- [78:45]
A
Like just with a sign, a piece of paper that says free on it.
- [78:49]
B
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
- [78:51]
A
Works well. Or they just start shutting parts down. Like, remember CNN Plus? That was a moment. Oh, God, yeah.
- [78:57]
B
They did that for like a week. And then they were like, ah, fuck this. This seems like it might be hard. And then go, I really like that. I don't even know who's going to get it. But the President Trump is like, I'll decide who gets to buy. And you're like, sure. That's not. I think that's how business works. You, you, you basically two people come to the father and say, I would like it. It's like, Solomon, I'll cut CNN in half. And then one of you can take. Yeah.
- [79:22]
A
And then the father says, you basically says, you have X amount of time to make it worth my while, you know?
- [79:28]
B
Right, right. You got to make it worth my while and you got to change it so that every time I turn it on, it makes me feel good. That's the only thing that works, by the way. I thought it was interesting that, you know, I came into it with sort of the idea that, oh, we're being led by this sort of mercurial and they're following the whims and I don't know, but I did leave thinking, oh, this is a darker, deeper plan.
- [79:50]
A
There does seem to be like a unifying theory, weirdly, which is. I mean, I think it goes back to what you say, which is big fuck small. You can see it from what's going on in Minneapolis to what's going on in Venezuela. It's the one thing that seems to unite at all, which is just like this dick swinging contest.
- [80:08]
B
But it's big fuck small. But it's in. In regards to. It's not just a theory of power. It's a theory of returning to a more colonial economy, an extraction economy of those weaker economies and your country being more homogenous. Like, there is actually now metrics rather than just, oh, we have more weapons, so we can take what we want. Like, but why are we doing it?
- [80:36]
A
I also think something that you touched on that I can't get my head around is like the ideological malleability of maga. Like, two seconds ago, it was America first, a type of isolationism. And then. And Steve Bannon, who was the mouthpiece partially for it, is now saying, well, there is that Western exceptionalism for isolation. It's like, oh, okay, there's a lot.
- [80:59]
B
Of exceptions to go along there. But I think that the larger point is it is a return to great homogenous heritage based powers extracting the resources they need from the unwashed masses of lessers. Like it's that. I think it's that dirty and dark in a lot of respects. And what they don't understand is the fresh hell that they've unleashed, not just morally, but in terms of stability and their ability to manage it.
- [81:32]
A
Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna miss the post war world order when it's gone.
- [81:37]
B
Yeah, they're gonna. I kind of like that you're gonna miss this world. You know what? Maybe that's the way to go here. Why don't we just. Fucking guilt. We worked very hard on that world order. You're gonna miss it when it's gone. It's a terrible, terrible thing. Now we've been gone forever. While we were gone, was the audience still active in some way? Were there things that they. Are we. Are we done?
- [81:59]
A
Absolutely.
- [82:00]
B
All right. What are they?
- [82:01]
A
Got loads of questions for you.
- [82:02]
B
All right, let's do it.
- [82:04]
A
First up, John.
- [82:05]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [82:06]
A
Bill and Hillary Clinton have announced that they won't comply with the subpoena from the House Oversight Committee's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Do you think that they should comply?
- [82:17]
B
I absolutely do. But why should they comply if the Department of Justice is not complying with releasing the files? Like does. Is compliance a kind of specialized individual indigenous opportunity or is it. Should it be universal? I mean, the Department of Justice has subpoenaed them to testify in the Jeffrey Epstein case while not complying with releasing the files. So how does that comport in any. But do I personally think they should comply? Absolutely, absolutely. And, and if they've got something to hide or an affair like, yes, we should know about all this. This is, this is bonkers. How long this is going on and.
- [83:00]
A
We have only seen such a fraction. What I think I was reading. It's like 2 million files, stuff to come out. There's. It's 1% is what I've seen. Yeah, like that we've seen.
- [83:09]
B
And the casual nature in these emails are like, hey, can you get me an Indian and a redhead? Like it's. They're just casually. It's literally like they're ordering from, you know, uber eats. I mean, it's just. And the fact that we don't.
- [83:25]
A
Spelling errors. It's humiliating. That would bother Jillian the most. It's just, it's so these people, you think they're Titans of the world.
- [83:34]
B
And they can't now.
- [83:36]
A
Now, the BlackBerry.
- [83:39]
B
The grammar police have also indicted.
- [83:42]
A
The Grammar Police are doing more here than.
- [83:45]
B
No, I think. I think that's wise. But absolutely, they should. They should comply, and the Department of Justice should comply. And these victims of this heinous case should finally get some of the justice and peace that they deserve. For God's sakes.
- [83:59]
A
Preach fucking thing. Next up, John, which one do you like doing more? The Daily show or the Weekly Show?
- [84:09]
B
Oh, that is an excellent question.
- [84:12]
A
Awkward. We're all listening.
- [84:17]
B
Anytime you can do something in your house. If they would let me do the Daily show from my house, it may have the edge. It is. It's. The whole thing is just per. You guys know that generally when I'm not doing this show or the Daily show, that I am in a state of stasis where the charger is unplugged and I sit quietly not talking to anybody for five days. So I love the interaction of all of it. It helps. You know, I spend all the rest of my time, when I'm not doing that, reading articles about how not to get Alzheimer's. And the only way to do it, apparently, is to continue collaborating and being around people and engaging in the world. And this is the manner by which I choose to do it. And you are the people that I love doing it with. So that's.
- [85:15]
A
Nah, take that Daily Show. Yeah, that was the takeaway.
- [85:20]
B
I meant the. Both.
- [85:20]
A
Yeah, no, no, no, cut that. I'm taking it.
- [85:24]
B
But I will say the commute to the Weekly show is much more.
- [85:30]
A
It's pretty good.
- [85:31]
B
They got any more. Any more for us?
- [85:34]
A
Yeah, Saya joined Instagram. John, does that mean you're through with Twitter?
- [85:39]
B
Sorry, X. I did join, but I'm not really sure what to do with it.
- [85:46]
A
No one else is, unfortunately.
- [85:48]
B
I joined it. And. And. And then. But then I was like, like, so now what do I do? And then I was like, so that I have to take a picture if I want to put something on there. Like, you can't just write. You got to take a picture. So I. I haven't used it yet, but I did join it and I am going to put something there. I. I'll probably, like, put our stuff on there and Daily show stuff on there and maybe figure out some other. If I could figure it out. But yeah, tw. Twitter's rough, man. Like, it's like there's only so many times that I say something random on Twitter, like where I can be told I'm a Jew. Where you're just like, hey, this is getting a little, like. I know. I'm aware. Like, not hiding. It'd be okay if. You don't have to jump on and tell me, like. And the thing. I don't. And by the way, Instagram could be the same thing. I have no idea. It just seems like a slightly less toxic environment than the one that appears to have developed. But you guys. Guys. You guys are on it. What do you think?
- [86:47]
A
Just toxic in a different way?
- [86:50]
B
Well, I think people are going to tell me I'm a Jew on both platforms, and. And. And I'm that. I mean, the nice thing for me is my life is relatively drab, so there will be no posturing about the fabulous, you know, fabulosity of all this. So I. I feel no pressure in. In that regard. As you guys can see, we were laughing about it earlier. By the way, I dress and look like I gave up about 17 years.
- [87:15]
A
Ago, so I'm sure there's some thirst traps on the camera. Roll. Waiting. Waiting for their moment.
- [87:21]
B
Yeah, listen, thirst traps. I don't even. I shower in my clothes.
- [87:26]
C
It's.
- [87:26]
B
It's. It's bad. Jillian, are you on. You're on Instagram, too?
- [87:29]
A
Yeah, yeah, I'm on Instagram. I'm not on X, the Everything app. I. I love myself too much for that. It.
- [87:37]
B
People are. It's wild, man. Like, it's. And. And you really don't. Like, you just think to yourself, like, I really do hope, actually this is a Russian bot. Because if there's a human being out there who really felt the need in their day, like, seconds after I posted something, to just jump on there and be like, I'll never forgive you for the rally to restore sanity. You're like, where. What's your life? What's your life?
- [88:02]
A
The good news is it certainly is a Russian bot.
- [88:05]
B
They all are Russian bots.
- [88:07]
A
Well, I can't wait to see your Instagram aesthetic.
- [88:09]
B
Oh, it's a lot like my Pinterest boards.
- [88:13]
A
Oh, okay.
- [88:15]
B
It's going to be mostly Ann Taylor. Is that still a company?
- [88:20]
A
Yes.
- [88:21]
B
All right. I thought that was it.
- [88:24]
A
All right.
- [88:24]
B
I thought that was a reference from a while back, but I wasn't quite sure. Well, guys, it's so good to be back with you and to get my Alzheimer's medicine for the day and we'll move there. But as always, great preparation, great work. So lovely to have you guys back. Lead producer Lauren Walker. Producer Brittany Mvic Producer Jillian Spear. Video editor and engineer Rob Votolo, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce. And our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Thank you guys so much for rejoining us after a lovely break and we shall see you guys next week. The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. Hey, folks, you know, we're around the holidays now and a lot of people are looking for where to make their donations at the end of the year. And it is like it's hard to figure out about who's really doing a good job and who's, you know, maybe a little bit wasteful and maybe you're giving them money and maybe they're going on a cruise. I don't know what they're doing. They could be, they could be very much going on a cruise. Well, this company, GiveWell, they've done the research for you. They've spent 70,000 hours on research. It helps donors find highly cost effective programs because that's the key. It's not. Come on on. You're a generous person, you're a nice person, you're a good person, you're a good neighbor. But you do want to know that the money you're given has some effectiveness. Well, GiveWell spent 18 years researching global health poverty alleviation and only directs funding to the highest impact opportunities that they found. This is, man, this is the thing. And it's not even like gives it four stars. Like they're really looking into does your money do anything? And you can find all the research and recommendations on their site for free. And thanks to the donors who choose to sponsor the research, GiveWell doesn't take a cut from your tax deductible donation to their recommended funds. So it's a hell of a service. To make a tax deductible donation Today, go to givewell.org and pick podcast and enter the weekly with Jon Stewart at checkout. Make sure they know that you heard about GiveWell from the Weekly with Jon Stewart. Again, that's givewell.org to donate or find out more. Shopping is hard, right? But I found a better way. Stitch fix online Personal styling makes it easy. I just give my stylist my size, style and budget preferences. I order boxes when I want and how I want. No subscription required. And he sends just for me, pieces plus outfit recommendations and styling tips. I keep what works and send back the rest. It's so easy. Make style easy. Get started today at stitchfix. Com Spotify. That's stitchfix. Com Spotify.
- [91:27]
C
Paramount podcasts.