Welcome to the daily show. Thank you. My name is John Stewart.
Man, do we have a show for tonight. Later on, I'm going to be joined by our guest Ruter Bregman. He is my alltime, and I mean this alltime favorite Dutch historian.
Yeah, that's right. You heard me. Suck on that.
Herman von Deljunk, who is another Dutch historian that we looked up backstage. But first, and I'm so glad you're with us today. Let's talk about our beloved president.
He's in a he's show some respect. He's in a bit of a tough situation right now since he ran on fixing the economy. And fixing the economy is very complicated.
It's very tricky. You need professionals. But Trump is one of those guys who's like, "I can do it.
I know what I'm doing. " He watched the YouTube video and he opened up the hood and he was like, "Oh, it's the wire from the carburetor and the no let me. " Oh, it's on fire.
And then his wife comes out. He's like, "I told you to call somebody. " And then he's like, "You don't believe in me.
" and seen. Now you see why I'm not in many movies. The point being, yesterday Trump sat down for an interview with NBC's Meet the Press host, Kristen Welker, and the challenge was clear.
The president had to find a way to persuasively take credit for the remaining good parts of the economy while subtly assigning blame to Joe Biden for the bad on fire parts. Let's see how Trump threaded this rhetorical needle. I think the good parts of the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy.
nailed it. He went right at it. No attempt at persuasion or allegory or metaphor.
Trump, good, bad, and bad. He's a regular Shakespeare. Maybe Shakespeare would have been better off with the Trump approach.
Act one, scene one. Romeo and Juliet. Hey, Juliet.
It's Romeo. Let's then kill ourselves. and see.
I want to thank my family. Look, I'm trying very hard in this new Trump flood the zone media ecosystem strategy to not get too high or low, to not take the bait, to find things in my life that give me pleasure or peace. For instance, quick story.
I have a niece, 11 years old, loves dolls. I was going to get her 20 or 30 of them for her birthday, just to see the joy of a child. You You can't put a price tag on that.
It gives me great solace. Anyway, like I said, I'm not trying to take these interviews personally. I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls.
First of all, I don't think we consider 11 year olds baby girls. Second of all, you don't know what she needs. She'd been through a lot this year.
How many dolls would you get her? What is the appropriate number of dolls to get a beautiful baby 11-year-old girl? Mr President, I think they can have three dolls or four dolls.
It's just not that many dolls. I mean, okay, sure, she could have a small tea party with the dolls, but her dream had been a quasi realistic concave reenactment with dolls. That's what she wanted.
But fine, fine. All right, it's fine. It's fine.
I'll just tell her the president of the United States said no. You know what? It doesn't matter.
Dolls are not her only happy place anyway. She also loves taking standardized tests. No, it's true.
Very arudite. So, I was thinking of getting her this wonderful baby's first SAT kit. It has all the Scantron sheets and around 250 number two pencils.
She's going to go crazy. She is going to love it. They don't need to have 250 pencils.
They can have five. Mother, how dare you? What kind of a man would deny this poor girl her full compleiment of pencils for her dream standardized testing toy kit?
Is that man a Ebenezer Scrooge? B, the Grinch, C, an evil stepmaster. Or D, all of the above.
Oh, that's right. She can't answer because she's already used her entire pencil quota. I have to say like when Trump is talking about what people should do and get like dolls and pencils, Trump has such a depression era view of what kids play with in 2025.
Kids don't need 20 sets of those hoops you hit with a stick as you as you go down the street. Just one hoop is Jim Dandy. But look, to be fair to Donald Trump, his austerity pitch to the American people is in line with the modest way in which Trump conducts his life.
Trump has a monastic view of simple living that says, "Hey, what if Saddam Hussein's palace had a view of Central Park? We're standing in my apartment at Trump Tower. Some people consider it to be the greatest department in the world, and some people think it's what would look like inside Marie Antuinette's vagina.
It was notoriously well-appointed. Look, I do want to hand it to Trump. If you notice a very sparing use of pencils and dolls in the He does walk the walk.
But look, here's the truth. If a Democrat had even hinted at toy rationing for American children, we'd have a full week of Fox special reports on the sobbing children of socialist America and a boom in guntoing patriots going, "You can have my GI Joe when you pry it from a kung fu grip. But at least we're finally getting to address in a substantive manner Trump's chaotic stewardship of what was the world's most stable economy and how Americans are going to have to sacrifice financially and tamp down their consumerist impulse.
And that is what has driven so much of our economy and I guess our waste. And I'm sure the president will use this interview with Welker to cheerlead the effort to a more financially responsible future for all of us. We're gonna have a big beautiful parade.
A military parade. Yeah, sure. We're going to celebrate our military.
We have the greatest military price. People uh peanuts compared to the value of doing it. We can't afford not to do it.
Why don't you believe in me? If you hadn't spent so much on dollars and pencils, we weren't even talking about this and see. But this is the brilliance of Trump.
In the same interview where he says to Americans, "Sorry about your Christmas, suck it up. " He talks about a $90 million parade that just so happens to fall on his birthday and is totally worth it. We have the greatest missiles in the world.
We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world and we're going to celebrate it.
I don't know, Mr President, if you know how submarines work, but dragging them down Pennsylvania Avenue will most likely void the warranty. But this is why it's so hard to pin Trump down on everything. Because to get to substantive policy questions, you have to face down the fire hose of his nonsense and that moves you off track.
His frenetic nature that means we all end up suffering from a kind of secondhand ADHD, a viral cloud of his unfocused weaving that gives all of us brain fog. Well, no more. Hi, Sharks.
When I saw the president of the United States starting out on tariffs and ending up on dolls and parades and pencils, I thought there's got to be a better way to help Americans figure out which of the things it's okay to get upset about and which things are just himing off. So, I invented this chart. Let me show you how it works.
First, we take something the president said. Donald Trump says that he is directing the Bureau of Prisons to reopen Alcatres and then we figure out is that okay? Sure.
It's okay. It's the kind of thing that's okay to just let go. It's just a stupid thing to keep us occupied to lose focus on his actual policies.
It's okay not to take the bait to not get sucked into but why would you want to reopen Alcatraz? What the is that? Why would you want to do that?
The president says he wants to use the island to quote house America's most ruthless and violent offenders in this notorious federal prison. It closed in 1963 because it was too expensive to run and repair. It's now been a museum.
What did Trump think we're low on prisons? What do you Although I guess any opportunity for Trump to open a prison and simultaneously close a museum is too good to pass up, but it'll take hundreds of millions of dollars or I don't know how many dollars and pencils, but it's a lot. Does Does Doge know about this?
Does Alcatraz Alcatraz officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment because they run a museum. They're a museum. They're not that's what they're they're not they're not like tough talking wardens.
They're dosent with art history degrees. The only person working there is busy fixing those machines that flatten pennies. That's the only person that works there.
And here's the crazy part about Trump. He throws out these crazy ideas and then those crazy ideas have days of shelf life. This is a press conference today announcing a partnership with the NFL draft.
But now the NFL guys have to just sit there and nod through all this Alcatraz nonsense. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate, right?
Alcatraz, sing and Alcatraz. Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something. One person almost got there, but they, as you know, the story, they found his clothing, a lot of shark bites, a lot of lot of problems.
Right now, it's a big Hulk that's sitting there rusting and rotting. It sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak. Got a lot of qualities that are interesting.
And I think they they make a point. What point? There is no point.
That's not It's It's fine. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
The chart was supposed to prevent this kind of overeotional digression. This one's on me. I am not leading a chart-based life right now.
I apologize. I can do better. I can do better.
Let's go again and judge whether or not this is an important pronouncement or a brain fogging digression. President Trump shared an AI generated image of himself depicted as the Pope on social media yesterday. It's okay.
It's okay. It's it's it's it's okay. It's just it's fine.
It's not the most presidential thing, but Trump and the Pope do share the same taste in interior design, so it's not the worst. And it's just a troll. Well, it's not hurting anybody.
I mean, Trump wasn't going to heaven anyway, so it sounds like it's going to I'm not going to get distracted by it. I'm not But he can't really be the pope, can he? Can he be the pope?
The last time a non-Cardinal was pope was back in 1378 when the Italian archbishop Bartolo Priyano, who had been a monk, was controversially chosen from outside of the College of Cardinals, and he became Pope Urban V 6th. So, will Donald Trump follow in the 647year-old footsteps of Bartolo Priyano? No, he won't.
You see what you're doing to people, Trump? MSNBC's got to waste valuable air time fact-checking your nonsense. Time they could have spent frowning, sighing, and rolling their eyes.
Is there anything during this chaotic news cycle that maybe we should keep our eyes on? Don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president? I don't know.
Holy That's not okay. But, by the way, I don't know. That wasn't a gotcha question.
Should the president uphold the Constitution? On Millionaire, that'd be the warm-up question like, "What color is an orange? " or "Name a planet with people on it.
" I mean, if you can't answer that the president's supposed to uphold the Constitution, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't even let you become a citizen. And before you might say, "But they never told me I was supposed. " Let me refer you back to a cold day in January.
Preserve, protect, and defend. Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the United States.
Were you even awake? Preserve, protect, and defend, i. e.
uphold. It's not optional. It is not an opportunity for you to lawyer shop loopholes to our nation's founding document.
You took an oath in front of God and those who are fighting against God. But the important thing is this. Here's the problem.
The volatility of nonsense from consequential to truly disorienting is unfathomable. While we're chasing Pope and Alcatraz stories, the Trump administration has gutted funding for America's food banks. They've hollowed out the FAA to the point where Newark airport is basically inoperable and not in its usual way.
And then there's this. Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. laid off nearly all workers at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.
The program offers monitoring and treatment for first responders and survivors diagnosed with 9/11 related health conditions. Mother, I agree. Do you know how bad you have to be to make the lives of sick 9/11 responders worse?
The Trump administration is now number two on the 911 evil power rankings. Al-Qaeda is still number one, but you're closing the gap. And trust me, there is nothing that you can do to distract me from making sure that those folks are going to get what they've earned from the government.
The White House posting this AI image of a buff Jedi Trump to mark Star Wars Day on May 4th while touting his immigration crackdown. Here's the thing. I know I'm not supposed to get distracted, but he's not a Jedi in that picture.
Do you understand? Trump is presenting himself as a Jedi, but his lightsaber is red. And the only way you can have a red lightsaber is by infusing its kyber crystal with the power of your rage and hate, thereby corrupting it into a vessel for the dark side.
Therefore, therefore, every one of those photos that Trump is putting out there, he is admitting he is admitting he's not a Jedi, but in fact a Sith Lord. And there are always two. So, the question is this.
Who is he working with? And why do I know all this? Well, I happen to have an extensive collection of Star Wars action figures.
30 to 37 of them, actually. Some call them dolls. I call them friends.
