April 16, 2024 • 35 mins
Jon Stewart unpacks Iran launching missiles at Israel and resident Civil War historian Donald Trump claiming to be the solution. Plus, with Trump’s criminal trial beginning, Desi Lydic, Ronny Chieng, and Josh Johnson go head-to-head to decide which persecuted martyr he resembles most. Then, White House and National Security Correspondent, David E. Sanger, joins Jon to discuss his latest book, “New Cold Wars.” Sanger details how America’s “arrogance” in the decades after the Cold War led to underestimating Russia’s imperialistic plans, including its invasion of Ukraine, and how a similar pattern is unfolding with China. They also discuss how America’s foreign policy track record might impact its role in simultaneous “new cold wars” with Russia and China.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
From the most trusted journalist at Comedy Center.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
It's America's only source for news. This is the daily
Churn with your home show door. Hi, everybody welcome. Oh
(00:47):
I almost I almost surprise myself. What the heck? What
is my head doing? There? We go? Hey, you are
going to do show? Miname is John Stuart unbelievable show.
They're already exhausted from the open. By the way, how
was your weekend? My weekend was breaking At this moment.
(01:09):
Israel underfire from Iran.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's just raining rockets with those sirens blaring out.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
We do effectively have World War three in progress.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Oh no, not world War three. I'm still writing a
rock war on all my checks. But yes, the skies
above Israel were lit up like I want to say
Christmas tree, but that's probably not for that area. Menora
(01:50):
is the moment society has dreaded since the arms cysts
of nineteen forty five finally upon us. As Einstein said,
he doesn't know what weapons World War II will be
fought with, but he knows the next ones will be
fought with sticks and stones. This is John Stewart signing
up May God bless us and everyone, and let future
civilizations know that we could not overcome our fatal nature.
(02:14):
In the end, there was almost no damage, as Israel,
the US, and other rallies shot down ninety nine percent
of Iran's missiles and drones. Huh, wasn't world worth three?
(02:36):
I certainly regret doing this. I I oh boy, moment
of panic and I guess sort of a primitive instinct.
But is that me did I art garfulk But kudos
(03:03):
to the United States and to Israel. It shows just
how effective a military defense system can be. When you
funnel American dollars away from healthcare and education, it really
helps to build. And the best part is we did
it with no help. The two Amigos, surrounded by hostile
(03:27):
Arab nations united in their zeal to destroy Israel.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
Jordan's air force also intercepted and shot down dozens of
drones that violated its airspace and were on their way
to Israel.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And we've now learned that Saudi Arabia and the UAE
provided real time intelligence that helped track the incoming missiles.
What are the teams in these wars? I don't even
know the teams anymore? The Arab countries are helping Israel.
I don't know what the teams are. We need to
(04:01):
sort this out with jerseys or something, because Iran could
attack at any moment.
Speaker 6 (04:08):
In a statement, Iran said it now considers the matter.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Concluded, Hey, do you hear that we're good?
Speaker 7 (04:20):
We're good.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
We don't. By the way, he was delicious. Really that's
what got me. Anyway, We're gonna be okay.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Israel has vowed it will respond to Iran.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
All right, can I have a word with you? Middle East?
Over here? A shaloma lekam trying to cover all bases. Listen,
I hope this doesn't sound patronizing, but when we in
(05:08):
the West drew your region's borders and set you up
with perfectly functioning dictatorships, we expected a little better. See.
The agreement was we would make up a whole new
bunch of countries, some of which made sense, and in return,
(05:30):
you would give us your delicious oil. That was the deal.
You give us your delicious oil, and we take it.
We certainly didn't expect to get drawn into all the
(05:51):
drama that our actions created, and now these wars have
got us all turned around. At one point, we're helping
a Rock fight Iran, and then we're invading a Rock
and now we're helping to Ran fight Isis. And then
we're using Isis to help fight Huthis that are backed
by Iran. I mean, you know in Gaza, we're actually
(06:11):
bombing them and feeding them. How do you think that
makes it feel? Oh? Oh, oh, did you have a
nice sandwich?
Speaker 7 (06:19):
Run?
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Oh? And apparently now there's two kinds of Islam. I mean,
you could have told us that before we got into this.
As I said earlier, arbitrarily jerrymandered your homeland. So do
better keep that oil coming. And by the way, we
(06:42):
got enough trouble keeping track of our own wars. Like
this weekend, our former president and illustrious historian Donald J.
Trump spoke near one of America's most hallowed battlefields. And
if you thought Lincoln consecrated Gettysburg with his soaring rhetoric,
well buckle up Gettysburg.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
What an un believable battle. That was the Battle of Gettysburg.
What an unbelievable I mean, it was so much and
so interesting, and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful
in so many different ways. It represented such a big
portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Wow. That is plagiarized almost directly from my seventh grade
book report Gettysburg. Wow. I did not know, hadn't my man?
(07:49):
It was vicious and horrible and beautiful? Is he talking
about a Civil War battle or a horse giving birth? Later?
It was bloody, but it's life now, obviously not a
Civil war buff like but unlike me. He even knows
(08:11):
all the famous quotes.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
I go to get his Burg, Pennsylvania, to look and
to watch, and the statement of Roberty Lee, who's no
longer in favor? Did you ever notice that no longer
in favor? Never fight uphill, me, boys, Never fight uphill.
They were fighting uphill? He said, Wow, that was a
big mistake. He lost his great general and they were fighting.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Never fight uphill, me, boys. It is. It is true
the North did have the higher ground, But I'm pretty
(08:53):
sure that Robert E. Lee was not a leprechaun. Ah,
I never fight up here. That's not how to take
back to Narth spotty, lord, you can't be fighting up
here me byes also a minor point, but I'm pretty
sure Robert Lee would not have told them never fight uphill,
(09:14):
since he's the one who told them to fight up hill.
He wasn't like, hey, you know, they go up the hill.
I'm gonna be so mad if they do that. They
go up the hill of Long Street. Actually told him
they'll go up the hill that Roberty Lee said me
byes will do what they want. Although, to be fair
(09:37):
to former President Donald Trump, he does have a lot
on his mind right now.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
Now breaking news the first ever criminal trial involving a
former president will soon get underweight.
Speaker 8 (09:46):
Oh my god, Donald, don't run up that Hell me bye,
stay down, stay down to hear me by, stay down. Yes,
After years of anticipation, our criminal trial of a former
president has begun, and by all accounts, it is absolutely revetting.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Forty minutes ago, you wrote to an observation that I
was very surprised Trump appears to be sleeping.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Tell us about.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
That, well, Jakie appeared to be asleep.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
A jake? What part of head down? Ice closed? Drool
coming of his mouth? Do you not get over here?
He's snoring, he's doing the hong shoe, he's doing the
me There's a piece of paper going up and down
and up and down in his mouth. He's asleep. Imagine
(10:53):
committing so many crimes you get bored at your own trial.
Move on to the good stuff nowth in case, in
case you've lost track, this is the trial where Trump
allegedly paid hush money to an adult film star that
he slept with and then allegedly falsified business records to
cover it up. Or, as Trump would put it.
Speaker 9 (11:14):
This is an elegical persecution. This is a persecution like
never before. Nobody's ever seated a big like it. And again,
it's a case that should have never been brooked. It's
to the soul character. And that's why I'm hurried for
having to be here.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, it's true. Trump is always very proud to be
part of any assault on America. Look even oh worse, Yes,
mister Stewart, we agree. Look, even if the prosecution is
(11:54):
a bit of a stretch, it's not persecution. The guy's
not Nelson Mandela or Jesus.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
I don't mind being Nelson Mandela because I'm doing it
for a reason.
Speaker 6 (12:03):
Trump also shared two articles that compared him to Jesus Christ.
One was titled quote the Crucifixion of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Hi don't let him crucify me. Boy. We had full
teme coverage out of the courthouse in Lower Manhattan to day.
Here with an update on which Martyr Trump more resembles
Jesus or Nelson Mandela. It's Ronnie Chag and Daisy Lida.
(12:36):
I'm gonna start with Ronnie Chag, Jesus or Mendela.
Speaker 10 (12:40):
Clearly Mendela, all right, both for two heroes unjustly persecuted
by a corrupt legal system. And as Mendela often said,
and I quote, this is a witch hunt hoax.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I've never even met horseface.
Speaker 11 (12:55):
I totally disagree. Ronnie Jesus Christ. He's obviously Jesus Christ.
It's right there in the New Testament or in its sequel,
The Art of the Deal, chapter ten, verse eight, and
lo he evicted the rent controlled tenants. And it was
good and tremendous and vicious and beautiful Jesus.
Speaker 10 (13:17):
Wow. Oh, hang on, hang on, just think about this
on second. Okay, Trump and Mendela they both had three wives, eh, Jesus,
they even have a serious girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Okay, the guy had no riz. I don't think Rizz
is an approval anyway. Mendela was in prison for twenty
seven years, Ronnie, So it's.
Speaker 10 (13:42):
Yes, But if you add up all the prison sentences
Trump got for other people from January sixth, and his
campaign and his business, it's way more than twenty seven years. Okay.
Trump is like ten Nelson mandelas.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
No, Ronnie Trump is Jesus.
Speaker 11 (14:00):
They both have a ton of buildings with their names
on them, filled with portraits of themselves to be worshiped,
and they both sold sneakers, gold sneakers.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Hold On, hold on, I'm sorry to interrupt that this
is ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Okay, Johnson, everybody.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Trump is not Mandela or Jesus. Okay, we all know
that Donald Trump is oj.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
I don't think that, did you say oj Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
John oj Trump? They were both icon celebrities in the eighties.
Plus Donald J. Trump is the J for juice probably,
but most importantly, their obvious guilt didn't deter their loyal fans,
who either think they're innocent.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Or don't care they're guilty.
Speaker 11 (15:00):
Jesus had loyal fans not like this.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
So if he's ojay, you're saying that whether or not
Trump slept with Stormy Daniels or paid Stormy Daniels hush money,
it's not gonna matter. He's walking away a free man.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yes, And personally I'm excited for the moment in the
trial when Trump will drop his pants and say, if
the glove don't fit, you must have quit.
Speaker 8 (15:23):
Well by Donathy and Jocks, everybody won't come back with
David Sanger, don't go away?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Why come back to the time I got tonight a
White House. A national security correspondent for the New York Times.
His latest book is called New Cold Wars, China's Rise,
Russia's Invasion, and America's struggle to defend the West. Please
welcome back to the program, David Sanger. So we wrote
(16:16):
another batter new prot works. David. First of all, thank you.
It's nice to see you again.
Speaker 7 (16:20):
Good to be here.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Is the premise that the United States did a poor
job of managing risk after the fall of the Soviet Union, Well.
Speaker 7 (16:32):
We certainly made a lot of false assumptions, bad assumptions.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
That doesn't sound along the way, Yeah, I.
Speaker 7 (16:38):
Wouldn't be as, wouldn't be as. And the fundamental argument
of the book is that we believed, somehow we deluded
ourselves into believing that China and Russia, each for their
own different reasons would like to sign up to the
Western world that we were going to go say, look,
we got this whole thing figured out. All you guys
do is come in here and sign on the dotted line.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Right, We're going to do a rules based democratic foundation
order and everybody'll be cool with it.
Speaker 7 (17:06):
And that was supposed to be the end of history,
because right we were.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Said, it's the end of history. Western liberalism is triumphant,
and we can all just skate on the glorious booty
that we get from it.
Speaker 7 (17:21):
Right now, you can't blame just him, because there were
a lot of other people believe JUSTI, okay, and I
signed on to a little bit of this myself, so
I confess. But I got to tell you this basically
went on for thirty years, good twenty five anyway, because
we were busy doing the wars on Terry. We were
(17:42):
just talking about those little.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
When you talk about in the book, there's a lot
of stories of how George Bush thought that there would
be a great reprochemont with Putin over there shared dislike
of terrorism and the two of them. I mean, there's
stories in there that come out of James Bond. You're
on a yacht with George Bush and Putin and they've
just seen a very dark version of the Nutcracker. You're like,
(18:05):
it's not even the regular Nutcracker, it's the dark Nutcracker.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
And you're like, I bet Bush really enjoyed that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I'm sure you love anything high.
Speaker 7 (18:13):
So, so this was two thousand and two. We were
in Saint Petersburg. We were floating down the Never River.
They're in a great party boat.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
There's this guy.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
Wait, you were floating down the river with them. I
was floating down on the boat behind it. We weren't
eat like tubing. That's what white house reporters do, isn't it.
We were in the pools, just this sign. The pool
was a river, all right, Okay. So so we're following
him down and there's this guy serving dinner. He's kind
of big and hulking. It turns out it's Pregosion.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay, Jenny Progosion, the head of the Terrible Army.
Speaker 7 (18:53):
Well, at the time, he was putin chef. Okay, his
only job was make sure the meals were good and
a really glowering Wait.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So he's like Bobby Flay and then he turns into
the head of a Mercenary Army.
Speaker 7 (19:14):
Well before he did that, he ran the Internet Research
Agency and tried to fix the twenty sixteen election with
this information.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
They really are renaissance, man, it really is. I mean
that's talent, that's talents. So now this appears to be
going along until George Bush wants them to go after
Islam terrorism. And then at that point Putin wants them
to go after Chechtein.
Speaker 7 (19:41):
Right, or at least Putin wants to use the excuse
to go after Cheschney. And that was the beginning of
Bush beginning to think, you know, maybe this guy isn't
the one we thought he was.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
He looked into his soul.
Speaker 7 (19:50):
Yeah, well, you know, he may have looked at the
wrong soul. So so in two thousand and seven, Putin
shows up at this thing called the Munich Security Conference
and he says, you know, there are parts of Russia
that have been separated from us that really belong to us,
that to the Russia that Peter the Great created. And
(20:11):
remember Putin isn't trying to recreate the Soviet Union. He
thinks the guys around the Soviet Union were idiots. You
go into his office, he's got a big bust of
Peter the Great there, So who do you think he
thinks he is.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Progosian? No? No, no, how do we miss all of this?
And even if we had been onto it, what would
we have done differently?
Speaker 7 (20:36):
So first it was a combination of sort of bad intelligence,
wishful thinking. Oh, sure, he's going to be troublesome, but
at the end of the day, he cares about his
oil exports, his gas exports, more than he really cares
about this. And look up until the weekend before the
invasion happened.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
There's a story.
Speaker 7 (20:57):
No, the invasion of Ukraine in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So all past twenty fourteen, Yeah.
Speaker 7 (21:03):
Twenty fourteen comes, he takes crimea. Obama says, I'm not
going to war for something that used to belong to Russia.
Nobody does sanctions for a year, right, And then next
year the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel signs the nord
Stream two agreement, creates this pipeline that runs from Russia
around Ukraine's what doesn't get any revenue from it, and
(21:24):
straight into Europe. And he says, she says, you know, Putin's.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
A reliable supplier. Is realistic? Yeah?
Speaker 7 (21:31):
Right, okay, reasonable assumption maybe because he really hadn't cut
off gas supplies. So what happens next? Seven years later
he goes after full on Ukraine. The US reveals the
intelligence in starting in the late fall, they get this
remarkable intelligence. They send Bill Burns, the CIA director who
(21:52):
used to be ambassador to Russia, to say, this would
be a really bad idea. Putin says, oh, I'm not
you know, I'm not doing anything. And the weekend before
everybody's back in Munich and there are a bunch of
Europeans saying to me and everybody else, Oh, he's not
really gonna invade. He's just bluffing. He wouldn't risk his
(22:14):
oil revenues. Four days later he invades. The intelligence chief
for Germany was in Kiev the morning of the invasion.
They had to evacuate him because he didn't believe they
would invade.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
So what did he think that noise was? He got
out of town kind of fast. So this is all hindsight,
though in truth, what could we other when someone is
imperialistic in that way? What can other powers do short
of an actual shooting war to prevent these kinds of things.
(22:48):
There's no guarantee that tougher sanctions after CRIMEA would have
deterred him. It sounds like this is kind of his
destiny and he's fulfilling that destiny, come hell or high water.
Speaker 7 (23:02):
So that's the other piece of this, which is we
impose our values on Russia China and we think, well,
we're not going to do something that would get in
the way of our economic interests.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Neither would they.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
So China's a really interesting example. Xhijingping comes in more
than ten years ago. Joe Biden spent a lot of
time with him, traveled around with him. But the intelligence
reports of as she are, this guy's not going to
challenge the West. He's going to tend to his economy,
make sure all is good. Right, We now discover and
you read about in the book, they are these secret
(23:35):
speeches that he gave almost as soon as he came
into office, saying we're going to build up our nuclear
forces to the size of the Russians and the Americans.
We're going to make sure that we take our claims
in the South China. Sea I was out in the
rose garden of the White House when she came to
visit and promised everybody he wasn't going to militarize these
(23:57):
islands they're building in the South China. See a year
or two later, you look on satellite photographs there are
fighter jets showing up on the islands. Kind of looks like.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
That's just convenience. It's not are we lying to them
or are we lying to ourselves? I think more to ourselves.
Speaker 7 (24:15):
So, you know, we did not want to conceive of
a world in which we were back in superpower conflict.
We wanted to live in the world in which the
US was the predominant power. We finally calmed down the
Middle East or doing real well with that, and and
that we could focus on competing with China, some containment
(24:37):
of Russia. And you know, Biden happened to be the
one sitting in the office, sitting in office when this
all fell apart. And most of the book is a
story of what happens when that fell apart. It's the
story of how this Opera Regia nuclear plant in Ukraine,
the biggest nuclear plant in Europe, suddenly everybody's afraid is
going to become the world's biggest h Yeah, right, And
(25:02):
there's an amazing story right from New York City two
years ago October of twenty twenty two, when President Biden
shows up at a fundraiser at James Murdoch's house.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
They're nice, not familiar with the last name, but go ahead.
Speaker 7 (25:17):
Yeah, he's actually sat of the black sheep of the family.
I a Democrat who raises money for Biden among others.
So they're, you know, nice New Yorkers walking around with
their wine looking at his art collection. The President comes
in and says, by the way, we're going through something
that is the closest to nuclear war we've had since
the Cuban missile crisis. They're all looking at each other, like.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
He drops that at a cocktail party.
Speaker 7 (25:44):
I'm sure they all thought that it was really the
moment to get out of the Hamptons.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Don't you think he drops that? And then it's like,
do you guys have breathe like he does.
Speaker 7 (25:53):
Actually, people in the White House were amazing. Now call
it his Armageddon speech, because he had just said the
same thing in the Oval Office.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Right then. Then he turned to everybody and go and
my word is don't. That's a big thing now, he tells.
He tells dictators don't don't. And they're like, okay, haven't
we sowed the seeds of this with our own arrogance
and cavalier approach to a lot of these foreign policy conflicts.
(26:22):
A we always frame things as this is a battle
between democracy and the free world, and liberation and authoritarianism,
But the truth is we're fighting for trade channels and
resources like this is all a function of competing capitalist powers.
And aren't we the ones? I mean, we've invaded more
(26:44):
countries than Russia and China combined. So how do we
give ourselves somehow the passes the white hat guys, when
a lot of our policy has created a lot of
the chaos that they're taking advantage of. It is I'm done,
I'm out of here.
Speaker 7 (27:08):
So there's been a lot of that going on in
American history for a long time. Teddy Roosevelt, you know,
took over his fair share of territory. But I think
in the Biden administration we've had to sort of face
these contradictions because at the beginning of the administration, the
president was saying just what you said, this is a
battle between democracy and autocracy, and everyone says, Okay, that's
(27:30):
pretty clean.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Then he goes to just not true.
Speaker 7 (27:32):
Yeah, Then he goes then he goes to Saudi Arabia
does the fist bump with NBS right, And I was
on that trip.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
They weren't quite sure. How that are you ever home?
Speaker 7 (27:45):
When you cover the White House, you got to go
where the president goes as part of the job. And
then you know, we move on to what's been happening
in Israel and h and the Israel Hamas war. And
as you said earlier, we are in the very odd
position of both providing aid and providing the arms that
(28:06):
are being dropped on Gaza. And I think this administration
has had the hardest time trying to go write that
and obviously is causing a lot of pain, not only
for Gossans, but for people in the administration who are
having a hard time living with.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Would it simplify our position if we stopped pretending our
morals were beyond the reproach of all these other countries?
Would it help us to not have to scold everybody
for failing to live up to principles that we very
clearly do not uphold.
Speaker 7 (28:40):
Well, at least we have some principles. Okay, that's the
one thing.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
We say that. But you know, you can invade a country,
what happened in Iraq. That's you can't call for regime change?
What did we do in Libya? Every time we say
these things, we undercut our own position with I mean,
for God's sakes, Iran is an enemy today because we
overthrew their democratically elected government nineteen fifty three. That's right.
So at what point do we just admit that this
(29:07):
is how we're behaving.
Speaker 7 (29:08):
The odd thing is at the moment that presidents do
admit that, they get chewed up for admitting to American error.
Obama went and apologized to the Iranians.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Saying apologize. I'm just saying, like, take off the mask
and go, you know what this is? It strikes me
as it's colonialism and imperialism in a more modern form.
China is in Africa trying to extract. We're trying to extract.
We're militarizing economic rivalries and creating all kinds of chaos
(29:44):
and death over what is ostensibly trying to get better deals.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
Well, some of it's better deals, some of it is
protecting technology. And I argue in here that with China
as opposed to Russia, this is, first of all, this
is incredible competitor and it's a competitor and a military sphere,
in the technology sphere, in finance, in economics, and we're
their best customer and then they are ours. And that's
(30:11):
really what makes this different from the old Cold War.
So a reason there's new in new Cold Wars, and
there's a reason there's an ass at the end. First
of all, we're fighting too simultaneously. Okay, the old Cold War,
that wasn't the.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Case, fighting the wrong terminology, because isn't that Look, the
only people that never lose a war or the military
industrial complex are the people that sell the weapons. And
if we continue to if we continue to push that,
you know, weaponization of these economic rivalries, aren't we just
(30:46):
playing into that cycle?
Speaker 7 (30:48):
We are playing into the cycle. But if you're in
a world in which vacuums happen, if we say, okay,
we're done with this, you're going to go back and
build our big walls and sort of received from it,
someone fills that space. And that space is going to
get filled largely by China, some by Russia, some by
other authoritarian regimes. And so we've got to make a
(31:09):
really hard and bad choice, which is do we want
to be the one trying to fill that void with
our technology and our principles, understanding that we violate them
all the time, or do we want to let an
authoritarian regime go fill that space, which we know how
that's going to look.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
It seems like what we should do is be honest
about what our aims are in the way that China
went into Africa and did Belton Road, knowing that really
it's about cobalt and lithium, and rather than us going
into Africa and just building up all these small military
juntas that end up creating all those dictatorships that create
(31:52):
so much cash and pain for those countries.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Well, I'd argue that now we're not doing it with cobalt,
We're doing it with semiconductors.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Right.
Speaker 7 (31:59):
So the the big story that we tell in here
went to Taiwan. Spend a lot of time at Taiwan Semiconductor,
which is the biggest producer of the most advanced semiconductors
in the world, and you looked at the question does
that create a silicon shield for the United States and
for Taiwan? In other words, that the Chinese would not
(32:21):
dare take over Taiwan because they would lose access to
Taiwan semiconductors.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
We're going to learn any sentence that begins with would
they dare? Yes, they would dare, and so would we
and so and so.
Speaker 7 (32:37):
My argument here is it's a silicon shield for a
little while, John, but eventually the Chinese are going to
learn how to make everything Taiwan Semiconductor is making. And
at that moment we've got a real Taiwan crisis. And
so the book is sort of a warning head to
what these next twenty or thirty years are going to
look like, because this is not a world in which
(32:57):
these new cold wars are going to end sometime soon.
They're going to be the dominant theme of the next
twenty thirty forty years, long after Putin and She are gone,
and long after Joe Biden and Donald Trump are gone.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I don't believe that last part.
Speaker 7 (33:13):
The Trump's never leaving.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
I think the two of them, honestly, it'll be like
twenty eighty four and they'll be like it's another Biden
Trump rematch. I can't believe it. Two heads in a jar,
who pro wars? It is available now, David Sire and Hijo,
thank You's notch op for tonight before we go. We're
(33:54):
checking with your hosts for the rest of the week.
Don't say so, don't say hello, They'll say excited for
you know, ho's the week? What are we gonna be
looking at? John, I'll be continuing our coverage of the
Trump trial unless someone has the money to keep me quiet.
(34:15):
You are you? Are you asking for Donald Trump to
pay you hush money? No that broke bis can even
pay his own bond.
Speaker 11 (34:26):
No no, no, no no no no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I'm looking for the real players.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
I'm asking the Republican Party to pay me hush money.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Well that's a fair point. Don't say so on all
this week.
Speaker 5 (34:42):
Let me say it again, more sheep is not going
to solve the wolf problem. My advice to the President today,
for what it's worth, mister President, don't stop it. Support
Israel with respect. Go to Amazon and buy a spine on.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch
The Daily Show weeknights at eleven ten Central on Comedy
Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
This has been a Comedy Central podcast show
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
From the most trusted journalist at Comedy Center.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
It's America's only source for news. This is the daily
Churn with your home show door. Hi, everybody welcome. Oh
(00:47):
I almost I almost surprise myself. What the heck? What
is my head doing? There? We go? Hey, you are
going to do show? Miname is John Stuart unbelievable show.
They're already exhausted from the open. By the way, how
was your weekend? My weekend was breaking At this moment.
(01:09):
Israel underfire from Iran.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's just raining rockets with those sirens blaring out.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
We do effectively have World War three in progress.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Oh no, not world War three. I'm still writing a
rock war on all my checks. But yes, the skies
above Israel were lit up like I want to say
Christmas tree, but that's probably not for that area. Menora
(01:50):
is the moment society has dreaded since the arms cysts
of nineteen forty five finally upon us. As Einstein said,
he doesn't know what weapons World War II will be
fought with, but he knows the next ones will be
fought with sticks and stones. This is John Stewart signing
up May God bless us and everyone, and let future
civilizations know that we could not overcome our fatal nature.
(02:14):
In the end, there was almost no damage, as Israel,
the US, and other rallies shot down ninety nine percent
of Iran's missiles and drones. Huh, wasn't world worth three?
(02:36):
I certainly regret doing this. I I oh boy, moment
of panic and I guess sort of a primitive instinct.
But is that me did I art garfulk But kudos
(03:03):
to the United States and to Israel. It shows just
how effective a military defense system can be. When you
funnel American dollars away from healthcare and education, it really
helps to build. And the best part is we did
it with no help. The two Amigos, surrounded by hostile
(03:27):
Arab nations united in their zeal to destroy Israel.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
Jordan's air force also intercepted and shot down dozens of
drones that violated its airspace and were on their way
to Israel.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And we've now learned that Saudi Arabia and the UAE
provided real time intelligence that helped track the incoming missiles.
What are the teams in these wars? I don't even
know the teams anymore? The Arab countries are helping Israel.
I don't know what the teams are. We need to
(04:01):
sort this out with jerseys or something, because Iran could
attack at any moment.
Speaker 6 (04:08):
In a statement, Iran said it now considers the matter.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Concluded, Hey, do you hear that we're good?
Speaker 7 (04:20):
We're good.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
We don't. By the way, he was delicious. Really that's
what got me. Anyway, We're gonna be okay.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Israel has vowed it will respond to Iran.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
All right, can I have a word with you? Middle East?
Over here? A shaloma lekam trying to cover all bases. Listen,
I hope this doesn't sound patronizing, but when we in
(05:08):
the West drew your region's borders and set you up
with perfectly functioning dictatorships, we expected a little better. See.
The agreement was we would make up a whole new
bunch of countries, some of which made sense, and in return,
(05:30):
you would give us your delicious oil. That was the deal.
You give us your delicious oil, and we take it.
We certainly didn't expect to get drawn into all the
(05:51):
drama that our actions created, and now these wars have
got us all turned around. At one point, we're helping
a Rock fight Iran, and then we're invading a Rock
and now we're helping to Ran fight Isis. And then
we're using Isis to help fight Huthis that are backed
by Iran. I mean, you know in Gaza, we're actually
(06:11):
bombing them and feeding them. How do you think that
makes it feel? Oh? Oh, oh, did you have a
nice sandwich?
Speaker 7 (06:19):
Run?
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Oh? And apparently now there's two kinds of Islam. I mean,
you could have told us that before we got into this.
As I said earlier, arbitrarily jerrymandered your homeland. So do
better keep that oil coming. And by the way, we
(06:42):
got enough trouble keeping track of our own wars. Like
this weekend, our former president and illustrious historian Donald J.
Trump spoke near one of America's most hallowed battlefields. And
if you thought Lincoln consecrated Gettysburg with his soaring rhetoric,
well buckle up Gettysburg.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
What an un believable battle. That was the Battle of Gettysburg.
What an unbelievable I mean, it was so much and
so interesting, and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful
in so many different ways. It represented such a big
portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Wow. That is plagiarized almost directly from my seventh grade
book report Gettysburg. Wow. I did not know, hadn't my man?
(07:49):
It was vicious and horrible and beautiful? Is he talking
about a Civil War battle or a horse giving birth? Later?
It was bloody, but it's life now, obviously not a
Civil war buff like but unlike me. He even knows
(08:11):
all the famous quotes.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
I go to get his Burg, Pennsylvania, to look and
to watch, and the statement of Roberty Lee, who's no
longer in favor? Did you ever notice that no longer
in favor? Never fight uphill, me, boys, Never fight uphill.
They were fighting uphill? He said, Wow, that was a
big mistake. He lost his great general and they were fighting.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Never fight uphill, me, boys. It is. It is true
the North did have the higher ground, But I'm pretty
(08:53):
sure that Robert E. Lee was not a leprechaun. Ah,
I never fight up here. That's not how to take
back to Narth spotty, lord, you can't be fighting up
here me byes also a minor point, but I'm pretty
sure Robert Lee would not have told them never fight uphill,
(09:14):
since he's the one who told them to fight up hill.
He wasn't like, hey, you know, they go up the hill.
I'm gonna be so mad if they do that. They
go up the hill of Long Street. Actually told him
they'll go up the hill that Roberty Lee said me
byes will do what they want. Although, to be fair
(09:37):
to former President Donald Trump, he does have a lot
on his mind right now.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
Now breaking news the first ever criminal trial involving a
former president will soon get underweight.
Speaker 8 (09:46):
Oh my god, Donald, don't run up that Hell me bye,
stay down, stay down to hear me by, stay down. Yes,
After years of anticipation, our criminal trial of a former
president has begun, and by all accounts, it is absolutely revetting.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Forty minutes ago, you wrote to an observation that I
was very surprised Trump appears to be sleeping.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Tell us about.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
That, well, Jakie appeared to be asleep.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
A jake? What part of head down? Ice closed? Drool
coming of his mouth? Do you not get over here?
He's snoring, he's doing the hong shoe, he's doing the
me There's a piece of paper going up and down
and up and down in his mouth. He's asleep. Imagine
(10:53):
committing so many crimes you get bored at your own trial.
Move on to the good stuff nowth in case, in
case you've lost track, this is the trial where Trump
allegedly paid hush money to an adult film star that
he slept with and then allegedly falsified business records to
cover it up. Or, as Trump would put it.
Speaker 9 (11:14):
This is an elegical persecution. This is a persecution like
never before. Nobody's ever seated a big like it. And again,
it's a case that should have never been brooked. It's
to the soul character. And that's why I'm hurried for
having to be here.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, it's true. Trump is always very proud to be
part of any assault on America. Look even oh worse, Yes,
mister Stewart, we agree. Look, even if the prosecution is
(11:54):
a bit of a stretch, it's not persecution. The guy's
not Nelson Mandela or Jesus.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
I don't mind being Nelson Mandela because I'm doing it
for a reason.
Speaker 6 (12:03):
Trump also shared two articles that compared him to Jesus Christ.
One was titled quote the Crucifixion of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Hi don't let him crucify me. Boy. We had full
teme coverage out of the courthouse in Lower Manhattan to day.
Here with an update on which Martyr Trump more resembles
Jesus or Nelson Mandela. It's Ronnie Chag and Daisy Lida.
(12:36):
I'm gonna start with Ronnie Chag, Jesus or Mendela.
Speaker 10 (12:40):
Clearly Mendela, all right, both for two heroes unjustly persecuted
by a corrupt legal system. And as Mendela often said,
and I quote, this is a witch hunt hoax.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I've never even met horseface.
Speaker 11 (12:55):
I totally disagree. Ronnie Jesus Christ. He's obviously Jesus Christ.
It's right there in the New Testament or in its sequel,
The Art of the Deal, chapter ten, verse eight, and
lo he evicted the rent controlled tenants. And it was
good and tremendous and vicious and beautiful Jesus.
Speaker 10 (13:17):
Wow. Oh, hang on, hang on, just think about this
on second. Okay, Trump and Mendela they both had three wives, eh, Jesus,
they even have a serious girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Okay, the guy had no riz. I don't think Rizz
is an approval anyway. Mendela was in prison for twenty
seven years, Ronnie, So it's.
Speaker 10 (13:42):
Yes, But if you add up all the prison sentences
Trump got for other people from January sixth, and his
campaign and his business, it's way more than twenty seven years. Okay.
Trump is like ten Nelson mandelas.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
No, Ronnie Trump is Jesus.
Speaker 11 (14:00):
They both have a ton of buildings with their names
on them, filled with portraits of themselves to be worshiped,
and they both sold sneakers, gold sneakers.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Hold On, hold on, I'm sorry to interrupt that this
is ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Okay, Johnson, everybody.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Trump is not Mandela or Jesus. Okay, we all know
that Donald Trump is oj.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
I don't think that, did you say oj Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
John oj Trump? They were both icon celebrities in the eighties.
Plus Donald J. Trump is the J for juice probably,
but most importantly, their obvious guilt didn't deter their loyal fans,
who either think they're innocent.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Or don't care they're guilty.
Speaker 11 (15:00):
Jesus had loyal fans not like this.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
So if he's ojay, you're saying that whether or not
Trump slept with Stormy Daniels or paid Stormy Daniels hush money,
it's not gonna matter. He's walking away a free man.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yes, And personally I'm excited for the moment in the
trial when Trump will drop his pants and say, if
the glove don't fit, you must have quit.
Speaker 8 (15:23):
Well by Donathy and Jocks, everybody won't come back with
David Sanger, don't go away?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Why come back to the time I got tonight a
White House. A national security correspondent for the New York Times.
His latest book is called New Cold Wars, China's Rise,
Russia's Invasion, and America's struggle to defend the West. Please
welcome back to the program, David Sanger. So we wrote
(16:16):
another batter new prot works. David. First of all, thank you.
It's nice to see you again.
Speaker 7 (16:20):
Good to be here.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Is the premise that the United States did a poor
job of managing risk after the fall of the Soviet Union, Well.
Speaker 7 (16:32):
We certainly made a lot of false assumptions, bad assumptions.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
That doesn't sound along the way, Yeah, I.
Speaker 7 (16:38):
Wouldn't be as, wouldn't be as. And the fundamental argument
of the book is that we believed, somehow we deluded
ourselves into believing that China and Russia, each for their
own different reasons would like to sign up to the
Western world that we were going to go say, look,
we got this whole thing figured out. All you guys
do is come in here and sign on the dotted line.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Right, We're going to do a rules based democratic foundation
order and everybody'll be cool with it.
Speaker 7 (17:06):
And that was supposed to be the end of history,
because right we were.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Said, it's the end of history. Western liberalism is triumphant,
and we can all just skate on the glorious booty
that we get from it.
Speaker 7 (17:21):
Right now, you can't blame just him, because there were
a lot of other people believe JUSTI, okay, and I
signed on to a little bit of this myself, so
I confess. But I got to tell you this basically
went on for thirty years, good twenty five anyway, because
we were busy doing the wars on Terry. We were
(17:42):
just talking about those little.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
When you talk about in the book, there's a lot
of stories of how George Bush thought that there would
be a great reprochemont with Putin over there shared dislike
of terrorism and the two of them. I mean, there's
stories in there that come out of James Bond. You're
on a yacht with George Bush and Putin and they've
just seen a very dark version of the Nutcracker. You're like,
(18:05):
it's not even the regular Nutcracker, it's the dark Nutcracker.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
And you're like, I bet Bush really enjoyed that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I'm sure you love anything high.
Speaker 7 (18:13):
So, so this was two thousand and two. We were
in Saint Petersburg. We were floating down the Never River.
They're in a great party boat.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
There's this guy.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
Wait, you were floating down the river with them. I
was floating down on the boat behind it. We weren't
eat like tubing. That's what white house reporters do, isn't it.
We were in the pools, just this sign. The pool
was a river, all right, Okay. So so we're following
him down and there's this guy serving dinner. He's kind
of big and hulking. It turns out it's Pregosion.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay, Jenny Progosion, the head of the Terrible Army.
Speaker 7 (18:53):
Well, at the time, he was putin chef. Okay, his
only job was make sure the meals were good and
a really glowering Wait.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So he's like Bobby Flay and then he turns into
the head of a Mercenary Army.
Speaker 7 (19:14):
Well before he did that, he ran the Internet Research
Agency and tried to fix the twenty sixteen election with
this information.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
They really are renaissance, man, it really is. I mean
that's talent, that's talents. So now this appears to be
going along until George Bush wants them to go after
Islam terrorism. And then at that point Putin wants them
to go after Chechtein.
Speaker 7 (19:41):
Right, or at least Putin wants to use the excuse
to go after Cheschney. And that was the beginning of
Bush beginning to think, you know, maybe this guy isn't
the one we thought he was.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
He looked into his soul.
Speaker 7 (19:50):
Yeah, well, you know, he may have looked at the
wrong soul. So so in two thousand and seven, Putin
shows up at this thing called the Munich Security Conference
and he says, you know, there are parts of Russia
that have been separated from us that really belong to us,
that to the Russia that Peter the Great created. And
(20:11):
remember Putin isn't trying to recreate the Soviet Union. He
thinks the guys around the Soviet Union were idiots. You
go into his office, he's got a big bust of
Peter the Great there, So who do you think he
thinks he is.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Progosian? No? No, no, how do we miss all of this?
And even if we had been onto it, what would
we have done differently?
Speaker 7 (20:36):
So first it was a combination of sort of bad intelligence,
wishful thinking. Oh, sure, he's going to be troublesome, but
at the end of the day, he cares about his
oil exports, his gas exports, more than he really cares
about this. And look up until the weekend before the
invasion happened.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
There's a story.
Speaker 7 (20:57):
No, the invasion of Ukraine in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So all past twenty fourteen, Yeah.
Speaker 7 (21:03):
Twenty fourteen comes, he takes crimea. Obama says, I'm not
going to war for something that used to belong to Russia.
Nobody does sanctions for a year, right, And then next
year the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel signs the nord
Stream two agreement, creates this pipeline that runs from Russia
around Ukraine's what doesn't get any revenue from it, and
(21:24):
straight into Europe. And he says, she says, you know, Putin's.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
A reliable supplier. Is realistic? Yeah?
Speaker 7 (21:31):
Right, okay, reasonable assumption maybe because he really hadn't cut
off gas supplies. So what happens next? Seven years later
he goes after full on Ukraine. The US reveals the
intelligence in starting in the late fall, they get this
remarkable intelligence. They send Bill Burns, the CIA director who
(21:52):
used to be ambassador to Russia, to say, this would
be a really bad idea. Putin says, oh, I'm not
you know, I'm not doing anything. And the weekend before
everybody's back in Munich and there are a bunch of
Europeans saying to me and everybody else, Oh, he's not
really gonna invade. He's just bluffing. He wouldn't risk his
(22:14):
oil revenues. Four days later he invades. The intelligence chief
for Germany was in Kiev the morning of the invasion.
They had to evacuate him because he didn't believe they
would invade.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
So what did he think that noise was? He got
out of town kind of fast. So this is all hindsight,
though in truth, what could we other when someone is
imperialistic in that way? What can other powers do short
of an actual shooting war to prevent these kinds of things.
(22:48):
There's no guarantee that tougher sanctions after CRIMEA would have
deterred him. It sounds like this is kind of his
destiny and he's fulfilling that destiny, come hell or high water.
Speaker 7 (23:02):
So that's the other piece of this, which is we
impose our values on Russia China and we think, well,
we're not going to do something that would get in
the way of our economic interests.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Neither would they.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
So China's a really interesting example. Xhijingping comes in more
than ten years ago. Joe Biden spent a lot of
time with him, traveled around with him. But the intelligence
reports of as she are, this guy's not going to
challenge the West. He's going to tend to his economy,
make sure all is good. Right, We now discover and
you read about in the book, they are these secret
(23:35):
speeches that he gave almost as soon as he came
into office, saying we're going to build up our nuclear
forces to the size of the Russians and the Americans.
We're going to make sure that we take our claims
in the South China. Sea I was out in the
rose garden of the White House when she came to
visit and promised everybody he wasn't going to militarize these
(23:57):
islands they're building in the South China. See a year
or two later, you look on satellite photographs there are
fighter jets showing up on the islands. Kind of looks like.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
That's just convenience. It's not are we lying to them
or are we lying to ourselves? I think more to ourselves.
Speaker 7 (24:15):
So, you know, we did not want to conceive of
a world in which we were back in superpower conflict.
We wanted to live in the world in which the
US was the predominant power. We finally calmed down the
Middle East or doing real well with that, and and
that we could focus on competing with China, some containment
(24:37):
of Russia. And you know, Biden happened to be the
one sitting in the office, sitting in office when this
all fell apart. And most of the book is a
story of what happens when that fell apart. It's the
story of how this Opera Regia nuclear plant in Ukraine,
the biggest nuclear plant in Europe, suddenly everybody's afraid is
going to become the world's biggest h Yeah, right, And
(25:02):
there's an amazing story right from New York City two
years ago October of twenty twenty two, when President Biden
shows up at a fundraiser at James Murdoch's house.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
They're nice, not familiar with the last name, but go ahead.
Speaker 7 (25:17):
Yeah, he's actually sat of the black sheep of the family.
I a Democrat who raises money for Biden among others.
So they're, you know, nice New Yorkers walking around with
their wine looking at his art collection. The President comes
in and says, by the way, we're going through something
that is the closest to nuclear war we've had since
the Cuban missile crisis. They're all looking at each other, like.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
He drops that at a cocktail party.
Speaker 7 (25:44):
I'm sure they all thought that it was really the
moment to get out of the Hamptons.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Don't you think he drops that? And then it's like,
do you guys have breathe like he does.
Speaker 7 (25:53):
Actually, people in the White House were amazing. Now call
it his Armageddon speech, because he had just said the
same thing in the Oval Office.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Right then. Then he turned to everybody and go and
my word is don't. That's a big thing now, he tells.
He tells dictators don't don't. And they're like, okay, haven't
we sowed the seeds of this with our own arrogance
and cavalier approach to a lot of these foreign policy conflicts.
(26:22):
A we always frame things as this is a battle
between democracy and the free world, and liberation and authoritarianism,
But the truth is we're fighting for trade channels and
resources like this is all a function of competing capitalist powers.
And aren't we the ones? I mean, we've invaded more
(26:44):
countries than Russia and China combined. So how do we
give ourselves somehow the passes the white hat guys, when
a lot of our policy has created a lot of
the chaos that they're taking advantage of. It is I'm done,
I'm out of here.
Speaker 7 (27:08):
So there's been a lot of that going on in
American history for a long time. Teddy Roosevelt, you know,
took over his fair share of territory. But I think
in the Biden administration we've had to sort of face
these contradictions because at the beginning of the administration, the
president was saying just what you said, this is a
battle between democracy and autocracy, and everyone says, Okay, that's
(27:30):
pretty clean.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Then he goes to just not true.
Speaker 7 (27:32):
Yeah, Then he goes then he goes to Saudi Arabia
does the fist bump with NBS right, And I was
on that trip.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
They weren't quite sure. How that are you ever home?
Speaker 7 (27:45):
When you cover the White House, you got to go
where the president goes as part of the job. And
then you know, we move on to what's been happening
in Israel and h and the Israel Hamas war. And
as you said earlier, we are in the very odd
position of both providing aid and providing the arms that
(28:06):
are being dropped on Gaza. And I think this administration
has had the hardest time trying to go write that
and obviously is causing a lot of pain, not only
for Gossans, but for people in the administration who are
having a hard time living with.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Would it simplify our position if we stopped pretending our
morals were beyond the reproach of all these other countries?
Would it help us to not have to scold everybody
for failing to live up to principles that we very
clearly do not uphold.
Speaker 7 (28:40):
Well, at least we have some principles. Okay, that's the
one thing.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
We say that. But you know, you can invade a country,
what happened in Iraq. That's you can't call for regime change?
What did we do in Libya? Every time we say
these things, we undercut our own position with I mean,
for God's sakes, Iran is an enemy today because we
overthrew their democratically elected government nineteen fifty three. That's right.
So at what point do we just admit that this
(29:07):
is how we're behaving.
Speaker 7 (29:08):
The odd thing is at the moment that presidents do
admit that, they get chewed up for admitting to American error.
Obama went and apologized to the Iranians.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Saying apologize. I'm just saying, like, take off the mask
and go, you know what this is? It strikes me
as it's colonialism and imperialism in a more modern form.
China is in Africa trying to extract. We're trying to extract.
We're militarizing economic rivalries and creating all kinds of chaos
(29:44):
and death over what is ostensibly trying to get better deals.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
Well, some of it's better deals, some of it is
protecting technology. And I argue in here that with China
as opposed to Russia, this is, first of all, this
is incredible competitor and it's a competitor and a military sphere,
in the technology sphere, in finance, in economics, and we're
their best customer and then they are ours. And that's
(30:11):
really what makes this different from the old Cold War.
So a reason there's new in new Cold Wars, and
there's a reason there's an ass at the end. First
of all, we're fighting too simultaneously. Okay, the old Cold War,
that wasn't the.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Case, fighting the wrong terminology, because isn't that Look, the
only people that never lose a war or the military
industrial complex are the people that sell the weapons. And
if we continue to if we continue to push that,
you know, weaponization of these economic rivalries, aren't we just
(30:46):
playing into that cycle?
Speaker 7 (30:48):
We are playing into the cycle. But if you're in
a world in which vacuums happen, if we say, okay,
we're done with this, you're going to go back and
build our big walls and sort of received from it,
someone fills that space. And that space is going to
get filled largely by China, some by Russia, some by
other authoritarian regimes. And so we've got to make a
(31:09):
really hard and bad choice, which is do we want
to be the one trying to fill that void with
our technology and our principles, understanding that we violate them
all the time, or do we want to let an
authoritarian regime go fill that space, which we know how
that's going to look.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
It seems like what we should do is be honest
about what our aims are in the way that China
went into Africa and did Belton Road, knowing that really
it's about cobalt and lithium, and rather than us going
into Africa and just building up all these small military
juntas that end up creating all those dictatorships that create
(31:52):
so much cash and pain for those countries.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Well, I'd argue that now we're not doing it with cobalt,
We're doing it with semiconductors.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Right.
Speaker 7 (31:59):
So the the big story that we tell in here
went to Taiwan. Spend a lot of time at Taiwan Semiconductor,
which is the biggest producer of the most advanced semiconductors
in the world, and you looked at the question does
that create a silicon shield for the United States and
for Taiwan? In other words, that the Chinese would not
(32:21):
dare take over Taiwan because they would lose access to
Taiwan semiconductors.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
We're going to learn any sentence that begins with would
they dare? Yes, they would dare, and so would we
and so and so.
Speaker 7 (32:37):
My argument here is it's a silicon shield for a
little while, John, but eventually the Chinese are going to
learn how to make everything Taiwan Semiconductor is making. And
at that moment we've got a real Taiwan crisis. And
so the book is sort of a warning head to
what these next twenty or thirty years are going to
look like, because this is not a world in which
(32:57):
these new cold wars are going to end sometime soon.
They're going to be the dominant theme of the next
twenty thirty forty years, long after Putin and She are gone,
and long after Joe Biden and Donald Trump are gone.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I don't believe that last part.
Speaker 7 (33:13):
The Trump's never leaving.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
I think the two of them, honestly, it'll be like
twenty eighty four and they'll be like it's another Biden
Trump rematch. I can't believe it. Two heads in a jar,
who pro wars? It is available now, David Sire and Hijo,
thank You's notch op for tonight before we go. We're
(33:54):
checking with your hosts for the rest of the week.
Don't say so, don't say hello, They'll say excited for
you know, ho's the week? What are we gonna be
looking at? John, I'll be continuing our coverage of the
Trump trial unless someone has the money to keep me quiet.
(34:15):
You are you? Are you asking for Donald Trump to
pay you hush money? No that broke bis can even
pay his own bond.
Speaker 11 (34:26):
No no, no, no no no no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I'm looking for the real players.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
I'm asking the Republican Party to pay me hush money.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Well that's a fair point. Don't say so on all
this week.
Speaker 5 (34:42):
Let me say it again, more sheep is not going
to solve the wolf problem. My advice to the President today,
for what it's worth, mister President, don't stop it. Support
Israel with respect. Go to Amazon and buy a spine on.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch
The Daily Show weeknights at eleven ten Central on Comedy
Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
This has been a Comedy Central podcast show
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