The Daily Show

"The fuck are we doing here? The subtext of all this is, America knows this is wrong. But it apparently doesn't have the courage to say it in a straightforward manner. America and Israel both know that you cannot bomb your way into safety. We learned that lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan. They learned it in Southern Lebanon. They laid seige there, occupied the southern area for 20 years, all it did was birth and strengthen Hezbollah. And they're about to do it all over again, and we are letting them. Real friends take the fucking keys, because friends don't let friends... bomb that much."

"Whether it's globalization or industrialization or now Artificial Intelligence, the way of life that you are accustomed to is no match for the promise of more profits and new markets, which sounds brutal! ...if you're a human."

"Kudos 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."

"Listen, I hope this doesn't sound patronizing, but when we in the West drew your region's borders and set you up with perfectly functioning dictatorships, um... we expected a little better."

"Look, at some point in this trial, something important and revelatory is going to happen. But none of us are going to notice, because [of] the hours spent on his speculative facial tics -- if the media tries to make us feel like the most mundane bullshit is earth-shattering, we won't believe you when it's really interesting!"

"There are no participation trophies in end-game democracy! Oh yeah, I remember FDR saying "Well, if the Nazis take over Europe, at least both teams had fun.""

"Authoritarianism and Donald Trump aren't the only threats our democracy faces -- an arthritic status quo, unable or unwilling to respond in any way to the concerns of voters who just received new and urgent information about their candidate also erodes confidence and faith in the system of government. […] Honestly, though, "Get on board or shut the fuck up" is not a particularly compelling pro-democracy bumper sticker."

"I am in no way saying Biden's gotta drop out, but can't we stress-test this candidacy? Can't we open up the conversation? Do you understand the opportunity here? Do you have any idea how thirsty Americans are for any hint of inspiration or leadership and a release from this choice of a megalomaniac and a suffocating gerontocracy. It is crushing our fucking spirits! Do you have any idea what could be ahead of you?! All we want is for someone to keep it 100. The percentage, not the age. That's all we want!"

"Wow! What a terrible fucking week. "Hey, Jon! Come back to The Daily Show, just for the election. It'll be fun! You'll do one day a week, it'll be a laurgh. What could go wrong?""

"Yes, apparently, Republicans are pro-worker now and pro-union! I hope somebody tells all the Republican governors who passed right-to-work anti-union laws in their states, and all the Republican-appointed judges who made it easier to break unions, and Donald Trump himself, who helped kill a bill that would have protected unions so they're gonna be so embarrassed at their hypocrisy!"

"How are you supposed to turn down the temperature of the rhetoric if you're not allowed to mention the rhetoric?!"

"[imitating Joe Biden] Let me-- Let me ask you something, Lester. Let me ask you this... Who's got two thumbs, Lester? An-- And is about to beat your ass?"

"I have a slight confession to make, and I am not proud of this in any way, shape, or form... but I'm following social media during all this to find out who did it because it's this pattern I feel like we now have in the country when we hear about a horrific event. You're on pins-and-needles in this sort of reverse-demographic lottery to make sure that the psychopathic shooter doesn't belong to one of your teams. [...] And we're all doing it! We're all doing it because we have to know what our posture will be on the tragedy. Will it be a haughty "I told you!" or perhaps a circumspect "Well, let's not rush to judgement. We shouldn't generalize." And then it ends up being someone we can't even fucking figure out in the first place! [...] It's a jump ball! We don't know yet who's got dibs, who wins, and none of us knows what's gonna happen next, other than, there will be another tragedy in this country, self-inflicted, by us, to us. And then we'll have this feeling again. I remember it on 9/11, this disorienting "Holy shit, stop the world, I would like to get off" feeling. And in that moment, there will be some incredible Americans who, in the midst of it, for some unknown reason, rush towards it and get us back to some sort of equilibrium. And we'll count on those folks to hold us together again. And it does remind us that, by a hair's breadth, we dodged a catastrophe. But it was still a tragedy, because one of those first responders lost his life. His name was Corey Comperatore. He was a retired fire chief in the area. He had given his life in service to his community, and he died literally shielding his family. He's a reminder that, in those moments of crisis, there are helpers. And we can all make a choice to try and be one of those people."

"19 years old and the world's already beat the shit outta ya. Innt that--? It's always the young dudes that are like, "I have a- A quick question, I'm 19 years old… When hope is gone. When the darkness slowly creeps down…""

"Part of the issue is, you just want someone to talk to you like you're a human. Like you're an adult. Not like it's work, not like they're spinning you."

"In the span of a week! Democrats have gone from a certain Trump Presidency to the joy… of a statistical tie. Which, right now, that feels like victory!"

"So sexist, saying Kamala Harris slept her way to the top! Joe Biden and Donald Trump literally slept their way to the top, and we never heard a fucking peep about it!"

"Why aren't you doing the thing that they told us that you were going to do?! With the hammer and the sickle and the bandolero shots?!"

"I swear to god, the guy running for President on the Republican ticket has morphed into a poor man's Catturd."

"Wait. She calls you on her birthday?! That is very [censored]. On her birthday, she calls you?! "Hey, girl! It's Kamala. Anything you have to say to me that you should've said hours ago?""

"They had black Americans! Hispanic Americans! Asian Americans! Gay Americans! Jewish Americans! Palestinian Ame-- Oh. Now, to be fair, it was only four nights, eight hours a night. But really, it's best not to think about the consequences of our actions over there, especially given the theme of the week."

"Whatever you're feeling? Go with it. Whether that feeling is joy, or perhaps relief at having a chance when you had none is exhilarating."

"Oh, so which is it? Do the vibes fatten you up, or are they emotional Ozempic, which one? But I guess you're right. You can't feed your family on vibes. You can only feed your family on immigration fearmongering. You can't eat good vibes! I think you might be confusing vibes with the tomato-infused soup-adjacent fondue, the weapon of mass lactation that this city calls fucking pizza! I'll tell you that much! Yeah, that's right, motherfuckers! C'mon! C'mon! You want a piece?! You want a piece?! "Ey, ey. I wanna order a pizza." "Oh, yeah, you want a personal or a backyard pool size?""

"You spent two months riling up your base that our country had literally been stolen from them through fraudulent means, that you could never even get a whiff of in a court of law, and let—let yourself just abuse them. You pressed on. You abused their trust. You showed up for a speech? You fucking tweeted ‘Join me on Jan. 6. It will be wild.’ But suddenly now: ‘I was just a hired magician to do the bar mitzvah! I didn’t do anything. I showed up with a hat and a rabbit and then the whole party went out of control!’One thing will always be true, and it is the quality of the former president I respect the least: Whenever he is cornered and forced to face even the smallest of consequences for his own mendacity and scheming, he reverts to the greatest refuge of scoundrels. As Shaggy would say, ‘It wasn’t me!’"

"I just wanna point out, just as a matter of perspective, that the lessons that our pundits take away from these results, that they will pronounce with certainty, will be wrong. And we have to remember that!"

"My point is this: FUCK! But this isn't the end! I promise you, this is not the end. And we have to regroup, and we have to continue to fight and continue to work day in and day out to create the better society for our children, for this world, for this country, that we know is possible. It's possible."

"Honestly, I don't care why she lost; I care why he won. We have spent so much time diagnosing Donald Trump and what his actions say about him. He's a dictator, he's a fascist, he's a malignant narcissist whose blood type is fryer oil. But it's pretty clear that America is the one that needs the diagnosis, because whatever's wrong with him, we fucking love it. In this moment, Donald Trump is holding up a mirror to the American people and it might be time to make a good fucking hard look."

"The election that we just had was a repudiation of the status quo: an overly-regulated system that is no longer responsive, or delivering, for the needs of The People... government is theoretically a constitutional system of checks and balances between equally powerful branches. But what government actually is, is an overly-complicated, byzantine, bureaucratic maze of rules, loopholes to those rules, and norms; complex enough that 🄐 if you want to find a rule that keeps you from doing something, you'll find it; and 🄑 if you actually want to do something, you can find a loophole to get around said rule. And then the norms are just how often you've had to pull any of this shit."

"She doesn't know anyone who wakes up and think they want to bomb Iran. I don't know if she knows anyone who wakes up and thinks."

"It does say something about the ubiquity of Donald Trump in our lives that we don't hear from him for 20 minutes and we think..."he's dead!""

"[in response to Markwayne Mullin's saying that "speaking his mind" is what America loves about Donald Trump] No, that's what America loves about Dolly Parton! Transparent, speaks her mind...yet Dolly rarely jails her political enemies! I mean, Senator Markwayne...do you want to know how embarrassing your weak-kneed rationalizations for jailing political opponents ring? I'm gonna play you a clip of a fellow Senator. A fellow Republican Senator. Now, Ted Cruz has supported this President through insults to his own wife's looks and to his own father's loyalties. And yet still manages to maintain a modicum of self-respect when it comes to this President trampling all over our Constitution. Sir, it brings me no pleasure to have to play this.[clip of Ted Cruz saying that Brendan Carr's threats against free speech are "dangerous as hell"]FANTASTIC. Fantastic! Senator Ted Cruz boldly stating that the FCC Chairman threatening the licenses of broadcast networks is dangerous.I just want to say this to Trump's defenders: you don't have to bend over backwards to try to make Trump's authoritarian power grabs seem like the rule of law! He does not give a fuck anymore! He's saying it straight up! Trump is saying "people like dictators"! Trump is saying "I hate my opponents and I want them punished"! And Trump is saying "I'll use all the levers of government possible to accomplish that goal!" So you can get on board with THAT and say "I'm with that," or you can join the rest of us and you can fight like hell for this Constitution because let me tell you something, it is a form of representational government worth preserving and defending!"

"Jon: Perhaps we need to look back at our founders, and through their infinite wisdom, designed and operated a more mature system, with checks and balances, and a respect for all, that prevented this kind of corrosive infighting and radicalisation."

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