Carter Funeral Guest List, Politicizing LA Fires, Sports War: Bonuses vs. Ratings
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You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Desi Lydon. Thank you.

Welcome to The Daily Show. I'm Debbie Leidick. We've got so much to talk about tonight. The real presidents of America have a drama-filled reunion. We look at why NBA ratings are labroken and move over Black Little Mermaid. Conservatives have a new fish to be mad at. So let's get into the headlines.

kick things off with a historic day in Washington, D.C., where former President Jimmy Carter's funeral was being held in the Washington National Cathedral. And look, I don't know how you measure the life of a man, whether through their personal accomplishments or the lives they touch, but if you measure a life by the VIP guest list at your funeral, then Jimmy Carter was a f***.

Funeral services fit for a president. Today's funeral service bringing together five living presidents. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump to honor Carter, the longest-lived commander-in-chief. Wow, that is incredibly rare to have five American presidents in the same room together. And even rarer to have Donald and Melania in the same room together. Kudos to President Carter.

And it seemed pretty uncomfortable that they all had to sit next to Donald Trump. Just think about the history there. Trump tried to put her in prison, accused him of murder, said he was the secret Muslim founder of ISIS, said she was pretending to be black, and did his entire family dynasty, almost got him murdered, tried to overreact.

his presidency and paid off a porn star behind her back. All of them have said that he's Hitler. So yeah, it's a seating chart so awkward that it probably had them asking, is there any extra room in that coffin?

Although there was one surprising moment of chemistry. During Carter's funeral, President-elect Trump chatted with former President Barack Obama. Of course, we don't know what they discussed, but the interaction seemed friendly, with both presidents talking and occasionally smiling. Ooh, someone's trying to make Elon jealous.

It's a little weird for Obama, though, right? To go from this guy is future Hitler to, oh man, cool story, future Hitler. And by the way, Kamala noticed. Oh, oh.

I don't know if that funeral music was for Carter or for her. Commonly did the look that I do when someone behind me at the movie theater is talking. I didn't pay 20 bucks to hear you sing Defying Gravity. Also, this is Conclave. Why are you singing Defying Gravity? She did not seem happy to be sitting that close to Donald Trump. She basically spent the rest of the day flipping through that funeral program like she was going to find 44 electoral votes in it.

But of course, the story dominating the news right now is the Los Angeles wildfires. There's been so many challenges as L.A. workers try to control these fires, like water shortages and manpower shortages. But there's one thing that we have an endless supply of good old fashioned made in America blame. And of course, one of the country's leading blame producers is Donald Trump.

I've been trying to get Gavin Newsom to allow water to come. You'd have tremendous water up there. They sent it out to the Pacific because they're trying to protect a tiny little fish, which is in other areas, by the way, called the smelt. And for the sake of a smelt, they have no water. OK, we'll come back to the smelt. But can we just talk about how weird it is that this senator is staring so hard at Trump the entire time he talks?

that makes me change subway cars. And for the record, no, the L.A. fires have nothing to do with smelt. But in Trump's defense, words are hard. And smelt only has one syllable, while climate change has three.

Now, obviously, Trump supporters aren't just blaming fish for the wildfires. They're also going back to the hits. Of course, we haven't even mentioned the idiotic DEI priorities that have infected the hiring of senior personnel throughout the state. She's the first female LGBTQ plus fire chief. She's been...

putting her firefighters through DEI training. Focusing on DEI. This state has been hijacked by the extreme left. Remember, Karen Bass is the socialist mayor who said Castro's a great guy. It's DEI, that DEI, which is so sickening. What does DEI have to do with putting out fires? But you got a city fire chief who thinks DEI is the number one issue. It's insulting.

Okay, Leo, you're at a 2.0 right now. I'm going to need you to bring it down to a 1.0, okay? This whole argument is so annoying. Women can't be firefighters. They let dogs be firefighters. Society is so hypocritical. Although, to be fair, there are some signs that DEI and firefighting is a little over the top. Remember, only gay Muslims can prevent forest fires. Smokey,

more like a walkie bear at my right. Honestly these people really seem to think that if anyone in the L.A. fire department is in a straight white man it must be that the mayor use lower standards when hiring them in fact they're so obsessed with this it's getting a little creepy. 70% of our hires have been based on D I not muscularity not experience not size not competence.

This guy's talking about firefighters like the only thing they do is pose for sexy calendars. Not muscularity, not size, not girth, not cut or uncut. Sorry, where was I? For more on the Los Angeles fire, we go live to Michael Costa. What's going on? Why are you at the airport? Well, obviously I'm flying to L.A. to help out their gay fire department. You see...

You heard those Fox News pundits. There's too much DEI, so they need a straight white man with big chest muscles and that V thing going down. My doctor said not to mix steroids and Ozempic, but the results speak for themselves, all right?

Do you even know how to fight fires? Of course I do, Desi. I mean, I've blown out birthday candles. How much different can it be? And I'm not one of those pussies that needs two tries or for their mom to come over and help. What I do is I make my wish, usually to get that V thing going down, and then I f***ing own those birthday candles. That's...

not going to help you with this fire, Michael. Okay, well, you know what will help, Desi? One of these floppy tubes that I see firemen always pointing at fires. It's called a hose, but beware, Desi, as a straight white male, I'm obliged to put bros before hoes. You get it.

I'm sorry, how exactly does you having a white male identity help you fight fires? Well, I'm white, so the fire will respect me. I'm straight, which means I won't leave the fire halfway through to go see Wicked, and I'm male, which means I can always bust out Firehose 2.0. I'm talking about my peen, Desi.

Yeah, I got that. You know what? Go ahead. Fight the fire in L.A. Just get on your flight. Oh, I miss my flight. But I told United to let me pilot my own plane out there, so that's what I'll be doing. Do you know how to fly a plane? No, but it can't be that hard. It's just a matter of defying gravity. You did see Wicked. Oh, Desi, grow up. Sexuality's a spectrum, okay? Michael Cason. Let's find out who's right about her. So don't...

resolutions was to spend less time with the people you love and more time with those who will never love you back, you're in luck because there's so much going on in the world of sports. So let's get into it in a new edition of Sports War. Get ready for battle. It's time for Brought to you by Gambling. Gambling. The sport Michael Jordan was best at. Woo!

I'm Desi Leidick. I'm Jordan Klepper. This is Sports War, the show where we are legally not allowed to agree with each other. So if I say baseball should get rid of the designated hitter... Then I say everybody should have to hit. The umps, the hot dog vendors, the 90-year-old organists. Choke up, Seymour. I wish I was designated to hit you with a sock full of quarters. I'd like to see you try that again when I'm sober.

Speaking of being incentivized to hit people, it was the last week in the NFL's regular season, and that means it's time for some players to cash in. Now, with the final game of the season, you get those players going all out to earn big-time bucks, hitting incentives, escalator clauses in their contracts. Von Miller needed just one sack.

to stack $1.5 million in bonus. He barely gets a couple of fingers on the quarterback, but it counts. Miller only played three snaps in this game, but that's all he needed. The Tampa Bay Bucs could have just taken a knee with seconds to go, but their future Hall of Famer needed just five more yards to earn $3 million in a bonus, and he got it.

Whoa! $3 million bonus. These players are putting the damn in irreversible brain damage. And I got to tell you, Desi, I love it. You can't put a price on $3 million.

I mean, if you did, it'd probably be $3 million. Bad take, discount Joel McHale. Why do professional athletes need more money just for doing their jobs? Isn't the pussy enough? Sorry, Jordan, I should explain. Pussy is slang for vagina, which is a woman's genitals and what your face looks like without a beard. Oh, man.

Wrong again, Lydic. It's what my face looks like with a beard in the 1970s. My point is, Desi, how could you not like this? Even we get performance bonuses. Every time I interrupt you, I make an extra 50 bucks. What are you even talking about? Interrupting, interrupting. Ha-ha! Whoa!

Whoa! Easy 50 bucks. The system works. Maybe you should use that 50 bucks to get a haircut that doesn't look like you're the stunt double for Tilda Swinton. Boom! I just hit my $20,000 Tilda reference bonus. You keep Tilda's name out of your filthy mouth. God, I wish you were adopted but didn't know it. That way I could break it to you when you were at your lowest and most vulnerable.

Which brings me to my can't-lose bet of the week. Which notorious serial killer is probably Desi's real father? Brought to you by gambling. Gambling. It's barely addictive when you compare it to smoking crack.

Moving on, if you missed the big NBA game last night between OKC and the Cavs, don't worry, you're not alone. The NBA is in trouble. TV ratings for pro basketball games have flopped this season. Viewership is down nearly 20%. What's to blame? Well, according to many, the three-point shot. Critics accuse teams of becoming excessively reliant on the deep ball in recent years.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The ratings are down because of three-pointers? Hard disagree. In fact, I got three-pointers for you right here, huh? Yeah. And you want to guess where the third one is?

The giant boil on your back that's growing eyes? Correct. What is happening to my body? But they are so fun. I love these three-pointers. So why would fans stop watching because of three-pointers? Jordan, just because you only date threes doesn't mean they're fun, but...

the real reason the NBA is bleeding viewers. Woke destroyed the NBA. Ratings have collapsed. Some say it's that, some say it's DEI kind of stuff. I mean, what the heck is going on? Oh, it's DEI. Oh, there are too many Eastern Europeans in the NBA. Pack your bags, Luka Doncic, and take your little C symbols back to Transylvania. Desi, look, I'm surprised you don't like diversity, given you were a diversity hire for this job.

Why, because I'm a woman? No, because you're a moron, Desi. Which brings me to my Jordans, Juiced and Jack, better than I. Could Desi correctly spell D-E-I if given both the D and the I? Brought to you by gambling. Gambling. You know, if you rent a storage unit, they don't check if you're sleeping in it.

And finally, college bowl week is over. But no matter who won, there's a clear, undisputed national champion. Giant novelty vats of food. This bowl season, a lot of the attention is on the mascots of the bowls, drenching Minnesota's head coach, P.J. Fleck, with a five-gallon tub of mayonnaise. The trophy is a functioning toaster, and there goes the Pop-Tart mascot. Cinnamon roll going down, and look how he comes out. Oh.

Yep, ready to be served and enjoyed by everyone as they break off a piece of cinnamon roll mascot. Wow, wow, I love this. We should be able to eat more mascots. It's funny how everyone's happy about the Pop-Tart, but when I put the Philly Fanatic in my mouth, it's sexual assault. How was I supposed to know that was his piece?

You know, you know, and you're absolutely wrong, Jordan. College sports should not be humanizing breakfast pastries because then when I eat them, I imagine how they were burned to death in a toaster screaming, why God, why?

And as those hot coils roast its pastry flesh, I wonder if the pain makes them taste even better and ask myself what that says about me. But then I take another bite of their delicious, jammy, pop-tart blood and smile. Which brings me to Desi's bankruptcy buster bet of the week. Will Jordan Klepper face justice for what he did to the Philly

Brought to you by gambling. Gambling. 20 million homeless people can't be wrong. Well, that's all the time we have for Sports War. Join us next time when we debate whether Aaron Rodgers should re-sign with the Jets or accept the nomination for Surgeon General. No way, no way. Secretary of Interior. Check your brains, Interior dumbass. Tonight is an Academy Award nominated actor whose new film is called Hard Truths.

Welcome Mary Ann Jean-Beth.

What a delight it is to have you on. Your performance in this movie is remarkable. Remarkable. Thank you. And congratulations. You're getting all kinds of accolades for your performance and the movie as a whole. You play the character of Pansy. I do. Who might be described as, as we saw in the clip, as a bit of a difficult woman.

Just a bit. Just a bit. She lashes out at pretty much everyone around her, including perfect strangers. I found her quite relatable, honestly. The thing is, a lot of people do. I've been getting a lot of people saying that's my mother-in-law. Lots of mother-in-laws, by the way. Oh, yes.

That's my mother-in-law, that's my auntie, that's my friend. A few people have professed to being her. Oh, really? Yeah. And I'm like, you're too self-aware. She's not self-aware. She thinks she's nice. Of course she does. But that's a real testament to your performance in this because a character like that would...

possibly be hard to want to follow along and relate to and watch, but you make her so vulnerable and raw and captivating. Right, thank you. Yeah, well, it's true. This has continued a, you know, decades-long relationship with Mike Lee, who's an incredible filmmaker. You were nominated for an Oscar for your performance in his other movie, Secrets in the Eye. Thank you.

on right now for this movie, too, I might say. He has a really interesting creative process. There's no, you're not handed a script and asked if you want to be part of it. You're part of the collaboration process from the very beginning. Yeah, oh, totally. He'll call you or email you and say, I'm doing a film. I don't know what it's about. I don't know what you'll be playing in it. Oh,

But we're going to have fun. And you go, yes, of course. I love that. I love being terrified. Is he just trying to trick you into writing it for him? Yeah, no, it's a really sort of creative, collaborative, rewarding experience. Because he respects you as a creative artist, and not just an interpreter of his vision.

So you really do work on it with him. I heard that he asked you to write down a hundred people that you knew with all these different characteristics and you made a list. Or did you do that on your own? Oh, no. He always says at the start of every project, he'll say, I want you to bring in a list of people you know from real life.

And you go in I mean I had over a 100 on my list, but he doesn't ask for a 100 but he wants more than 5 or 10. You are overachiever. It was about 140 actually oh my God, you sit there and you describe them all to him and talk about them and so I've been in a therapy session and you're analyzing someone else.

And then, you know, that list gets smaller and smaller and smaller until you settle on about three, between three and five people. And then you do these exercises to merge them until you've got one person. And then you start building the character from there. And days and days and days of improv with the other actors who are cast who are also phenomenal in the movie. I mean, all the performances in the movie are fantastic. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I'm curious because you did so much improv for this character and you were part of the collaboration process. Was someone like Pansy hard to shake? When you went home, would you bring a little Pansy home with you? You know what? We've got a really disciplined process. We never refer to ourselves as the character. It's always in the third person. You never say I, otherwise he'll kill you. So...

You're used to getting out of character, but I'd have her thoughts in my head. So I started to sort of hear her voice with me saying, look at him. What's he got that shirt on for? Looks awful. And I'd be like, shut up, Pansy. Please, just be real. But when I got home, I'd cook, I'd play music, drink wine, all the things she doesn't like doing. Right. So I was like, yes! Just shake her a little bit. I own me.

It's me. Yes. I imagine that she comes in handy every now and again. Like, I was thinking after I watched the movie, I kept thinking about that character. I think, what would Pansy think about this? So I was wondering if you would play a little game with us. And I'm curious how Pansy would react to some of these news stories and things in the world. Well, we'll see if we can conjure her. Okay.

Do you think, do you need, do you have a process? Do you need to? A warm-up. Okay, warm-up scene. All right. First question. How does Pansy feel about AI? What's that? That's right. That's right. Pansy, think about congestion pricing. It's disgusting. It's another way to get money out of people. Yep. If people stayed inside, we wouldn't have the problem in the first place.

So maybe there should be more curfews. What does Pansy think about Mark Zuckerberg's new look? I think we have a photo here. She thinks he needs to be checked into hospital straight away. Straight away. And should Marianne Jean-Baptiste get another Oscar nomination? Who on earth is that? LAUGHTER

I think this world needs a little more pansy in it. I really do. What types of roles-- is there a particular role that you're dying to play? Anything you haven't done yet that you love to sink your teeth into? I quite like the baddies, you know, the Bond baddies and, you know, the criminal mastermind, that sort of character. Like superhero villain. Yes. Well, not quite, yeah. But sort of. I mean, yeah. OK. I'll have it. I'll take it.

Well, the truth that you are so unbelievably talented, you could do absolutely anything you want. So congratulations on everything. Thank you so much for being here. It's such a pleasure to be here.

That's our show for tonight. But before we go, please consider supporting the California Fire Foundation. They are on the ground working with local fire agencies and community organizations to provide support to impacted residents. If you can, please donate at the link below. Now here it is, your moment of Zen. The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us a capacity for choice.

We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes, and we must. 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 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+. Paramount Podcasts.