Jon Stewart and The News Team Cover Joe Biden's Presidential Future & Project 2025 | ICYMI
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You're listening to Comedy Central. Don Stewart! And we all... ...very quickly, I mentioned a very quick congratulations to England and France who held their elections to great success. We would talk about them tonight, but we're in America. So... And last week we did a live show after the debate...

Wait, wait, where did we leave off? This cannot be real life. It just can't. We're America. Ah, yes, anger and despair. By the way, for those of you at home, the scripts are printed on Kevlar, which is why I had trouble. It's no way weak fingers.

Now, since the debate, it's been quite interesting, actually. Many Democrats have expressed concern that the president has a hard time expressing thoughts. And then there is this other camp who thinks that those people should shut the f***

Stop this whining. Stop the complaining. Stop trying to be the cool, cynical kids. I would not want to be in a foxhole with any of the people who, you know, were clutching their pearls all of a sudden. Pearl clutching and hand wringing. Or bedwetting and soaking all the way through the mattress. We panic and piss our pants. First of all, I'm not sure incontinence is the metaphor you want to go with.

And second of all, when are we going to free Senator Fetterman from the Turkish prison he's being held in? That's, I don't know. To those of you who say these concerns are simple pearl wedding and bed clutching, we all make mistakes. I thought I would take a moment to explain where the concern about Biden's performance might be coming from and why these concerns may be seen as a more foundational issue.

You see, even before the debate, there had been some troubling moments of disconnect from the president. You know, perhaps this chart could, if I may, sorry, the pen caps are made of Kevlar. Very difficult. Perhaps this chart will illustrate and illuminate the point more clearly. For instance, in 2022,

when we saw Biden give a shout out to Representative Jackie. Representative Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie? I didn't think she was going to be here. Unfortunately, Jackie was dead. It's something that the president seemed to have known six weeks earlier when he released a condolence statement about her death. So...

Then there was the recounting of a recent conversation that the president had had with his counterpart, the president of France. And Mitterrand from Germany, I mean, from France, looked at me and said, said, you know, why, how long are you back for? Unfortunately, Mitterrand is also dead.

for longer even than that first lady, so... Even on teleprompter, things continue to... Like the reading of the instructions people sometimes add to teleprompter scripts. The percentage of women who register to vote and cast a ballot is consistently higher than the percentage of the men who do so. End of quote. Repeat the line. At the Catholic school I went to, there was a guy named Riley, last name. Four more years...

Then of course to be fair, State of the Union, concern dropped a little bit at the State of the Union. He kind of nailed it. But then the debate happened and we kind of, what the ? What is, what? Now to my mind, the debate was a shocking display of cognitive difficulty.

RECOGNIZABLE TO UNFORTUNATELY ANYBODY WHO'S DEALT WITH AGING PARENTS AND IT'S A HARD WATCH. BUT THERE WERE MANY VIEWERS WHO FELT IT WAS NOT AS NOTEWORTHY AS BIDEN'S OPPONENT IN THE DEBATE.

It's pretty amazing that, you know, 90% of the conversation is around Joe Biden's style. When up on that stage, Donald Trump was engaged in a level of pathological lying that we've never seen. Shouldn't the discussions also be about Trump's fitness to serve? Every time he opened his mouth, he said something insane or that was a lie. Why aren't there calls for Trump to drop out? Where are they? Why doesn't anyone ever speak out about it?

Trump. Or, let's say, every night for ten f***ing years. But you know what? Fair point. Not me, because I wasn't here, but other people. Fair point. And let's take a look at Trump's chart. It's all bad. It's been bad since he started with grabbing the pussy. I mean, what are you going to do? The whole thing's been bad. The whole thing. The difference is this.

I will tell you the difference. I will tell you the difference. The difference is Trump delivered at the debate to expectation. We expect him to be crazy. But Biden's performance and inability to articulate at times was stunning. Like, I could not believe what I was watching. Just thinking about it again just makes me want to rip up my... Why do we make this out of such strong material?

But then it got worse. Rather than respecting the American people and having an honest, at least partial conversation about what we had all seen,

We were told immediately, "These are not the droids you're looking for." -He has a stutter. -He hasn't debated in four years. -He was almost over-prepared. -He had an off night. People have an off night. -You know, the president traveled six time zones forward to G7, and he was also doing -- continued to do his presidential duties. And also, he had a cold. He was jet-lagged. -He'd been home for almost two weeks. He was jet-lagged?

How big is that jet? The point is, for a campaign based on honesty and decency, the spin about the debate appears to be blatant bullshit. And the redemption tour hasn't gone that much better, whether it's been on the radio. I'm proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, the first black woman, served with the black president. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER

Yass queen. Or whether the president is on prompter and firing. Let me say this as clearly as I can. I'm staying in the race. I'll beat Donald Trump. I will beat him again in 2020. I gotta tell you, somehow...

Confusion with confidence is even more unsettling. Or when the president sat down with George Stephanopoulos to prove once and for all how cogent he is and to film a bronzer ad. Orange man good?

None of this was reassuring. And we're told that the threat of Trump is so great and the stakes are so high that even bringing up these absolutely legitimate concerns about the president's ability to do the most vigorous job in the world for the next four years is enabling fascism. Yet even the president doesn't seem particularly alarmed.

And it's really troubling...

As this new information has been introduced, we just learned about this and now we're all being told, well, you should have thought of that before you knew it. We can't go against the will of the voters. Democrats who voted in all 50 states in the primary, that is who they want to be their nominee. He's the nominee because millions and millions of people voted for him to be our nominee and he will be our nominee. End of story.

There was no real primary. Biden ran against Dean Phillips. That's not even a real person. That's a stock photo on the package for a garden owner. It's not a person. And let me say this. 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. Get on board or shut the f*** up is not, is not. Honestly though, get on board or shut the f***

is not a particularly compelling pro-democracy bumper sticker. Nor is, what are you going to do? I've gotten a lot of texts today from folks who watched a lot of West Wing episodes and imagine a very complex path through which we might have a robust primary process. But Wolf, you know the reality. There's four months left to the presidential election. Four months is for f***.

Britain just held an election in two months. France had two in one month, defeated fascism, and still had time to have an affair with Denmark. Are you telling me, you sons of bitches, are you coming to my house and saying to my face that the United States or Bruce Springsteen's America can't hold an election better than a French? Is that what you're telling me? In four months. Months.

It's 119 days. There are contestants on The Bachelor who haven't even met yet that will get married and divorced between now and the election. We have nothing but time. And by the way, I am in no way saying Biden's got to 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...

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. Here's an idea. I'll spitball it. It's last minute. But why don't we try and get all the Democrats together in, I don't know, six weeks' time?

We could get everybody to fly into some Midwestern town, maybe like one adjacent to important swing states. Let's call it Chicago. And they could spend, I don't know, four days there because nobody works Fridays anymore. And on Monday, anybody who wants to gives their sales pitch of how they can make democracy more responsive to the people it is supposed to serve. You could bang it out.

On Tuesday, the winners could move on to the next round and then face Biden. They could face Biden. Biden had a bye. Wednesday would be an off-day bus tour to find the restaurant from the bear. Thursday, the party emerges energized, unified, sanctified. You could televise the entire proceeding for four days. You could call it, I don't know, The Apprentice. I'm just workshopping here. So...

Feel free to ignore any obvious weaknesses in your team's existential fight for freedom and democracy. And then just white-knuckle this thing till November. Or take the advice of your own candidate. Do you think there is any Democrat who could defeat Donald Trump other than you? Probably 50 of them. 50? I gotta say, I like the cut of that fella's jib.

off with the big story of the past week, a national crisis with global implications. Somebody shit in the bed in Gwyneth Paltrow's guest house. According to the Daily Mail, a house guest of Gwyneth Paltrow's Hamptons home suffered, quote, catastrophic diarrhea in bed. The house guest then blamed the disaster on Ozempic before fleeing the property. Is one of the side effects of Ozempic not caring about cleaning up the diarrhea you get from Ozempic?

Why would you run out after that? If there's anyone who would be sympathetic, it's the woman who tells you to squirt coffee enemas up your butt. And pardon my word choice here, but I want to sit in this mess for just a minute. Because it brings up an interesting question. When you shit the bed as visibly and as nationally as this guest did, should you stay in the house? Or is it time to leave?

I know that some people would say that the guest just had a bad night. He's a decent man with a lifetime of service as a house guest, and he's earned the chance to stay and clean up his mess. But the thing is, we all know he shit the bed. We can't unsee him shitting the bed. And now every time we see him, we're going to be wondering, is he going to shit the bed again?

Are we-- are we still talking about the houseguest? All I'm saying is Gwyneth has every right to be skeptical about inviting this houseguest to stay over again for the next four years or so. I mean, it might be too late in the summer to get another houseguest. There's plenty of time to get another houseguest! Okay, okay, okay. Okay, okay. But who's to say that another guest might not shit the bed even worse? I mean, sometimes the bed shitter you know is better than the bed shitter you don't.

Maybe, maybe, but we should at least be honest about the bed shitting instead of pretending that the bed was never shat in. Otherwise, we're going to delude ourselves into thinking that this is the best house guest we can get and now all of a sudden it's January and there's a house guest that nobody wanted and nobody in the house is allowed to get a goddamn abortion. I'm...

I'm almost certain we're not talking about the house guests. No, we're not. We're not. Okay, gotcha. So, Joe Biden shit the bed, and now his campaign is trying to desperately change the conversation back to Joe Biden's opponent.

New reporting today on a plan from President Joe Biden. It's a plan to tie Donald Trump to Project 2025 and focus on what a second Trump presidency could look like. Democrats have been shouting from the rooftops that this Project 2025 is a blueprint for Trump to gut democracy if he wins. The DNC purchased five new billboards in Miami, tying Trump to Project 2025 today. The current President Joe Biden just tweeted...

Google Project 2025. He wants us to Google it? Kind of phoning in the attack there, aren't you, Joe? Although I'm not entirely convinced Biden wasn't trying to just Google Project 2025. I mean, his next tweet's going to be, Alexa, how do you win a debate? Alexa.

But yes, if you haven't Googled it yet, Project 2025 is a 900-page blueprint for Donald Trump's second term. It's basically conservative fan fiction, which could very well become fan reality. And it's full of terrifying proposals that range from burning more fossil fuels to outlawing pornography, which is bad news for people who like to masturbate and horrible news for people who like to masturbate to our flourishing coral reefs.

Maybe it's just me. I don't know. The people behind Project 2025 were some of Donald Trump's top aides, but apparently it's getting a little too controversial for Trump now because he's running away from it like it's a disabled veteran who wants a selfie. Donald Trump chose today to try to distance himself from Project 2025. On Truth Social today, Trump wrote, I know nothing.

about Project 2025. I have no idea who's behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying, and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck. But I have nothing to do with that. Really? You expect us to believe Donald Trump didn't read a 900-page... Okay, now that I'm saying it, I hear it, yes. I hear it. I do. Okay, yeah, I do. Okay. Okay.

But let's look at this. Okay, this is textbook Trump. He hides his dog whistles next to some plausible deniability. Every tweet is like a Cheesecake Factory menu, you know? There's something for everybody. And he doesn't mind if it's full of contradictions. He hasn't read Project 2025, but he likes parts of it. He has no idea who's behind it, but he hired most of them. He thinks it's abysmal, but he wishes them luck.

He's got one hand in his pocket and the other one's giving a high five. By the way, if Trump saying, "I don't know who these people are, but I wish them luck" sounds both odd and oddly familiar, it might be because of this. - President Trump was asked late today about Jeffrey Epstein's alleged co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. - I don't know. I haven't really been following her too much. I just wish her well, frankly.

Here's a tweet idea for Joe Biden. Google Ghislaine Maxwell. Yes, the Biden campaign would love the media to start talking about Project 2025 so they can stop talking about things like this. News broke today that a military doctor specializing in Parkinson's visited the White House eight times in eight months.

Eight times in eight months? That is shocking. I can't get one doctor's appointment in eight months. I had to go to the CVS Minute Clinic to get my tubes tied. Now, as it turns out, this doctor only examined Biden during his annual physicals, and the other visits were for other people at the White House. So this story might have blown right by until this happened.

The White House today facing repeated questions about President Biden's medical history. Has the president been treated for Parkinson's? No. Is he being treated for Parkinson's? No, he's not. Is he taking medication for Parkinson's? No. But the press secretary refused to confirm that Dr. Kevin Kennard, expert on Parkinson's disease, visited the White House eight times from last summer to this past spring. Hold on a second. Not what you should be able to answer by this point. Wait, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, wait a minute. Come on.

Ed, please, a little respect here, please. It is, you're asking me, I cannot, but I just, I also said to you, Ed, I also said to you, for security reasons, we cannot share names. We cannot share names.

Look, I know she's trying to protect people's privacy, but any time you're being that cagey with information, it just makes it look like you're hiding something. It almost would have been better to just make something up, like Joe and Jill and Dr. Parkinson's are in a throuple. Do you want the youth vote or not? For more on the questions over Joe Biden's health, we go live to the briefing room with our senior White House analyst, Michael Kosta. Michael. Michael, why?

What is the White House being so cagey about the president's health? Guys, I've been talking to White House officials, and it turns out the media is blowing this way out of proportion. You know, so have Parkinson's doctor visited a few times. Big deal. An STD doctor has been here every day for a week, and no one's asking if the president has an STD. What? What? Does the president have an STD? Ha, ha, ha, ha.

That'd be pretty cool, huh? No, no, no. Does he have an STD or not? Answer the question. Guys, calm down. He definitely does not have hepatitis A, if that's what you're asking. No. Does he have hepatitis B or C? D-E-F-G. Sounds like a preschool in here. I mean, this is what the White House is talking about. The media needs to

Calm down. No, no, the White House can't drop concerning information and then be angry when the media tries to report on it. There's nothing to report on. Biden's fine, but even if he isn't, which he is, the White House has a great medical staff with tons of spare organs. God, does Biden need organs? No one said anything about getting organs from pigs. Why would he even need that? Biden's in great shape. He's got the heart of an ox. Wait, okay, uh...

Are you talking figuratively or literally? I know, right? No! No! No! Come on! Answer it! Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. A little respect, please. A little respect. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Thank you. Now, let's be calm and let this family grieve. What? What? What?

I can't share names about which family is grieving, which sitting president of the United States, which they're not, but they could be one day, which might be today. Oh, my God. Michael, Michael, answer this one question clearly without raising any further questions. Okay, where is the president right now? The president is at the NATO summit. Great. Great. Okay. And he's in all of our hearts. Wait, what? No. No, we hate you. Okay? Jeez, Michael Kosta, everyone. Yes.

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