Trump and Musk Feud Goes Nuclear, Threats Fly, Kanye Calls For Ceasefire | Jonathan D. Cohen
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Welcome to The Daily Show. I'm Michael Kosta. We have so much to talk about tonight. Woo-hoo! Because one simple 1,100-page piece of legislation is tearing America's favorite friendship apart. So, let's get right into it with our ongoing coverage of the big, beautiful bill. Oh, man.

I sleep with that. I wrap it around, I kiss it at night.

For a few days now, there's been a simmering tension between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the leader of the free world and the breeder of the free world. But today, the conflict has escalated into a full-blown World War douche. Breaking news, a very public breakup between the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and arguably the most powerful man, President Donald Trump. A fascinating and blistering war of words. It is getting messier literally by...

the minute. Well, it's crashing and burning right now. The bromance is over. Oh my God, I can't believe it. The thing that was always going to happen is now happening. And you get to be a part of it. I thought these two billionaires with the world's biggest egos would work it out amicably. All right, let's take a step back and figure out how this completely predictable thing predictably unfolded.

After Elon stepped away from the White House a few days ago, he started to express some constructive criticism about Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill, that it drastically increases the deficit, which clearly undercuts all the hard, patriotic work Elon has done gutting funding for cancer research and starving children.

And at first, it was just quiet complaining. But yesterday, Elon took his campaign up a notch. Elon Musk, who just yesterday called it an abomination and doubled down on that today in a string of posts. One reads, a new spending bill should be drafted that doesn't massively grow the deficit and increase the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. In

In another, he writes, call your senator, call your congressman. Bankrupting America is not okay. Kill the bill. Another simply shows a movie poster for the Quentin Tarantino movie, Kill Bill. Right? Kill Bill. I guess Elon is a fan of Tarantino movies, although not the one where all the Nazis die at the end. That one makes him sad. Now...

Trump had been uncharacteristically reserved about his good friend turning against his bill. And even today, when he was asked about it, you could tell that he was treading lightly. -I've always liked Elon, and that's why I was very surprised. Elon and I had a great relationship.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is just like when your mom catches you jerking off to her JC catalog. Trump's not mad, but he is disappointed.

This was an interesting response. Because for every other ex-staffer who speaks out against Trump, he's like, this loser, piece of shit, low-life dirtbag. I wish I'd fired him sooner and f***ed his wife. But when it came to Elon, he was more subdued. And I think that's because Trump could tell that deep down inside, Elon has $400 billion. $400 billion.

But if Trump was hoping to handle the situation delicately, it didn't seem to work. Elon Musk is wasting no time pushing back. He said, without me, Trump would have lost the election. Democrats would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. He went on to say, such ingratitude.

All right. Whoo! This isn't about policy anymore. This is getting personal. This is Elon saying, I made you. And like everything else I make, I can blow you up. And by the way, Elon taking credit for winning the election is a little rude to the Democrats, isn't it? I mean, you're totally erasing all the work they did to blow the election. Whoo!

But those tweets triggered Trump. He doesn't mind if you criticize his policies or ideas or family or children. He doesn't give a shit about any of that. But the one thing you cannot do is suggest that Trump didn't win something on his own. He thinks he won everything on his own, even the things he lost.

So then, Trump started swinging back. Let me read a little bit of what Donald Trump posted on TruSocial. He says, "Elon was wearing thin. He asked him to leave. I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted, that he knew for months I was going to do, and he just went crazy." That's not fair. Elon Musk didn't just go crazy. He's been crazy for a long time. And maybe he's right.

What kind of idiot would be into Elon's cars? I love Tesla. Not me, Murr.

And Trump didn't just leave it there. He also threw in a threat, saying, if this African junkie wants to cut the deficit, I know where to start. And he says the easiest way to save money in our budget billions and billions of dollars is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

Elon's government contracts can't be worth that much, can they? Oh, it's $6.3 billion last year. Elon, you idiot. This is why you always sign a prenup. By the way, can we just point out how crazy 2025 is? Most people can't afford to eat eggs anymore. Meanwhile, these two billionaires are attacking each other from different social media platforms that they each own. Maybe we should eat the rich. But Trump...

But Trump, Elon, let's calm down, all right? Things are getting a little too heated. At this point, we can still walk away from this, right? Let's not say something we can never take back, right? -Elon Musk tweeting within the past one minute, "Time to drop the really big bomb @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That's the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day! BJT!" America, tonight, we are a nation at war.

And look, it's not a big surprise that Trump might be in the Epstein files. We've seen them party together. Of course Trump is in the Epstein files. This is like saying, guys, there are aliens in the X-Files. Yeah, obviously. But for his own best friend slash sugar daddy to say this, that is huge. Although, I like that he ends it with, have a nice day. I don't know if Trump is, but I sure am.

But as you can imagine, this whole feud is tearing MAGA world apart. Steve Bannon called for Musk to be deported. Some Musk fans called for Trump to be impeached, to which Musk replied, yes. But some more sober minds are calling for a ceasefire. Kanye West reacting to the feud today, posting, Rose, please, no. We love you both so much. Look.

You know you've gone too far when Kanye West is saying, please stop being messy on the Internet.

Meanwhile, some people in MAGA world are so freaked out by this breakup that they've chosen to respond in denial. I think Trump might be working in tandem with Elon here to tank his own bill in a 4D chess move. Oh, okay. 4D chess? No. At best, it's Jenga between two kids who immediately knock the tower over and start whipping blocks at each other. Now...

For more on the fallout between Trump and Elon, we go live to Washington with Grace Kuhlenschmidt. Grace, boy. Grace, the way these Trump and Elon fanboys are handling their breakups seems kind of sad. Actually, Michael, you're kind of sad and stupid. I've been talking to a lot of Republicans, and it's obvious that Trump and Elon are playing 4D chess. Maybe even 5D chess. And all of these Ds are rock hard.

Grace, Grace, those Republicans are kidding themselves. Elon is trying to kill Donald Trump's bill. Yeah, so that they can pass an even better bill. A bill that they wrote together. Classic 6D chess move.

It's like, Jesus, you kill him, then he comes back even more powerful with washboard abs and one of those haircuts that TikTok guys have. Grace, Grace, what the f*** are you talking about? It's kind of like short on the side, but super fluffy up top. No, I don't, that's not what I mean. Trump, Trump and Elon are not secretly working together. Republicans just don't want to admit that their two leaders are split over Trump's signature legislation. Yeah, maybe. Maybe.

Maybe the bill is going to die in the Senate. Maybe Republicans can't get the support it needs. And Chuck Schumer walks out to cast the deciding vote. And then he reaches for his neck and he pulls his face off. Musk in a Mission Impossible mask.

He votes to pass the bill. Democrats race to stop him, but then Donald Trump flies into the room on the wing of his Qatari jet and starts karate boxing. He does his own stunts. Check out the whole franchise on Paramount+. Grace, Grace, stop it. No. This...

This is not an action thriller. Musk called Trump a pedophile. Republicans have to accept that this alliance has collapsed. No, your parents are getting divorced. What? Imagine a chessboard in seven dimensions. What are the seven dimensions? Time, space, Medicaid gravity, Starlink.

Grace, Grace, Grace. It just seems like they're both trying to get each other into checkmate. What is checkmate? Checkmate, like chess. I'm unfamiliar. Grace, we've been talking about this the whole time. I'm more of a twister girl. Oh, Grace Kuhl and Schmidt, everybody. When we come back, Louis Black will be joining me on the show. Don't go away. Checkmate. Welcome back to The Daily Show.

When a news story falls through the cracks, Lewis Black catches it for a segment we call Back in Black. Right now, college students across the country are graduating and getting ready to enter the glorious, psychotic nightmare that is adult life. Welcome, kids. You'll need two things, a positive mental attitude and a cyanide capsule in your molar for when the shit hits the fan.

But that's not the only advice you'll need because thanks to AI, you newly minted graduates probably don't know shit! A growing number of college students are reportedly turning to artificial intelligence for help with their coursework. Students use it taking notes during class, devising study guides, practicing tests, summarizing novels and textbooks, drafting their essays. How many of your peers do you think use AI? Like everybody?

Probably like 95%. Everybody that I've talked to has at least experimented with it. Are you kidding me? That's what you're experimenting with at CollegeBT? You should be doing fun experiments, like how much LSD can you take before you forget your name? Take it from me, Dua Lipa! Ha ha!

And it's tragic that AI is robbing these kids of a proper college education. I mean, what are we going to do if a student like Barron Trump isn't using his full cognitive ability? The only thing AI should be telling that Sasquatch in a suit is be sure, you f***ing freak, you're blocking the goddamn sun! Woo!

Now, it's bad enough that students are using AI to cheat on everything they're doing. What's even worse is that they're bragging about it. If you saw my video yesterday, you know I got called into my professor's office for using AI. But today's a new professor and a new exam, so we're still going to be ripping AI for the whole test. Another exam in the bag, another hundred again. The senior year of high school, we got assigned this ginormous essay that we had to do. And I was like, bro, there is no way that I'm writing this.

So I copy and pasted the prompt into ChatGPT, added my sources, and made them write the essay. And then I got an F on the assignment, and then I failed the class. So moral of the story, you're going to fail all your classes if you use ChatGPT, so just don't. What are you doing to your eye? Huh?

Can chat GBT please tell that woman to keep her cornea out of my face? So AI is smart enough to help the kids cheat, but not smart enough to tell them to shut the f*** up about it. And you'd think with all these kids admitting to using AI, their professors would be furious. It's

New reporting shows a growing number of instructors using artificial intelligence tools. Professors tell the New York Times that using chat GPT saves time, helps ease large workloads and serve as teaching assistants. One professor at Harvard is trying to use AI for his students and to their advantage. We recreated the way that we would teach in the classroom with the AI tutor.

Come on, professors. If you replace your teaching assistant with AI, then who are you going to leave your wife for? Not using your brain as a professor, what is your job? You're basically a scarf model with a drinking problem. And Harvard professors using AI is extra insulting. You're the top school in the country. Why did your students even bother paying an Asian kid to take their SATs?

So AI is making everyone lazy. Even school administrators are using it. All right, at first glance, this may look like a regular old graduation ceremony, but take a closer look. Instead of a proud teacher or a dean reading off their name, shaking their hands, these accomplished graduates scanned a QR code on their phones, and then AI read their names aloud. What the f*** is this?

These kids graduating college or boarding a plane at LaGuardia. Oh, a QR code scanner. What a personal touch. Who doesn't like being treated with the same dignity as a head of lettuce at Whole Foods?

So there's barely anybody left who isn't even using AI. And even when they don't, they're getting punished for it. Students across the country have been wrongly accused of AI cheating. With his scholarship on the line, an AI detection tool incorrectly flagged Joe Rivera. I get an email three days later saying, hey, you've been flagged for plagiarism, specifically chat GBT. And for that, you need to contest this.

Or you take a zero and you fail the class. His professor, after a closer look, confirmed he did not cheat. Suck on that, nerd! That'll teach you for trying to actually learn something. And ladies and gentlemen, that's the state of education in 2025. Students are using AI to do their work. Teachers are using AI to do their work. And any students who aren't using AI are being punished.

So let me put this in a way you kids can understand. Michael. Bruce Black, everyone. We'll be right back. Jonathan D. Cohen will be joining us on the show. Don't go away. Welcome back to the show. My guest tonight is a historian and author whose new book is called Losing Big, America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling. Please welcome Jonathan D. Cohen. Thank you.

Huge fan of America's reckless bet on sports gambling. The best. Your book takes on modern sports betting. But before we get into that, tonight, do you think Obi Toppin's going to get four and a half rebounds and gain one of the NBA's? Yeah, this segment brought to you by FanDuel. Right. Why now? Why this book right now?

I mean, I think we're at a point of what I would call a public health crisis where young men in particular are losing more money than they can afford. And states are basically not even getting that much money for it. And the consequences are being felt again by primarily young men who are, again, either losing more money than they can afford or in worst cases, developing full blown gambling addictions and thoughts of suicide. How did we get here?

Because America's had a long history of betting and gambling, but this seems like we've taken on a whole new level. Yeah. So here, here, we got in... So in 1992, the sports leagues went to Congress and asked for the passage of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. PASPA. PASPA, which effectively... Which did, in fact...

blocked states from legalizing sports gambling. Okay, fine. And then in 2018, the Supreme Court, on the basis of states' rights, which is, of course, a really cool doctrine that's never caused any problems before. On the basis of states' rights, basically ruled pass by unconstitutional and said states are allowed to legalize sports gambling if they want to.

And then that's kind of when the floodgates opened. And so now we have 38, soon to be this year, 39 states and Washington, D.C., with sports gambling and 30 with gambling on your cell phone. Some states did it very quickly. New Jersey was given a year to manage it and f*** that up. It's New Jersey. That's New Jersey, right. I think Delaware did it in your book. You said they did it in like six weeks. Jersey gets a year. They still can't figure it out.

Talk a little bit about fantasy sports. Talk a little bit about... -The gateway drug? -Fill out your bracket. -Yeah.

Seems innocuous, seems harmless, but in some ways, did that help us get here? Right. It's not gambling, but it's not not gambling. And sort of legally, if there was this whole states' rights argument, that is what got us here. But culturally, the reason that within six weeks we have people lining up ready to bet or waiting to bet on their phone is that you're already acclimated to leveraging predictions to make money with something like fantasy sports or leveraging college basketball.

And then not to mention, you may remember in 2014, 2015, FanDuel and DraftKings took off not as sports betting companies, but as daily fantasy sports companies. And lo and behold, come the Supreme Court decision, they already had every American sports bettors like social security number, phone number. They were trusted with credit card deposits, name recognition, which is what allowed the Supreme Court decision comes down. Boom, they're multibillion dollar companies overnight.

The state of Colorado says that the revenue created through gambling goes towards... The water. The water. There's other initiatives...

Is this bullshit? Does this help me place a bet? This is for the water. Hey, I want my kids to have clean water. Let's bet that... You know what really helps? It helps the lawmakers sleep at night because it helps them justify why they've unleashed this public health crisis in the name of tax-free government revenue, which has always been sort of the bottom line for lawmakers when it comes to the expansion of gambling. But is it not going to water and helping water? It is going to water, but like...

It's not even a golden goose. It's like a bronze... It's like a copper goose. It's like when you look at how much... An injured goose. Yeah, yeah. It's like how much money is sort of promised or at least is imagined by these lawmakers and then how much actually comes in because sports betting is just such a low-margin business for the state. I remember in Michigan, where I'm from, the lottery would go to education. There was always these ads like, buy your ticket, help the schools. And I remember I was 11 years old and I would say, maybe we should just fund the schools. Maybe...

I'm a hero. I'm the hero here. I'm the hero here. Maybe Colorado should just fund the water without having to... Yeah, but that would be too hard. That would be too hard. Yeah. How many people are doing this? Okay, so with the caveat that Texas and California, the two most popular states, don't have legal sports betting yet. Right. The estimates are that 20 to 40 percent of American adults have legally bet within the last five to seven years. Clap your hands if you've set a bet in the last year. That guy looks like he's lost a lot.

One thing that I found fascinating in the book that I learned was that a small amount of gamblers actually attribute to the most amount of revenue. So most of us are gambling 60% or something equal 1% of revenue. Yeah.

Is that good? Is that bad? It's good for the 60% of people who contribute 1% of revenue. It's bad for the 82% of bettors on the NFL who... Or, excuse me, the 3% of bettors on the NFL who amount to 82% of the revenue. And so some of those people, sure, they're really, really rich like you, and they're giving millions of dollars because they're the...

But a lot of the people are like kind of like the guys I profile in the book who are like gambling their rent money and are just over their skis or they've developed an addiction of some kind and they and they should not be betting as much as they are. The NFL kind of hides behind this. This is good for the fan experience. Yeah. Talk a little bit about how the NFL, which was adamantly against gambling. But man, has that changed?

Right. And so for decades, literally decades, the NFL used gambling as a punching bag. Whatever problem the NFL had at the peak of the concussion crisis, Roger Goodell says that gambling is the number one threat to the integrity of football. Right. Because, of course, it's not concussion. Well, he he may have been concussed. But it's sort of a punching bag. It's you can trust our product, not just because like America is football and football is America or whatever, but like because we hate gambling so much. That's why you can trust our product.

And then May 14th, 2018, 10.01 a.m., when sports gambling is going to be legal, lo and behold, we need to give gambling as tight a bear hug as possible and extract every last dollar out of the gambling economy so that we can monitor it and so that we can keep our players safe and so that we can keep our game safe. Oh, and we can make billions of dollars from it.

I mean, the ads. It's incessant. It's nonstop. What else are the apps doing to kind of prey on us? Or even, you know, what other ways is this industry attacking us? Right. So if you imagine the complaints all the time now about social media and the endless scroll, for example, and the sportsbooks apps basically mimic the endless scroll where you're

When we legalized this in 2018, we were probably imagining, hey, I'm going to bet on the Knicks over or whatever. I'm probably going to lose because it's the Knicks, but I'm going to bet on the Knicks over or whatever. They lost a lot of money. So that's normal. Okay, I'm going to bet on a team to win the game. That's normal. But these days, you can bet on Malaysian women's doubles badminton. Okay.

Correct. Because there's obviously a huge black market for Malaysian women's doubles badminton, and we need to get those gamblers who are gambling illegally onto our apps. So this endless stream of betting options-- you can bet on the speed of the next pitch. You're a tennis guy. You can bet on whether the next tennis serve will be an ace. The goal is to mimic the slot machine phenomenon or the roulette wheel phenomenon, where

Just constant action. You finish your role, okay, let's just do another one. And there's just constant, constant sources of action rather than having to wait three hours for your bet to materialize. Yeah, that was something that really resonated with me from the book. It's that...

The gambler isn't necessarily addicted to they won or they lost. They're addicted to the action. They're addicted to the feeling of will they win or lose, and that never ends. And it also makes a really shitty basketball game exciting all of a sudden. Right. Every five minutes you can bet on... Not even every five minutes, every five seconds you can bet on something new, and you can get that feeling, that dopamine hit that you get when that wheel is spinning. I personally...

don't naturally provide empathy for a gambling addict. I go, come on, man, stop. Stop doing this. You're f***ing up your life. But explain to me some of the things you say in the book about how it might not be that simple and how you call it a public health crisis. Why is that? Well, maybe you go to heroin addicts and you tell them to stop f***ing up their life, too. For some reason, it's easier for me with drug and alcohol addiction

to sympathize or just go like, it's just one little drink. I can see how it can escalate. But some of the things you outline, I mean, the apps know when you deposit money into your bank and then they email you. I mean, it starts to really feel like it's tough to say no over and over and over again. Right. And so just to your point, your first question, the gambling actually is a lot more like drugs and alcohol than you think. Right.

The American Psychiatric Association has it categorized as an official gambling addiction, as an official addictive behavior, because it is not something like sex addiction that's a disorder, but it doesn't affect your brain chemistry. Gambling literally affects your brain chemistry and changes your dopamine pathways. So someone who's addicted to gambling isn't choosing-- you can't just tell them to stop. They are not choosing to gamble. In the same way you can be addicted to a drug, you can be chemically addicted to gambling.

But it's right on our phone, which we also use for everything. Yeah, but states' rights. What are some of the solutions? What can we do here? So I would say there's two categories of solutions. Because you're not against sports betting. Yeah, I bet on Danish handball like an hour ago. Did you really? Yeah. Well, and, you know, one of the examples you use, and you really do a wonderful job of highlighting some individuals that really put themselves in difficult situations.

life problems because of gambling, one of which needs the action in the middle of the night, so starts gambling on minor league British darts. Yeah, which you're a huge fan of. It's funny. It's humorous until you think, no, you want action. If you're an American, there's no sports happening in the middle of the night, but there is over there, and it's terribly dangerous. So this is an easy solution, for example. Get rid of these insane sports that literally only someone with a gambling addiction would ever possibly think to bet on. Right.

Couple that with all sorts of other changes to the app, getting rid of the endless scroll, getting rid of some of these live bets, adding friction. I think when you deposit money into your account, you should have to wait 12 to 24 hours until you can gamble with it. This problem of loss chasing where you lose your bet. Oh, I'm so mad. Let me just put another $100 in. Oh, I'm so mad. I'm going to put $200 in. And all of a sudden, like $15,000 later, you wake up and you're like, what the hell just happened to me?

Slow it down. Yeah, friction. Slow it down. It's a fascinating book. I think this is such an interesting topic that it's one of those things that America just does so terribly that we just accept and adopt way too quickly, and then we hustle back to try to fix it. And...

Your book makes a good argument that we need to start trying to fix it right now. That phenomenon that you described of needing to like, of like unleashing something and then, oh, lo and behold, we messed it up. That was basically why I wrote the book. And that's why I think parents, for example, of young kids, like younger than you think, need to like make their kids aware of gambling and gambling addiction and that they can't have these encounters on their own. And then all of a sudden they go from video games to sports betting to some sort of gambling problem. Great. It's a great book. Thank you for being here so much. Losing Big is available now.

I'll be honest, I think he misses the place. I think he got out there and all of a sudden he wasn't in this beautiful Oval Office. He's not the first. People leave my administration and they love us.

And then at some point they miss it so badly and some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile. I don't know what it is. It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it. 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+. ♪♪♪

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