David Remnick
Appearances
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
And... This is the first cover that was on The New Yorker. That's right. Ray Irvin was the artist, and they put it out, and it went on the newsstands. Harold Ross was the editor. Raoul Fleischman, a yeast fortune behind the magazine. Sure. And it sold nothing. It sold nothing. It didn't do very well at all. Even with all that yeast money behind it.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
And this is a... They almost closed the whole thing down after three months. Really? They almost gave up on the whole thing.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Was there a story? It was meant to be just a purely comic, jazz age, 1920s, pre-Depression thing. And they were going to close it down after three months. And then they had a good piece about the Scopes monkey trial, which you remember?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
sure who did what i watched it on court tv it's fantastic and then i swear to god what took off on the newsstand was a piece you're not going to believe this about cabarets and nightclubs and things like this and people were fascinated and it flew off the newsstand And the next thing you know, we were a big success.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Oh, it was purely little bits and pieces. The first profile that ever ran, and we're famous for longer pieces, as you know. The first piece that ever ran as a profile was a one-page profile of the head of the Metropolitan Opera. Showbiz.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
One page.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
And read more. What? You know, there aren't little dots in one-sentence summaries of world events. Son of a bitch. No, it's in... It is in defiance of every trend that we think is happening. But look, I think that people actually want to know. They want to know what's going on in the world. They want to know what's going on in Washington.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
They want to know what's going on with other people's lives and have some empathy for it. They want to laugh. And that's what we're trying to do. It's a pretty inclusive formula.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Well, I think there are more people than you think. I mean, a million two, million three people subscribe to the magazine. I hope it'll be more, especially after this night. I think all day long. There's nothing like shameless pandering.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
They're not interested. My first job, sports writer for the Washington Post. Really? Yeah. I didn't even know they had athletic teams. They have what's now called the Commodores. Oh, very nice.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
I think people want to find out more than just ridiculous tweets. And they want to know what's going on. And they want fairness and fact checking and a sense of decency. And they also want some media outlets that aren't knuckling under.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
And that's our promise to you. And, you know, I think that we're looking for another hundred years, but I'd like to get past the next four. Right. Frankly, yeah.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
It's not even reminiscent of the first Trump term.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Immensely different. in a weird way more competent. I know that sounds very strange, but they seem to have come to the game very determined to do a ton of things fast and overwhelm you and overwhelm me and everybody here. And to some measure, they're succeeding.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
But there's a shrewdness to it. And part of the shrewdness is contingent on the weakness of the Democrats and the confusion of the Democrats at the moment. And the sport of the election, quite frankly, there are a lot of people behind them.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
And our job is to get it right and to get it fair and to get it factual and to not just be yelling and screaming and wagging our fingers with polemics, but to really describe these things with with some sense of seriousness. And I think people want that.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
I notice sometimes when I go out to dinner with this person or that person and meet friends, whatever, every once in a while, in fact, quite a lot, somebody will say to me, you know what? I've signed off on the news. I'm not watching it. I can't take it. I have to, you know, protect myself. It's too much. I understand that instinct. I understand it, but while you're doing that...
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Trump keeps going. Politics keeps going. The world keeps happening. And you may choose to protect yourself.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
But then you're part of the problem, I'm afraid.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
That's happening right now. Right now, the president is overstepping executive power, not once, not twice, but in multiple ways. And courts are going to have to stand up to do what courts need to do. The press needs to describe it in all its fullness and accuracy. Citizens need to do what citizens are capable of doing. And it requires everybody.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
And the Democratic Party, that Congressman Goldman did not exactly present the face of a warrior.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Chapter 12 in Profiles in Courage. Right? Yeah, yeah.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
But that's a political battle. Some of that is a political battle that's natural over... over federal spending, for example, over culture wars. It's not a mystery that we have such... That's right. It's not constitutional. No, this is about breaking the norms of the Constitution and the law, and what are you going to do about it?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
I think CBS said 52, 53 percent, which for him is a landslide.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
So I think we're headed toward a big crisis. I really do. And I think we're in the midst of it. Right. Really do.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Yeah. Well, the opposition party is the Democratic Party that's licking its wounds. It's beating itself up for what happened, and rightly so, in terms of the Biden decision to run a second time or the decision to kind of have a willing suspension of disbelief on where Biden was in terms of popularity or his age. There's a kind of sense of injury, embarrassment, and withdrawal. But enough already.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Enough already. Sack up. Yeah. You hear that?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
But what you described, which is that you have a historical trend and then there's a reaction to it, and this has happened any number of times, I fully expect and hope that that will happen again in some form or another. Again, it is not the job of the press, and this may disappoint some of you, to be at the head of the barricades shaking the fist and leading the charge.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
It is to describe so that you're fully in possession of the facts.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
and points of view are expressed, and, you know, then you do what you will in a democracy. That is a really important function. Do you really think the Democrats' problem is a messaging problem?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
No, this is three weeks old. What is it, three, four weeks old? This is not a new feeling. People did not believe... I think people did not fully take on board that what Donald Trump was saying that he was going to do in all those speeches that we... either laughed about or disbelieved or, you know, kind of let fly by or foolish enough to believe that he would lose.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
They did not quite take on board the full reality, the fullness of what he was gonna do, how fast it was gonna come, and with what sense of diabolical organization. Because you have to say this, it is just coming so fast at people in terms of the press, in terms of public opinion, in terms of the Democratic Party, that people are on their heels. Right.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
And I, you know, hope that doesn't last for... Because there's no time... If you keep ceding that to Trump, a lot of damage is going to be done very, very quickly.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
But the problem is that he's president and he's maximizing executive power as quickly and as fully as he possibly can. And unless you have a coherent reaction to that, whether it's in Congress, or the press, or the greater world, or on the street, you're going to lose a lot. Ultimately, he might get pushed back. Ultimately, in two years, there might be a midterm election that weakens him.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Ultimately, he may overplay his hand in this court case or that court case, and he loses. But a lot of damage is going to be done to a lot of human beings. And also, the one thing that we haven't mentioned the quality of cruelty to all this, not just illegality.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Yeah. I mean, just the cruelty about the description of trans people and our fellow brothers and sisters who are immigrants or have birthright citizenship. There is a tone of insult and the desire to damage.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
I can fully believe it, and any government agency, whether it's USAID or whatever it might be. Yes. But the notion of putting somebody in charge of the... HEALTH, THE PUBLIC HEALTH OF THIS COUNTRY, WHO IS A CONSPIRACY THEORIST AND A LIAR AND QUITE STRANGE.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
K Thank you very much. Thank you.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart & John Oliver on America's Trump Monarchy Era | David Remnick
Thank you very much.