Roy Wood Jr. on President Biden, Tucker Carlson, Trevor Noah and (of course) the WGA Strike 59:10

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On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org slash bots. It's on!

Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is just about any TV show you watch with 100% less writers. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. We couldn't have any fewer writers than Hollywood has right now. The Writers Guild strike is upon us. Yeah. And I should say we're on strike because I'm actually a member of

the Writers Guild. Oh, you are? Oh, wow. Yeah, not for my journalism, but for my film and TV screenwriting work. I think I've been in the Guild for maybe five years now. Oh, okay. And our guest today, comedian Roy Wood Jr. of Daily Show fame and recent White House correspondent dinner fame, is also a member of the Writers Guild.

Yeah, he is. And there's a lot going on with them in this strike. And the question is how long it's going to last and what impact it will have. Just shut down Saturday Night Live. I was supposed to go on Bill Maher in a couple of weeks, and I'm not going on. They need scripts. They're trying to figure out a way to do it without scripts. I don't know if they can do that or if I would cross a picket line. Yeah, they tried to move forward without scripts in the last strike in 07-08. I think it resulted in a Conan O'Brien, you know,

spinning a wedding ring at some point on air. But listen, clearly I'm a member. I'm with the Guild on this. So my opinion is my opinion and it's not objective here. But I get that there's a ton of skepticism around unions and worker organizing. Yeah. I remember when Google workers had organized and I had been an intern there and I was thinking, you know, well, why can't they work this out? But Hollywood guilds are really critical because

You're dealing in this industry with a huge power asymmetry where on one side you have an oligopoly of studios and on the other you have a very distributed set of gig workers, well-paid gig workers in many cases, but unpredictable gig work that ebbs and flows nonetheless. And for me, the WJA has been critical, you know, not just for the pay and the residuals, but for having health insurance between projects and having time to develop work.

And as streaming and technology has taken off, there's been this kind of great irony that we are in a golden era of TV and yet writers and other guilds which power the making of the television that everyone loves so much have actually gotten squeezed because the tech has allowed for a lot less transparency and a lot less bargaining power in some ways.

There's no more windows. There's no more international syndication. A lot of places where the economics really mattered have gone away, have disappeared. And, you know, it's not the studio execs that are getting squeezed out. Yeah, it's changed. The economics have changed rather drastically and there's AI coming in and everything else. So it's a lot of stuff going on and it depends on how long this is going to last. It definitely has an economic impact across countries.

Lots of places in Los Angeles. The last one, I think it lasted 100 days, was $2 billion, or just over $2 billion in Los Angeles. Because there's more people than that. There's makeup people. There's producers. It's meant to put the screws to the studios, and we'll see if the studios—they do have a lot of—they are saying they have a lot of content already banked, which they do in advance—

So we'll see what it means going forward. It's like a war. They stockpile scripts, you know, but they can't do that in late night news. And they may not be able to shoot because SAG and other guilds are completely with the Writers Guild. They're completely with us on this. I'm actually, it's bizarre. I'm going from Milken today, from the Conference of Fancy People, to a picket line. Oh, wow. Okay.

Why don't you pick at the Milken Conference? That's what I'd pick at. Have a good time on both. You're moving from the elite world to the people of the people. Go for it. You move from the elite world to the world of the people in literally a Chevy Bolt, the car of the people. I try to stay right in the middle. I try to stay right in the middle is where I like to live anyway. Well, I'm neither. I'm neither.

But you actually know the elites, Cara, on the other side of the picket line in this case, the Igers, the Sarandas. Well, let me just be clear. Some writers are quite elite. They're quite well-paid. So let's not pretend. The average writer makes $250,000. So, yes. But what do you think is in the studio heads, Maya? I think they're really...

They have some economic issues. I think they're very concerned about streaming and they haven't figured out the economics of it. I don't necessarily think they're being like, oh, we're so greedy. I think they're spending a lot on streaming and actually losing a lot. And so there's that as it'll eventually sort itself out. But there are a lot of concerns about the costs of streaming and getting into this business.

It's not unlike car makers trying to get into the electric business. It's going to cost and it's going to affect them going forward. And so there's a lot of economic uncertainty. So in this case, even though they're like, oh, they're fat cats trying to take money from us, it's like they're fat cats trying to shift an economic system. So there is some truth to that. Second thing is, what are they going to do about AI and what's going to happen if, you know, everyone's going to be shifting to more efficient means of doing all kinds of business?

And I don't know why they wouldn't shift to AI if they could. And changing the way writers' rooms are done. I know this mini room thing is really controversial, but...

Things change. Like, whether writers like it or not, things change. And there's new ways of creating content. Just like in journalism, there's all these sub-stacks now. There's all these, you know, newsrooms feel a little antiquated in many ways. And so they have some points. They have some points. I think this negotiation would have been very different maybe four years ago or two years ago when before everybody was hit, right, during the pandemic boom, for example.

But writers have a lot of power. I mean, writers power the engine of television. You know, if you like what you watch, that's thanks to a writer. And I think the overwhelming sense that I've gotten from the Guild on this is that throughout the negotiations, they're just further devaluing the profession of writing. They're not wanting to guarantee, you know, employment. They're wanting to shrink the amount of time. And they're stonewalling on issues like AI, where, you know, people who work want some clarity. And so...

I think the writers have a lot of power. Well, let's be clear. No one has clarity on AI. No one has clarity of how AI is going to hit it. So it's not clear. They don't know. Right, but it's going to be powered by the work that's generated by writers. And I think it is the time to have the conversation. The default in this world is always, you work for Uber, Uber owns your data. You write for the studio, they own the stuff. In the creative industry, we've actually been ahead of wanting to own our own IP and having residuals and backends from that. And so the default has shifted on us.

And now it's got to come back in some way or. Yeah, in some fashion. I just think it's just a very insecure time in general compared to when they were just minting money. They're not minting money. Yes, of course. And so that's one of the things. And maybe they will in the future mint money. And so, and the problem that you all have, and it will be interesting to see what SAG does and the Director's Guild and stuff like that, is this is a team sport.

Like, it's not just the writers, it's the directors, it's the set people, it's the actors. And it's because they know it's going to come for them, right? They know it's coming for them. It's the same economic issues. So we'll see.

Anyway, let's move from Hollywood to another power center, Washington. Yeah. Last week, you and I were in Washington because it was the White House Correspondents Dinner weekend, or as some call it, nerd prom. Lots of Hollywood people there, lots of Washington people there, lots of media people there. Who was your favorite sighting? I assume it was Kellyanne Conway, right? No, no, no, not at all. No, I just, I enjoyed it. I thought it was actually really interesting. It was sort of like, you know...

DC is back kind of thing, the social life. I covered parties for the Washington Post when I was in my 20s. And so it felt very frothy like that. I met a lot of fans of our podcast and also Pivot, which was fun. And one of them was Tim Daly, who's one of my favorite actors. He was in Wings and Madam Secretary. He was really great. Personally, I like that because I'm a big fan.

But, you know, it's interesting to talk to various media people. It was a lot of media people about there's all kinds of uncertainty in television news. And so I thought that was interesting. So it was fun. It was fun. I had a Hummer.

It's an electric Hummer, to be clear. Didn't make it any smaller. They're one of our advertisers. And they just let me use one for a couple rides, just a couple rides. They were sorry that they were canceling the Bolt, which is the love of your life. They were. They were. And so I would have been happy to have a Lyric or a Bolt. I would have been happy. But the Hummer was pretty funny. That's the whole thing. Karen, a Hummer. Speaking of funny people in large spaces, President Biden. Unlike Trump, he showed up.

He wasn't scared of jokes. I thought he was in really good form. What did you think? I thought he was great. I thought he did what he needed to do, which is, you know, I'm sure it was very scripted. And he's on the fly. He's not as good, but he was very good here. And he addressed the age issue, joked about it. Very good jokes. He did a great job here with timing, with everything else. So I thought that was a win for him.

And to think that it was just days after his announcement, right? It's probably a very good public image to have on right after. But the White House Correspondents Dinner might seem like just laughs or a lavish interplay of Hollywood and D.C. But there is a point to all of this madness to demonstrate a free press, an exercise of comedy without limits.

that you can wind up even the president in this country. And this year's dinner happened in the wake of a really important time in media. So there is Evan Gersovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who had been detained in Russia and faces espionage charges. There was a lot of kind of free press and free Evan conversation. Sure was. And then there was also the laughs at the expense of the Tucker Carlson's and the Don Lemon's. Don was there. Don was at the party. Yes.

Tucker was not there. And in fact, you know, given this new reporting from the New York Times about these texts about that's not how white men fight, just, well, that's another day. But nonetheless, he was the font of a lot of mockery and deserved. We certainly now know more about what

What happened with Tucker and what Fox News limits might be. Crazy. Crazy racist is apparently their limit. Okay. I'd really like someone to be murdered. I said no one ever. I said, I really wanted that guy to go down. But then I realized that guy is a person too. It's like, whatever. What do you think that says for his ability to make a comeback, by the way? Oh, I'm sure he'll have his fan base. People think that's great. There's a lot. Unfortunately, the catches off the...

The sled in this country in many ways for some people. So we'll see. Well, as Roy Wood put it, it was the first person to be fired from Fox News, not for women problems. So there was that. Yeah. Anyways, our guest today, Roy Wood Jr., was the headliner. I thought he was fantastic.

seems like a very hard gig. I thought he did great and I'm excited to talk to him about it. Yes. And so Roy Wood Jr. has been at The Daily Show since 2015. Obviously, since Trevor Noah's sudden exit to pursue other opportunities last year, there's a lot of questions who's going to be the future host of the show.

that there's a new permanent host expected to start in the fall or host because they say it might be a duo or a trio. So this is, in some ways, maybe an audition for him. Yeah, he's great. He's my choice, actually. He is? Oh, wow, Kara. Mm-hmm. Way to vote before the interview. I think they were all great, but I think he was the best. Well, The Daily Show has some time to figure out what's next as they halt production for the Writers Guild strike. That's true. And we'll take a little break, too. We'll be back with our interview with Roy Wood Jr. ♪

So congratulations on the White House Correspondents Dinner. Would you ever do it again? Yes, I would. I would do that again. I'm not going to say that it was fun, but it is essential. Because? You have the undivided attention.

of every elected official and every highest ranking member of media on camera and in the C-suite in the room at the same time, and you can say whatever you want to them. I don't believe that anything that I say is going to affect change in totality. I was joking with one of my writers for the dinner. I was like, there isn't one joke that's going to have somebody leave and reverse policy, but you might be a little more centrist down the road on something. I think that's the best case scenario, but

It was easily the most horrific and most exciting experience I've ever had as a performer. Close second is Showtime at the Apollo. All right, give me the horrific part. Was it a particularly tough room? Yes, the degree of difficulty and the risk of failure. It is a literal high wire from sentence to sentence. And in my opinion, I felt like I was coming in

with one hand behind my back because no one really knows who I am. And if you do know me, it's from The Daily Show and that's not my standup. - Right. - The Daily Show at best is probably second gear of what I am comedically on stage. But at the Correspondence Dinner, I have to be in fifth gear. - Right, right.

Who is this guy I don't know that is insulting these people that I respect? Right. Were there any jokes you were most nervous about telling? The first one, because I didn't try it in the comedy clubs. I didn't do it anywhere. Like, I literally... So here's what happened. The original opening line was, Greetings, members of the media, our nation's powerful leaders, and a property brother. Because we were told one property brother was coming. I go down to COVID testing at noon.

I see both property brothers. So we've been given bad intel. Yeah. So the joke is screwed. So now I'm like, okay, we need a quick-

Under five seconds. Right. So this is the property brother crisis, but go ahead. Yes, there is a property brother emergency going on in the WhatsApp text thread. And I said, well, you know what would be funny is if Biden is speaking, I should just give him back one of his documents. Well, how do you do that? I don't know, but that feels funny. And it's going at the top dog in the room first joke, which is the ballsy move. The first joke, we're making it about him.

Before you even know who I am. Now he kind of opened for you. What was it like for him to open? And he scooped some of your jokes. He had a bunch of them. That was a relief. That was a relief. Why is that? Because the room was already in a laughing mood and he showed that he could be a little playful. So the document joke doesn't work if Biden doesn't rip before me. We dropped a Rupert Murdoch joke. As the show is happening, I'm texting in real time with my writers. They're telling me who's in the room. They're on social media.

And, you know, just, hey, just so you know, Julia Fox is here and she's in whiteface. If you want to make a joke, I'm like, I'll pass on that. Thank you for the offer. Yeah.

That's how I found out Fauci was there. The second joke was Fauci. Yeah. And that's how we solved the Property Brothers crisis. The crisis. Well, I'm glad that was averted. Yeah. And then we reordered some of the Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon stuff because Biden hit it and he hit it hard. Biden's Don Lemon joke was killer. So I'm like, okay, well, then I'm going to move up the Santos bit.

And the stuff about BET, because that was originally later in the act. Right, because he already... Yeah, he's already hit it. So I need to create space between similar topics. So let's just reorder. Were his jokes better than yours? No, no. But he had some good ones. And I think that helped.

That helped to get the crowd ready a little bit to laugh as well. Yeah, because they didn't know if they'd be funny or not. And he's got a very pressure-filled situation. Yeah, I mean, the bigger challenge for me is that I had to come in and make fun of liberals, though, which Biden didn't do. Right, right, right. My stuff has to be a little more balanced. Right. I'm going to play a clip of one of your jokes that got quieter reactions from the crowd, the one about anti-drag bills popping up across the country. Let's listen to it.

And also, speaking of drag queens, can we stop with the grooming stuff? Can you stop talking about that? Drag queens are not at a school to groom your kids. Stop it. And even if they were, most of them kids going to get shot at school. It ain't no problem. Don't groan past legislation. Like, they booze going to bother me. I'm like Mitch McConnell. I ain't got no soul. So people obviously didn't know how to feel about a joke anymore.

about guns and drag queens, I guess, especially not in Washington. Were you surprised by how that landed? I thought that was a great joke. No, that joke got groans all the way through the runs. We ran, essentially, we had a three-week runway. I've known since February, I was doing the dinner, but we were just, you know, myself and head writer Christiana Mbakwe, we were just putting jokes in a bucket and topics in a bucket. And then

About three weeks out after I did my guest host at Daily Show, I could finally focus solely on the dinner. And every time I ran that joke, it got a groan. But I just felt like, to me, it was the right place to put a groan because I feel like at a roast, a groaner's good for pacing. But I don't feel like I have the equity, the trust equity with the audience to do a groaner about a person. Right. Right.

So do a groaner about a topic. Right. And then you button it with, you know, a call for legislation, which is really all it is. And we could have explained it more, but it's like, if you're groaning at it, then don't let conditions exist where I could even write a joke like that. Right. That's a really good point. But although it wasn't a groan exactly, people were also skittish when you joked about the scandal of Kamala Harris's job. Let me play that clip. But I think the most insulting scandal to fall to the feet of the Biden administration is,

was placed at the feet of our Madam Vice President. The scandal of "What does Kamala do?" Which is a disrespectful question. That's a disrespectful question because nobody ever asked that question of the Vice President until a woman got the job.

So you started laughing when we even played the clip. Why is that? Because the, ooh. Because I knew right behind it I had the yo-yo. And she's sitting near you, right? Yeah, and I had to look over. I don't think I looked over at her yet. Does making the audience uncomfortable help you drive your point home? Yes, because I want you to go on the same adventure that I'm going on, which is I want you to be, whoa, oh, I'm safe. Ha ha ha.

That's a high to make you think that I'm about to attack her, but then you reverse it into a conversation about sexism and how part of why I think we overlook her accomplishments and the things that she has done. Make whatever criticisms you want about how she's handled stuff, but to say she has done nothing is a...

That's an unequivocal lie. It's a lie. Right. Is there anything that should be off limits? You know, other comics have gotten into trouble there before. Some thought Michelle Wolfe about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for example. Some people thought maybe Vice President Harris should be off limits. I don't think so. But what are your thoughts? I don't think anyone's off limits. I just think the angles at which you go with them have to be appropriate. Mm-hmm.

You know, again, me dealing with people not really knowing me, appearance jokes, that's not my lane. Just if you look at my comedy, just... Right. If you look at the catalog of jokes I have told, I don't do jokes on people's appearance. So that was never going to be a lane for me. We had some Mitch McConnell jokes early on. Then he fell. Yeah.

And so Neiman was like, all right, I guess we can't do the Mitch McConnell jokes. Concussion, he in the hospital. Same game with Dianne Feinstein. We were like, eh, that's dicey. And then we looked at Nikki Haley and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And I think the thing that I had to be very careful about is people can take a joke and reassign it to make it mean whatever they want it to mean. Right, right. The conversation the next day is...

man tells joke about women, man picked on women. It doesn't matter if the joke was based in policy or Nikki saying what she said about Joe Biden and, you know, whatever. Like,

The conversation becomes less about the jokes and people assuming intention. And I didn't completely avoid it. I mean, it happened with the Don Lemon stuff, but I'm happier that it happened on some man-on-man crime versus me picking on... Right. So certain women were off limits. I wasn't sure about Mitch McConnell's health. It's very hard to find anything on him. So...

If I make a Mitch McConnell joke and then someone goes, see, he's still sick and you, it's like, gosh, I didn't mean that. Was there a Marjorie Taylor Greene joke? I think she's on limits all the time. Yeah, but then Tucker and Don pushed her off the table. She became less pertinent. Right, yeah, that's true. And so at that point, it's like big dogs only.

We're going Tucker. We're going Don. We're going Trump. We're going DeSantis. We're going Clarence Thomas. Right. And then we're into media. Yeah. Biden, Kamala, and then into media. We'll get to them in a minute. But Trump famously never attended the Correspondents' Dinner while he was president because he got insulted before he was president. Biden showed up and was ready to laugh, including it at himself.

As these two head into a likely showdown, I'm calling it Rocky II. Hopefully there won't be as many. Do you think it matters to the American people whether they go or not? I think it does. Here's what I'll say. I think it could help create some degree of healing of divisive fissures that we have politically in this country.

One thing that I hate that I wasn't able to do because I did not know they were coming until I got the text that they were there was Mike Pompeo, Kellyanne Conway, and Bill Barr were there. Oh, yeah. Caitlyn Jenner, too. So these are people who did not attend for many, many years. Yeah. Because the president didn't. Correct. So the joke angle was something in the ballpark of, you know, everyone that's run with Trump is either in prison or in this room. Like, that was the joke. Yeah.

And then we go through the people that were all Trump surrogates. But trying to write that joke at a table, at a banquet, while a television program is happening, we were just like, ah, don't worry about it. But I think if people saw that, if you see Caitlyn Jenner in the same room as Lester Holt, then maybe you'll think a little less my side. Yeah.

Media and politics, they divide the country, but the people in the country don't kick it in the same room with the people they hate. But they need to understand these people that you're riding so hard for, they're kind of cool with the other side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you have to whisper that? Yeah, because it's a secret. No one knows. They hang out all the time. Not all of them. Not all of them. But just being in that space together, that's huge. That's huge. And so there seems to be a thawing of...

of some of the Republican extremists starting to come back into this space and come to this dinner

I think it has an opportunity to 100% still be something that's relevant. I don't hang out personally with Kathleen Connolly. I do hang out with her ex-husband a little bit, but there is much more bipartisanship than people realize, especially at this weekend. I think the people who say that this dinner is irrelevant are the people that have already decided that those people are terrible people and there's nothing redemptive about them and there's no way to repair the relationship. And I am entrenched in what I believe. And that's leftists and people on the right.

who look at life that way. And that's not what life is, man. Life is nuanced. People are nuanced. And you're not going to agree with everything. You're talking about the word centrist a lot. It's interesting. But when you say centrist, what does that mean to you? Because you're in this room trying to appeal to a broad range of policy and attitudes and values. I think that a lot of us are...

a little bit more loose on things than we think, but we're sometimes publicly required to be a little more extreme on things simply because that's what gets the viewers or the vote. In a lot of ways, the media is tied. They're kind of, you know, inextricably tied to the same level of commitment that

That a politician is, you know, that's why there's so much of an uproar over CNN with the with the Donald Trump town hall is because so many people that are CNN loyalists are going, well, what are you doing? That's not what we're supposed. We hate them. And CNN is like, nah, no.

we're going to try to have some conservative views on here. Which was one of the jokes. We're going to fire Don Lemon and give a show to Charles Barkley. That should shake things up. Yeah. Which it will. I'm not sure for the best, but Gayle King will be there, so she'll keep it on track. But this idea that

Everybody is all the way on one side of the room and everybody's all the way on the other side. It's just, that's not real life. So one of the things that's interesting at the Correspondents Dinner, you talked about your dad, Roy Wood Sr., and his journalism career that took him around the globe. You were a radio journalist as well. Is that what formed your comedy, thinking about that? Because journalists are supposed to be that way, sort of what's happening in a nuanced way. Yeah. Yeah.

A little bit to a degree. I mean, my father was hard news journalism. He was an embedded reporter in pretty much every major conflict you can name from the 50s until the 70s.

South African riots all the way up to Korean War. And when he wasn't deployed doing that, he was running a black news network. Now, me by comparison, I was on the radio giving away Jodeci tickets. So not necessarily dangerous. I was the funny guy, but what I did was try to do community involvement. My thing on the radio was just giving voice to people in the community to come on and give them a place to amplify their messages.

Because my comedy started early when I was 19, you just don't have the maturation of a worldview yet. And it wasn't until I hit my early 30s that my comedy started shifting into something that matched my father's ideology a lot more. But when I started, I was just a...

fresh out of college with fart jokes and my room, I hate when my roommate drinks, eats or drinks part of my food, you know, just stuff like that. One of the things you're known for is weaving cultural observations with comedy, obviously. Does that, was that because of your dad or-

doing that? Because you're kind of, in many ways, you are kind of doing journalism. I love your reports because they're either, whether they're not real journalism or not, but they're very journalistic in the way, especially on Daily Show. I definitely try to convey information. If I can't give you new information, then I'm going to try and give you a new way of looking at old information.

So that's pretty much where my comedy and the daily show stuff intersects. Entertainment Weekly once described your comedy as charismatic crankiness. Does that feel accurate? How would you describe it? Yeah, because I'm not angry. No. I could be. A lot of people are, but I choose not to lean into anger for the most part. For me, at least, it's a wasted emotion that doesn't help me think of solutions or handle anything leveled.

But early on in my comedy, I modeled myself a lot after Chris Rock, George Carlin, Louis Black a little later on. Sinbad is probably my holy grail. Wow. And when you really go back and you look at Sinbad, Sinbad is cranky. Great stand-up. But some of it is rooted in portraying cranky people, but he's cranky about things that aren't necessarily...

these uber political things. It's why is the McDonald's shake so thick you can't get it through the straw? It's true. And then it's a five minute rant about the vein in your head that almost bursts. But it's the same that I like to try and do on stage. At the Correspondents Dinner, you made some really great points on the state of the news media. Let's play one of the clips here. The issue with good media is that most people can't afford that.

All the essential fair and nuanced reporting is all stuck behind a paywall. People can't afford rent, people can't afford food, not healthy food, they can't afford an education, they damn sure can't afford to pay for the truth.

That was a really sobering point, actually. You pointed out the newsrooms were facing a lot of cuts while executives are getting huge salaries. Talk about why you put this in. I know you said at the dinner it's not your job to have a solution, but I'm asking. Because it's scandalous. And to me, the media is so

so locked in on covering other scandals that let's not forget the scandal that's happening within your organizations and it's dire straits. And, you know, I don't have the place. I don't have the real estate within what's supposed to be a majority funny speech to really dig into the economics of the newsroom. But the base level facts are more staff cuts are being made than pay cuts at the top. So,

It's worth mentioning because that part of it to me is not fair. You know, another part that we ended up leaving out just for time is just how a lot of those staffing cuts happen at the local level or they start with minority faces or people that cover marginalized issues. Right. So now your newsroom has a blind spot to you.

Everything else that's happening to minorities. So as much as we celebrate diversity, diversity is usually the first thing to go. A lot of these layoffs, the tech companies, DEI is the first thing that got cut. Yeah, because you just hired them during George Floyd. So they haven't been there long enough to have any real seniority. So that part of it, which creates a huge...

blind spot for marginalized issues. Like the idea that, all right, Don Lemon was fired. Okay, cool. Whatever misconduct behind the camera, fine. But on camera from time to time, Don Lemon held people's feet to the fire who needed their feet held to the fire. How are you going to replace that?

I don't care that Trump is on CNN. What I care about is if y'all just let him slide and don't try to ask him anything real. Right. Well, one joke that everyone in Washington appeared to love used as an easy punching bag was cable news. Let's hear that clip. But I think it's fair that we should give credit where credit is due. Tucker Carlson is the first host to get fired from Fox News for something that's only partially about how he treats women. That's progress. He shattered the asshole ceiling. Speaking of assholes, Don Lemon is out of a job.

What do you think these two characters and their departures says about news media right now? They're different. They're different. The firings are for different reasons, though. Yeah. You know, on the surface, you could say that Don was fired for, as they say in sports, conduct detrimental to the team. Right. But when you look at a shift in CNN's ideology, there's no way Don Lemon's going to just let certain right-wingers come on the air and not swing a bat at him. Right.

Tucker cost the company almost a billion dollars. And then on top of all of that, we have all of the other lawsuit knickknacks. That was the other Rupert Murdoch joke. This joke got cut because there was too much backstory that I need to pre-install into the audience's brain. But there was a rumor that Rupert's fiance liked Tucker, and that's why he canceled the show, which makes Rupert Murdoch the pettiest person in the history of petty. And we say nothing but respect to you, Rupert.

Now, was it Tucker that cost him money or was it Maria Bartiromo? He actually, I think it's because he texted bad things about daddy. You don't insult daddy, big daddy. That's what it was. You don't do that. He's like, no. It wasn't the Trump text. It was him talking trash about the boss. About Uncle Satan, as I like to call it. Yeah. I like that. I like that. It was kind of fantastic the week before, correct, that you were able to have these firings. You were like, oh, yes. Yes.

This is perfect. Oh, yeah. I mean, there was part of us going, oh, my Lord, we have to change the script. Because keep in mind, two weeks before the Trump arrest happened, and we had jokes written from a perspective of, will he, he might go to jail. And then it's, oh, he's going, he's going, oh, my God, he got fingerprinted. Okay, fine.

Let's rewrite all of the jokes. And also the Trump arraignment happened when you were guest hosting The Daily Show, which was another gift for you. Yeah, another blessing from the news guys. And also the media layoffs that get the most headlines, as you said, are the national outlets. As you said, there's a huge culling at a local level. How is this lack of local reporting affected segments on The Daily Show? Did you think about that when you were guest hosting? What I thought about before I guest hosted was

Not being able to go and like, you know, with the news, there's to me, there's two stories is what everyone is talking about versus what you should be talking about. And so a habit that I picked up in college, they would give us a quiz. I think three days a week, you'll get a quiz on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the local news section of the Tallahassee Democrat. This one I was at Florida A&M.

And that habit just stayed with me as I got older. And what I noticed, once I got to the Daily Show, the deal was every day just read a local paper from a different city just to see what's going on. And that's my morning routine. Really? And you start noticing, though, how many more stories are just wire reports. Right. And I would find myself having to go to two and three different cities a day just to find a local story, you know, to read six or seven local stories. Right.

It's very difficult. So, you know, thankfully enough of the producers at The Daily Show are able to help find stuff and more so find people that are either for change or against change. Why is that important to you, especially? Because that's where all of the, that's where stuff really affects you. Like, politics is state and local. Like, that's the thing that

That matters the most. You know, if there's a story that I that I hate, I haven't been able to get to yet. It would be the one happening in the black belt in Alabama. We're around Selma. We go to Selma every year to celebrate the big voting rights. All right. Hip hip hooray.

But also on every one of those houses in that city and within that, let's say, 50-mile radius, there's raw sewage backing up into the front yards every time it rains. And it is environmentally corrosive and cancerous to the people who live there. There's no reporter that's going to go do that. But if I can go down there with a camera and make a couple chuckles in exchange for talking to some people that are trying to make some change, to me...

that's better than just following another document story. Right. And cracking a couple of... Yeah. Trump is always going to be there. But if we have a chance to go out and actually do something with someone or see something that's going on, I don't know. That's just always been important to me. I'm sure part of that is from my time in local radio and...

We had the mayor on once a month, and that, for 14 years, you learn local politics. You absolutely do. You're guest hosting The Daily Show. Would that be a focus for you if you got the job more around the country? You think it's important for a national comedy show to have local roots? What is national that wasn't first local? Mm-hmm.

It's just a matter of taking the national issue and boiling it down to something that everyone else can see at a personal level. And to me, that's better because now you're putting a face to it. You're putting a personality to it. Like that's a much easier lift. Like to answer the question. Yeah, I think state and local is important. When you look at what happened in the Tennessee legislature a couple of weeks ago when they were expelling members and the protesters were coming in.

I would have loved to have been able to talk to one of the protesters. Right. As much as I respect the two Justins, as I like to call them, I would have rather talked to a constituent. Right. And how they feel about it. And how they feel about it. And that makes me as curious as talking to an elected official. So, you know, I think there's a place for that in political satire somewhere, you know,

figuring out how to rejigger the daily show just a little bit. I think no matter who the host is, there's going to have to be some creative restructuring. So what are some of your ideas? Well, number one, it would be that. Like, it would definitely be more conversations with people that are

affected by the issues instead of conversations with the people that are legislating them. Right. So real people. Yeah. I think, I think that part of it. Everyone's a real person, but yes. Yeah. Yeah. But no, but let the media tell it like most of the time when we talk to,

regular people, it's man on the street, quick high and buys, you know, like it's 60 seconds. Yeah. So if we sat for three or four minutes and spoke with the legit, like, that's the thing I loved about radio. I was doing mornings in Birmingham when we had a Trayvon Martin rally and we had, you know, and everybody was wearing their hoodies and show up downtown in the civil rights district. And we're going to, you know, like everybody was doing nationally and

And the next day, we had such a real and raw conversation about whether or not, as a parent, would you allow your child to wear a hoodie? Which is such a simple and clean question just about the state of race in this country. And we took calls for three hours. Wow. Now, I can't do that for a whole half hour on a show. But that conversation, that thought as a parent, are you giving your child freedom or are you making them a target based on what they wear?

That's an interesting discussion to hear from regular people. It's also actual journalism, which is interesting. It's a different kind of it. But can you make that funny? Are you under pressure to make it funny? I'm trying. I'm like, so Jon Stewart's not as funny. He's quite serious. You know, his show is quite serious. There's some jokes on it. Is that the way this is going? I think you can make it funny. That person might not be funny, but that's my job to be funny. It's their job to

to bring the facts. And then you still have correspondence and fill pieces and everything else that feels like the news. But I just, at some point I know whatever program that I'm, that I'm getting to quarterback, I want to involve conversations with real people more into that fold, because I think that's one of the things that's missing from news is people being heard. I mean, even if you look at standup comedy, which I consider a form of journalism, like it's, you're reporting on the world or yourself. It's,

Two drink minimum or whatever. But if you look at a lot of the standup clips that go viral right now, half of them are crowd work. So what is that other than just a comedian talking to a constituent about a thing? And it's compelling because we're all connected under these same laws and actions and chaos and things that are happening around us. So

We've always been curious about what other people are going through. I don't think social media has removed that from our psyche. You've been around for tons of big stories and small stories since joining The Daily Show in 2015. Is there a story or segment that stands out most in your memory? Oof. The police reform. The police bias piece I did with Jordan Klepper. Mm-hmm.

That one was pretty fun. That was a good time. That was one that I felt like, you know, checked a couple of boxes. The Chicago piece as well. I wasn't on the show that day, but I really loved how Trevor handled the Philando Castile issue in Minneapolis. And, you know, when that verdict came down and not guilty and everything.

and the level of anger that was being felt nationally. And I think that's like the biggest difference, you know, just in watching Trevor a little bit and preparing for my guest host week. I think the bigger difference is that correspondents at no point are they required to tap into emotion. You're just allowed to be chaos agent and get out of there. But as a host, to a lot of degrees, you are to be emotionally an emotional mirror sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.

So that would be different for you, correct? Yeah. If you got this job? That would be something I would have to lean into a little more, even more so than I do with my standup because my standup, I can laugh off empathy or I can throw a silly joke in there so that we don't get too deep and too much into a one man show. But there's going to be days where there is nothing funny. None of this is funny, but we still have to make a show and talk about it. And on those days, that's when you lean into what

what everybody is feeling versus me going, no, you need to know about the fact that the chemical train derailments in Ohio, there's a ton of trains just carrying trash chemicals that are just chilling in random neighborhoods and the trains haven't moved in months. So like there's, you know, I call them cancer hubs. They're just all these different cancer hubs around the country. R&D.

Would you have any hesitations in taking the job if you get it? It's a beast of a show and a grind five days a week. I think that was one of the issues that Trevor Noah talked about, wanting to do lots of other things. Yeah, I know Trevor wanted some flex to do a lot of other stuff. You know, the one difference between me and Trevor is that I have a child. So, you know, I can't globetrot on a 100-city world tour. I mean, I could, but that would be the only thing I need to be doing.

Um, no, it doesn't, it doesn't bother me in that sense. You know, for me, the main thing is figuring out the show that I would want to make and just making sure that that matches with the show that they want to make. And for as long as we have a match there, I think we're in a good place. Um, because if it's not daily show, it's going to be somewhere else. I mean, there's

plenty of other places that I hopefully would be able to run my mouth, even if The Daily Show doesn't come calling. And the responsibility is going to be the same in those places and probably even more tougher because there's no framework in place. The Daily Show has a framework. Trevor augmented it a little bit. If this was an Italian restaurant under Jon Stewart, then Trevor made it Italian fusion and added a couple of different shaped noodles. But

But it's still Italian. What is yours, if you had to describe it? I'm probably a little more blue-collar than Trevor, so I'm just going to have a... Yeah, I'm going to have a carry-out window. We're adding pizza. I know this used to be a fine dining establishment, and it's that over there. But also...

Over here. Pizza's delicious. Yeah, we got calzones that have been sitting in a window for four hours. But spicy, right? Yeah, spicy. Spicy marinara, always. One more question before I let you go. The Writers Guild of America is officially on strike, the first time since 2008, halting production on films and TV shows, including yours. Among the union's grievances, writer pay has fallen while executive pay has ballooned, just like is happening in the news media. You might not have a solution yet.

for news, but what needs to happen here? I just think that there has to be transparency between the streamers and the gills on what is being watched, who's watching it. You can't pay somebody for a hit show, the same rate of pay and residuals as a non-hit show. That's not what would happen in the broadcast world. Right. And I think every couple of years, as we see an evolution in the technology industry,

There's more hiding of the hands of the money because no one understands it and right stream economics are different Yeah, oh, but I can't tell you my show viewership because my 11 herbs and spices is proprietary and my competitor will know Okay, well then you get no more scripts for a little while also I think something that will probably come to a head on the next agreement is

is once we see how AI starts to evolve. Yeah, I was going to ask you, yeah. Because if the studio is going to use AI to write a script or create the framework, and then you're just bringing in a writer to do punch-up, then we're right back in the same place. Writers asked for more money back in 07 during that strike, and they got more money, and then the studios countered by producing less episodes of television. Right. Well played. Right. But I am a member of the writer's guild, so I stand with the guild 1,000% on this, but I am very afraid of...

of the potential de-evolution of televised product on the other side of this. I just would pray that we don't get, you know, they say the rise of reality. Well,

The rise of reality was birthed from the last writer's strike. And I think that there is something to be said about the human experience being told by humans. Is it? Are you worried about AI? Because people were, I was with a bunch of Hollywood people and they're like, oh, they can't replicate us. I said, not today, but it's stupid now. But do you think about that? Like you were just saying, you come in and punch it up.

Just the way a radiologist, they put a hundred of them out of work and one comes and makes sure the AI was correct. It's off the internet now. I'm sure you can find it on somebody's page. But they had a Tom Brady AI stand-up comedy video where AI wrote all of Tom Brady's material and AI Tom Brady performed it. And some of those jokes were good. I was like, oh my goodness. The Drake Weekend song was good. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So...

I think that the cause is just, I think that you have to give people a living wage for the work that they do or give them the freedom to go and work other places concurrently and not shortchange it. Rather than an exclusive thing. This has the potential to be a long one. How's that going to affect you and writers of The Daily Show?

Well, you know, The Daily Show has stopped down, just like, you know, the rest of Late Night in New York City. So I don't know what the plans are, you know, beyond that with the show. But I know the show right now, you know, they're lock and step and standing with the Gil. For me, I'm back on the road for right now, just doing stand-up comedy dates, you know, I'm touring again. So...

I'm in a blessed position because I'm a multi-hyphenate, but a lot of writers are not. Right. And so, you know, I think the next thing we're going to start trying to focus on within the Guild is just ways to figure out ways to be, to support the writers. To support the writers to make money. It's the same thing we did when the pandemic shut down and we got what comedy gives back and we raised money for stand-up comedians who couldn't go on the road. So...

you know, when the comics were shut down and not able to eat, you know, the community came together and I would imagine the same thing is going to happen within the guild. So going around the country right now and doing standup, what is the things you are finding funny as you prepare? That's the thing that's interesting is that for as serious as you get at a correspondence dinner about all of these topics and all of this stuff, sometimes I just want to be silly. Hang on. I have, I literally have my set list from Phoenix. Um,

Anyone who doesn't have a good haircut, I assume, is a mass shooter. I don't trust people who don't have good haircuts. No one with a good haircut has ever shot people. News anchors are always mean to the weatherman. I hate the fact that in monster movies, whenever someone falls in love with a monster, they always make it a white woman. That's not fair to white women.

Beauty and the Beast, Swamp Thing, they made you have sex with Shrek. Like, so it's... Funny stuff. But not politically divisive, exactly. You don't need Trump, you don't need...

Yeah, so the road is where I breathe because The Daily Show is where I have to like really do surgery to figure out how to make this serious thing a chuckle. Yeah. Roy Wood Jr., you're one of my favorite comics. I really appreciate it. Thank you so, so much. I appreciate it. It's on!

The hanging question from that interview to me is, why is the McDonald's shake so thick? You can't get it through your straw. It's a very good question. Yeah, I like humor like that. I think he was making the point that it doesn't have to all be political or obstreperous or stuff like that. There is a lot of political humor going on, and he did a lot of it at the event. But he's more of a centrist in a lot of ways. He's sort of, you know, the kind of stand-up comic we're probably used to from a long time ago. Yeah, and I think he's

Even more than that, he's just encouraging people to be able to talk to people who disagree with them. Yep. He's into the exchange of ideas, which as writers, comics would be. I was surprised by how many times he talked about people not knowing him. Right. Yes. Well, I mean, he's next up after Trevor Noah, both on The Daily Show and at the Correspondence Dinner. So I guess that creates a certain amount of, well, what are the risks you can take? Or how do you tell the joke given that people don't recognize you in the room?

Yeah, he's appropriately nervous. You know, again, I thought he did a great job. And, you know, there's a lot on the line here, too, including whether he's going to get the Daily Show host gig, which I hope he does. And I think he hopes, he certainly hopes he does. He was very thoughtful about what kind of show he wants to make and how he wants to make it. And I liked his position. He was negotiating from, it seemed like, a position of power, saying, we'll see if they want to make what I want to make. And if not, other people will make it with me, I'm sure. So...

That's a good way to go into it. Yeah. He spoke a lot about our political environment and the need for almost virtue signaling by media or a fear to tell it like it is because you have to say what people want to hear. He called it inextricably tied to the limits that politicians are sometimes tied to. Do you ever feel that way where you... No. No.

have limits around what you can say? No, I think most... Or what position to take on an issue? No, I don't agree with that. I don't think people do that. I think people talk too much and they don't think enough, actually. There's a lot of instant reaction to every piece of news. And I think sometimes reporters feel the need to fill holes, especially on cable news. I mean, it's just a lot of blathering in many ways.

When they don't have news. I prefer a news person to say, you know, this is what happened. These are the facts. Yeah. I wish cable was all that. Like, I think not punditry. Well, there's pundits who aren't actual journalists. And then there's journalists who act too much like pundits in some ways. And I do think reporters should not just stick to the facts because they can have analysis. I do it all the time. But I certainly think it should come from a position of knowing what they're talking about. And I think there's too much talk actually about.

than holding back. I think people should hold back a lot more. Do you think there's an interesting kind of thread of whether The Daily Show is journalism? I mean, he talked about how stand-up is a form of journalism. A hundred percent. You think a hundred percent that? But the other day you were saying that you think that Jen Psaki isn't journalism. I don't think she is a journalist. I think she's come from a job. I think she's insightful. I think that's, you know, she was calling herself a journalist. I would not call her that yet. She was good at her job in communications, and we'll see if she makes that distinction.

She just got here. Your definition last time was more around beat reporting, I think. Well, yeah. I think comics have a certain special place. I don't think they have to... They're observational, very highly intelligent, and I think they have, you know, deep observations. Do you think you would call them journalists, though, or you would call them comedians that have commentary on our political... I think commentary. I think they're very intelligent making commentary, and I think a lot of people, you know,

By the way, when you listen to, say, John Oliver, they do a lot of... Yeah, they actually do reporting in that show. Yes, they do. And then he makes jokes about it. But my kids get their news through John Oliver. They do. There's certainly editorial direction on what they're doing as well. So it's more like opinion journalism. And there's a lot of enterprise and investigative reporting that they're doing. What he does is he makes the case. And I think it stands up because they do reporting. And so I think that's... I've watched it and I'm like, that is exactly what happened.

And I have not seen a correction on them very much. And so they go out, they talk to people. But what they're doing is extraordinarily valuable and always has been. Comics have always been valuable to social commentary since the beginning. And also just the craft, right? I think one of the things we saw in this interview was how last minute these jokes were coming down the pipe. Sure. How they were integrating new information and just the amount of...

craft and responsiveness that goes into their format. Just like in journalism, we're always, you know, kind of having to iterate on the news. And they certainly have that metabolism. Yep. They have to, especially in this crowd, in this particular crowd. I'm very excited to see what rendition of an Italian restaurant he has with his pizza.

We'll see. It'll be spicy. I really... What would your Italian innovation be on The Daily Show? I would do Ethiopian food. You would just switch it up completely? Switch it up. No more Italian. We're moving on to another place. Yeah. But the Italian works. I'm not that funny. I think they need to expand to a gelato menu and, you know, a little limoncello. A little more fun at the end. I've enjoyed watching them shift hosts a lot. It's been really interesting to watch different people's takes. Yeah.

in the same format. I've enjoyed it too. I do crave consistency. I find myself watching it less. Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah. You could get a sense of what someone's position and like how, and they surprise you, right? I don't know. Let's see what they do if they have a couple people on. But speaking of roles, let's read out our teams. Okay. Okay.

Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blakeney Schick, Kristen Castro-Rossell, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Cody Nelson and Kate Gallagher. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, it's all zingers for you.

If not, it's fart jokes for you. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more. And before we go, Kara, do you want to tell the people, especially the Canadian people,

because they need to know where you will be on Saturday. Yes, I'll be interviewing actress, writer, and producer Lilly Singh at the 30th Anniversary Hot Docs Festival in Toronto this Saturday, May 6th. It's in the afternoon. You can get 20% off your tickets by using the promo code HD23KARA20. That's H-D-2-3-K-A-R-A-2-0.