[theme music]
ANNOUNCER: From New York City, the only city in America,
it's the show that invented news.
This is The Daily Show with your host, Jordan Klepper.
[cheering]
Welcome to The Daily Show.
I'm Jordan Klepper, and this is pretty exciting, everyone.
This is the first time the show has
let me sit down in five years.
[laughter]
We've got a great show for you tonight, including
an interview with AOC.
But--
[cheering]
Sure.
But there's a lot to talk about.
So let's get into the headlines.
[cheering]
It's a day in America, so we're talking about guns.
This weekend was the national NRA convention, also
known as cargo pants Comic-Con or the Westminster
Stepdad Show.
Now, people like to stereotype NRA
members as gun-obsessed whack jobs
who want to arm little babies.
And the thing about stereotypes is sometimes they're spot on.
I've got three kids, two son-in-laws.
And did you know that I'm also a grandmother
not just once, but twice?
Have two beautiful grandchildren.
Little Miss Addie, who is almost two,
and Branch, who's just a few months old.
Now, Addie, who soon will need them, I want to reassure you,
she already has a shotgun, and she already has a rifle.
And she's got a little pony named Sparkles too.
So the girl is set up.
Wow.
That's the governor of South Dakota
bragging about her two-year-old granddaughter owning guns.
Bold.
When my kid was little, I was covering outlets, locking
cabinets, and cutting grapes in half
because they might be a choking hazard.
Kristi Noem is like, here's a shotgun.
You're on watch tonight.
Sic semper tyrannis.
[laughter]
Look, I know liberals and conservatives
don't agree on much.
But can we agree that you should
not own a gun if you don't know how to poop in a potty?
[laughter]
[cheering]
Although-- although it is adorable that she
has a pony named Sparkles.
In fact, if you'll excuse me for a second,
I need to address Sparkles directly.
Sparkles, this will not end well for you.
[laughter]
These people are clearly insane.
Run while you still can.
There is no time for goodbyes. Go!
Go, my friend.
Go.
[cheering]
Look, look, look, to be clear-- to be clear,
I'm not bringing up Kristi Noem just
to make fun of her grandkids.
I would never do that.
They've got guns.
[laughter]
I'm bringing up Kristi Noem because she gave us
a great insight into what creates the worldview
of an NRA member.
My dad taught us life lessons.
He taught us common sense.
And often those were taught during our hunting trips.
For instance, I remember being only about 9 or 10 years old.
And we had hunted all day miles and miles from camp
in the high country in the Bighorn Mountains
when my dad turned to me, and he said, Kristi,
hunt your way back to camp.
I'm going to go around this ridge,
and I'll meet you there at dark.
And he disappeared over the ridge.
Now, to a 10-year-old girl, this was terrifying.
And as strange noises came and darkness fell,
I had to rely on my instincts and my horse
to find my way back to our tent.
Now, years later, Mom shared with me
that my dad had followed me at a safe distance
all the way back to camp to make
sure that I got there safe.
Now, before you get all warm and fuzzy on him,
I also want to tell you that he made
bear noises the whole time he was following me.
[laughs] Scratching trees and growling at me, so, you know?
[laughs] What an adorable story about alcoholism.
Excuse me one second.
[laughter]
Seriously, Sparkles, this family is [bleep] nuts.
Get out of there.
Trust no one.
Sic semper tyrannis.
OK, but--
[cheering]
--the real purpose of an NRA convention
isn't to tell fun family stories
of childhood abandonment.
No, it's to explain why all the gun violence of the last year
had nothing to do with guns.
In the past, they blamed video games, rap music,
and for a brief period in the '90s, the Rachel.
It could be anything.
Well, not anything.
It can't be guns, but anything else.
And this year was no different.
You want to do something-- you can ban social
media in kids under the age of 15 or 16
before you take guns away.
This is a mental health problem.
It's undiagnosed mental health.
The motivations of the trans activists.
This is a cultural problem.
Bring back the family.
This is a spiritual problem.
The American media.
Genetically-engineered cannabis.
[laughter]
Weed, really?
When I get high, the only thing I want to massacre
is a bag of Funyuns.
If you're blaming gun violence on weed,
you're not even trying anymore.
These people are just name checking things they
don't understand on the news.
It's weed!
It's ChatGPT!
It's Love Is Blind crashing Netflix.
Is that a thing?
Is it a thing?
[applause]
And this isn't just the NRA deflecting.
They're stoking these fears, fears of rampant crime,
trans people, wokeness, mutant doobies.
It's all coming to get you.
And you know what happens when you combine
a culture of fear and guns?
You get the story that just came out of Kansas City, where
a kid trying to pick up his siblings
knocked on the wrong door and got shot
and wounded by the homeowner.
That kid wasn't shot by weed or social media.
He was shot by a scared person with a gun.
And this is the climate the NRA's stoking.
They're the irresponsible loudmouth hiding in the woods,
making bear noises, scratching on trees so
that you feel scared enough to go and get yourself
a [bleep] gun.
But--
[applause]
--you know what?
It's my first night.
Enough about gun violence.
Let's move on to something more lighthearted,
the corrosive rod of our judicial branch.
[laughter]
Of course, I'm talking about Clarence Thomas,
the Supreme Court justice.
[booing]
Yeah, big fans, I can tell.
You now him.
He's the Supreme Court justice who's
taken more free vacations than all
the Bravo Housewives combined.
[laughter]
Last week, we learned that Thomas had secretly
accepted luxury trips from right-wing billionaire
Harlan Crow.
And that's his actual name, not his Game
of Thrones cosplay character.
[laughter]
And now we're finding out that back in 2014, Harlan Crow
bought a house in two vacant lots
from Clarence Thomas for $130,000, which is outrageous.
I'm shocked that in America-- in my America--
there are still places where you can buy a house and two
vacant lots for $130,000.
[laughter]
I'm mad about the corruption, but I have to admit,
that's a [bleep] steal.
On top of that, Clarence Thomas's mom is still living
in that house rent free.
And Harlan Crow has paid for thousands of dollars
of renovations, all of which Clarence Thomas
should have disclosed by law.
Although, in his defense, the law is complicated,
and he's only a Supreme Court justice.
[laughter]
[applause]
For more of the legal nuances of this story,
we turn to Supreme Court expert Ronny Chieng.
Ronny.
[cheering]
Hey, Ronny.
Ronny, where are you right now?
Where am I?
Where do you think I am?
I'm at Clarence Thomas's mom's house.
That's the house?
Oh, technically, this is the pool house.
I mean, they built it to last week.
But, obviously, they're going to do a gut reno because, I
mean, it looks like shit.
That's insane, Ronny.
These revelations about money flowing
to a Supreme Court justice are-- frankly,
they're shocking.
Oh, really, Jordan?
You're shocked?
Are you shocked?
Have you been-- have your precious norms been violated?
Oh, no, somebody help.
Justice Thomas and Harlan Crow bent
over and double teamed Jordan Klepper's innocent principles.
Ronny, stop it.
Stop it.
I'm a professional news person.
I don't have principles.
[laughter]
You know what's really shocking here
is this billionaire is wasting so much money buying
Clarence Thomas flights and houses
and shit to vote conservative.
Hey, news flash, billionaire.
Clarence Thomas is already conservative.
All right?
It's like bribing Nick Cannon to hit it raw.
[laughter]
He was going to do that anyway.
Save your money.
Jordan, you know who I do blame for this?
Harlan Crow's parents for giving
him an evil villain name?
Yes, but no.
Sure.
I blame these dumbass, whiny, teacher's pet liberals.
Hey, if Clarence Thomas can be bought, then
why aren't you buying him?
Huh?
Instead, you give Beto O'Rourke,
like, a billion dollars to come in third in a student
council election, right?
Why don't you take that money and build
Clarence Thomas's mom a new garage, a yoga room,
and a helipool?
I think you mean a helipad.
No, I said helipool, OK?
It's a pool for helicopters so you
can land straight in the water and stop
walking there like a peasant.
[laughter]
Maybe abortion would still be legal
if liberals bought a pool for Clarence
Thomas's mom's helicopter, OK?
Is that so crazy?
Yes.
Yes, it is crazy, Ronny.
You don't fix corruption with more corruption.
What is the message you're sending when you let money
influence decision making?
Jordan, I will give you a thousand dollars if you
agree with me right now.
No.
I would never betray my integrity
for a thousand dollars.
Maybe five.
- OK, how about three? - Three?
Deal.
Yeah, Ronny Chieng is right, everyone.
All right, when we come back, my interview
with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, so don't go away.
[cheering]
Welcome back to The Daily Show.
There's a lot of depressing news
about gun violence in America.
But the good news is that there are
people working on solutions.
I met up with New York Congresswoman Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez to talk about one possible solution
right here in New York City.
JORDAN KLEPPER (VOICEOVER): I met with the congresswoman
at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx to discuss its Stand Up
to Violence program, which has shown
an impressive 46% reduction in retaliatory violence
in its first few years.
As a Democrat focused on violence,
isn't that off brand?
Well, I'm from the Bronx.
So it's on brand for where I'm from.
[laughs]
There is a lot of discussion around what
progressives can do about violence in a big city.
What the data has showed us is that if you respond
to violence as a public health issue
instead of as an incarceration issue, violence decreases.
And that's what we're doing here at Jacobi Hospital.
Are there cops here at the hospital
that are addressing the issue?
Hell no.
[laughs]
OK.
No, this is-- listen, and there's security
presence and police presence that
is standard in any hospital.
But that's not what this program is about.
In the traditional response to an incidence
of violence, a shooting or a stabbing,
you may go to the ER real quick.
You get patched up, and then you
go straight to the precinct.
What we decided to do is that we said,
hey, let's shift the response and see
what happens when we make the center of response
a hospital instead of a jail.
JORDAN KLEPPER (VOICEOVER): When a patient comes to the ER
with a gunshot wound, the Stand Up
to Violence team works with the victim
and members of the community to prevent violent retaliation.
You're essentially talking about preventative medicine
here. - It is.
It absolutely is.
Which in America, it's not exactly our thing if you
look at our health care.
We're not known for that, right?
We're not known for that.
We're more of a reactive medicine society.
And, you know, we have caseworkers.
We have social workers.
We have therapists.
And we also have people who themselves
were once incarcerated.
Some of our most effective people in this work
are the former gang members, people who
formerly spent time at Rikers.
I can hear how Fox News would spin
this as AOC tries to defund the police and fund gang members.
If I spent my time worried about Fox News said, I would--
I mean, I wouldn't be here.
We're here in New York City.
And you're talking about funding violence prevention
outside of the police.
And yet Eric Adams has just increased police wages by 28%.
Is that misplaced?
I think so.
We are now at a point where officially most officers are
paid more than a teacher with a master's degree,
serving these same kids involved
in these same incidents.
We are defunding safety, defunding our public schools,
defunding our public pools, defunding our parks,
defunding our libraries.
When we are taking all of those resources
and demanding that every single department
except the militarized one be cut,
we are sending a message about who and what we care about.
Here in a hospital, do you ever get the vibes?
Do you ever consider a career in the medical profession?
It's funny you ask that.
When I went to college, I went in as a premedical student.
Really?
I wanted to be an OB/GYN, actually.
But, you know, life takes us where it takes us.
I considered going into the medical profession.
I thought I could play a handsome doctor on TV.
[laughter] Didn't pan out.
JORDAN KLEPPER (VOICEOVER): While we were on the subject
of national embarrassment, I had
to ask the congresswoman about Clarence Thomas
and his BFF, Nazi swag collector Harlan Crow.
JORDAN KLEPPER: I want to talk a little bit
about Clarence Thomas.
You've said you would even draft articles of impeachment
for the things that he's done.
Yeah.
Has there been any quid pro quo?
And I said quid pro quo partially
because it took all that effort to learn
what quid pro quo meant back in the Ukraine days.
And it feels apropos of now.
And I don't think I used apropos correctly.
I think that quid pro quo is this bar that
doesn't even need to be met.
The justice is required by law to disclose something
like that, and he hasn't been.
Can you empathize though?
Beyoncé came through here and wanted to take you
on a sweet vacation, wouldn't you say yes and let her
show you her Nazi memorabilia?
You gotta tell someone about it.
But, hey-- hey, don't put Bey's name on that like that.
I'm not saying she has Na--
I'm saying if she invested in Nazi memorabilia
to show that she hates Nazi memorabilia,
she'd want to show it off.
And that whole thing is just, I mean, bizarre.
You also don't keep the linens around.
Which linens? Oh, the Nazi linens?
Yeah.
Who does that?
Don't you think if you had a billion dollars,
and you bought everything, you'd probably
eventually get to Nazi linens?
This is the distraction of that whole issue.
You're right.
We're just focused on that as opposed
to all the money that's going over to Clarence Thomas.
Although, if you're a billionaire,
can't billionaires have friends?
They can.
Supreme Court justices are required,
if they are receiving money from people--
they shouldn't even be receiving money from people.
This is why we pay salaries to public servants.
And if they want to live that kind of lifestyle,
then they can resign from the court.
They can retire.
Now I want to talk about the court.
It's looking as if the Supreme Court is going
to rule on some of the conflicting
rulings around mifepristone.
Who do you think is going to write
the final decision that takes away
these vital rights from women?
Is it going to be the guy who cried over beer,
or is it going to be the buddy with the Nazi memorabilia guy?
You know, my hope is that we do not get to that point.
But we also have to face the reality that the Supreme
Court has chosen to give up huge swaths
of their own legitimacy.
Chief Justice Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh,
the Republican Party, in them giving up, trying
to take seriously the legitimacy,
the standards, the integrity of the court,
they have given up a very large degree of their authority.
The new news in Florida this week
is the six-week abortion ban.
How do women approach that or fight
back against something like that
that's happening in Florida?
Of course, there's the standard
like vote and mobilize.
But I'm going to put that aside for a second.
We do not have to accept tyranny.
And this is a form of tyranny.
It is a form of violence.
Women will die.
People will die because of this decision.
And it will be by and large the men who
signed these laws that are killing the women that
will die by them.
And we have a responsibility to help one another,
whether that is supporting organizations that mail
mifepristone, which has significantly
reduced risk, certainly safer than medications like Viagra.
But, ultimately, we cannot continue
to accept people in power who will abuse
others for their own gain.
Indictment week was last week.
It might also be a month from now too.
We could have a lot of indictment weeks.
How do you think New Yorkers treated
former President Donald Trump?
I think they treated him like a Florida man.
He don't belong to us no more, OK?
[laughs] He's not from Queens anymore.
He's a citizen of Mar-a-Lago at this point.
And you said New Yorkers treated him as such.
Yeah.
Why wouldn't we?
Do you think people were weeping when
he was booked, as he claims?
Maybe George Santos and Marjorie Taylor
Greene were, but not me.
Kick it back to LaGuardia, baby.
JORDAN KLEPPER: Kick it back to LaGuardia?
[laughter]
Which is in your district?
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yes, it's in my district,
and so is Rikers.
And so I have to go in every single day
watching people get treated far worse for doing far less.
And then it's like this red carpet that gets rolled out.
I mean, if you hurt one person, you get 10 years in prison.
But if you hurt millions of people,
you get your name on a building.
Congresswoman, thanks for talking to me.
Of course. Thanks for having me.
[cheering]
Stay tuned because when we come back,
Betty Gilpin will be joining me on the show.
So don't go away.
[cheering]
Welcome back to The Daily Show.
My guest tonight is an Emmy-nominated actor
from GLOW and Gaslit.
She's here to talk about her new drama series
for Peacock called Mrs. Davis.
Your costume, what's it from?
It's not from anything.
I'm a nun.
[laughs]
Like, for real?
Yeah, for real.
Cool.
Didn't know they had those anymore.
The Swedish meatball tray is empty.
Are you going to get more?
Oh, yeah, sure.
Oh, right now?
OK, gotcha.
No, I am not talking it.
I'm eating.
(TOGETHER) Will you take a photo of our family, please?
Yes, of course, I will.
Please, welcome Betty Gilpin.
[cheering]
Betty, welcome to The Daily Show.
Thanks, for having me, Jordan.
Of course.
Now, there's a lot of buzz around this Mrs. Davis show.
- Is there? - There is buzz.
- Great. - You're part of it, right?
This is what you want, right?
Yeah, I think so.
JORDAN KLEPPER: No, you're doing great!
She's doing great! Betty's doing great, right?
[cheering]
It's funny.
I watch a clip like that.
There's a lot going on, and there's
a lot going on in the show.
So much going on, yeah.
In fact, they've told us-- they're like,
there's a lot of spoilers.
Yeah.
You can't talk about certain things.
BETTY GILPIN: So many things you can't talk
about, impossible to promote.
I'm not used to doing something so plot heavy.
Usually, the plot of things I do are,
like, when is she going to sob or have sex?
And that's kind of like the plot twists for that episode.
Screenwriting 101, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And this plot is like a Rubik's cube had
sex with a haunted calculator.
[laughter]
It's the best.
JORDAN KLEPPER: I feel like there's
a bunch of different genres going on in this.
Yes, like a hundred different gen--
I keep saying, it's like no country for old Looney Tunes
is the genre.
That's about right, right?
Yeah.
In a nutshell, a spoiler-free nutshell, essentially,
you are a nun who's part of the resistance,
fighting an all-knowing AI.
Yes.
Yeah, so the show kind of--
JORDAN KLEPPER: It almost sounded like a joke
as I called that premise.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, Hollywood and these old cliches, right?
Right, or like ChatGPT wrote that synopsis.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a society not unlike our own, but one
where an AI or an algorithm like Siri or Alexa
called Mrs. Davis has kind of taken over,
is in everyone's ear, purports to be benevolent.
And there's a small faction of society, myself, a nun,
included that thinks she or it is evil and not to be trusted.
Now, how do you train?
Because there's a lot of fighting.
How do you train to be a fighting nun?
Is it-- is it-- - Yeah.
Is it Kung Fu?
Is it Bible?
You know, it's more--
yeah, after GLOW, it's--
that felt like falling down a cement staircase every day.
So this was like, yeah, I guess I fall on my butt, like,
three times in the show.
It's not as comparable.
But I Zoomed with nuns to prepare.
Is that sacrilegious?
Can you do that?
Yeah, no, they love to Zoom.
They're Zoomers. Yeah.
They're like, breaks the monotony.
Thank you. What do you want to know?
Typically, yeah.
Did you ask them at all about fighting?
Like, if you had to fight, I know
it's not your first go to.
But if you had to, what would you do?
Yeah.
I mean, I think on screen, we're
used to seeing either, like, one-dimensional, climb
every mountain, pious nuns, or horror movie nuns
with, like, blood coming out of their eyes.
And the nuns I spoke to were three very different,
multifaceted women.
And while I don't hold the same belief system that they hold,
I was very impressed and had to kind of check
the cliche of them that I had in my head,
which was very wrong.
So none of them had blood coming from their eyes?
- No, not one. - Really?
Maybe the second they de-Zoomed, they're like,
OK, we can-- we can cry blood.
Yeah.
Water turned to blood, it's part
of the whole religious thing.
Yeah, I haven't read up on it.
But I think that's how it goes down in the Bible.
I think that's what happens.
Yeah, chapter 3 of the Bible.
Now, what is your relationship with AI?
Are you fearful of it?
You're a wonderful writer as well as an actress.
Thanks.
Do you look at something like even ChatGPT?
Do you fear that it's coming for your jobs?
Yeah, it's really scary.
I mean, the internet in general, it's weird.
I have a two and a half year old.
We were talking backstage. So do I.
He has peers.
They're going to be betrothed to each other.
We arrange their marriage. - Yes.
Oh, sorry. We should-- yeah, yeah.
Yeah, Whit, FYI, we've been doing-- you're fine.
It's actually-- yeah.
Everything's great.
But, you know, I try to limit her screen time.
And I snatch phones away from her like it's poison.
And then I myself can't pee without watching
Millie Bobby Brown take a lie detector
test because I'm so addicted.
I'm addicted to the thing that I'm
telling my daughter is poison.
So I don't know.
I have to get right with that before she's
on the grid of understanding.
But in terms of AI, I think our show,
Mrs. Davis on Peacock, April 20,
is kind of asking the same question that we are asking
now, which is, are you our savior, or are you
our downfall, to AI.
And even when we were filming, ChatGPT
six months ago wasn't as much a part
of the headlines as it is now.
And I don't know.
It's really scary. JORDAN KLEPPER: It is scary.
- Yeah. - I feel like this show--
it kind of asks that question, or it looks to ask--
when you look at guidance, do you turn to technology,
or do you turn to God?
Yeah.
Like, are you a God believer or an Elon Musk believer?
- Right. - Sort of--
Right.
Where do you fall in that line?
Have you have you picked a side yet?
I mean--
JORDAN KLEPPER: One's got rockets.
Right. Yeah.
[laughter]
Yeah.
I mean, I myself am not a person of faith.
But I do think this show has made me think a lot
about church and the internet being these two
sort of institutional responses to the same human question
sort of, of asking why and wandering
and wanting to-- wondering and wandering and wanting
to connect with each other.
And I think we often use church and the internet
to do the opposite of what they were probably built for,
which is to connect and wonder.
And we use it to disconnect and to provide all of the answers
in your echo chamber.
And I think--
I look at my daughter, and I hope
that we're just the generation driving
without seatbelts, using this to disconnect and get dumber.
Maybe they can use it to connect and get smarter.
But I don't know.
Probably not.
[applause]
What is your daughter obsessed with?
My son loves Gabby's Dollhouse and Bluey.
That's going nonstop in our house.
Yeah, I mean, she pooped her pants on Easter.
So I don't know if she's, like, the future of AI.
Yeah.
But-- oh, sorry, Mary.
[laughter]
She's like, are you kidding?
Yeah, she's into-- she's like a fluffy Thor Lebowski
as a two-year-old girl.
She's awesome.
A Thor Lebowski?
Yeah, finally.
Now, part of what's exciting about Mrs. Davis,
Damon Lindelof is one of the creators of this
from the Watchmen, Lost days.
I feel like Watchmen was such a compelling storyline
that came at big topics from a different angle.
Yeah.
And, also, it had the story unfold
in a way that feels both mature and like it's cutting ground.
You've worked with him before.
Yes.
I wonder like what drew you to working with him again
and what it was about this project
that you found interesting in its storytelling technique.
Yeah.
So he-- Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez
created this show together.
And they are both geniuses at (SOFTLY)
what I believe you're genius at, too,
Jordan Klepper, which is--
[laughter]
Go on.
You don't have to say it like a robot.
I mean, that's--
[laughter]
Well, I think you're a genius at this as well.
Thank you. Did we get that?
We got that clean? - Yeah, to camera.
Sorry. - Perfect.
[applause]
They hide a thesis statement in farce, which I think
oftentimes, when we're sitting down
to decide what to watch on TV every night,
we often are faced with either joyful and mindless
or important and depressing.
And I think finding joyful and important
is hard to do but possible.
And I think Damon and Tara both do it really beautifully.
And I think our show is an example of that.
And this show is an example of that for sure.
Joyful and-- and what?
- Important. - Oh, right, right.
Yeah.
Joyful and important, yes.
Yes.
The first four episodes of Mrs. Davis
will premiere on Peacock on April 20.
We're going to take a quick break,
but we'll be right back after this.
[cheering]
[music playing]
That's our show for tonight.
Now here it is, your Moment of Zen.
[band playing]
ANNOUNCER: MTV.