In this episode, Russell Brand takes a look at Jon Stewart's return to The Daily Show, and the reaction to it, and why the left can't handle it. He also takes a shot at Joe Biden and his age, and how it might be a symptom of the system itself, rather than a reflection of the people it serves, of the times in which we live. Russell Brand is an American comedian, podcaster, writer, and podcaster. His work has been featured on Comedy Central, HBO, and other media outlets, and he is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, and NPR. He is married to the wife of former Vice President Joe Biden, Jill Biden, and they have a son, a daughter, a son-in-law, a stepson, a grandchild, and a great-son, and great-grandson. Russell Brand has been a long-time friend and supporter of the Democratic Party and has been involved in politics for a long time. He has been an avid supporter of Bernie Sanders and other liberal causes, and has consistently voted for him in the Democratic presidential candidates in presidential primary debates, including Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren in 2016 and is a supporter of his wife, Hillary Clinton in the 2020 Democratic primary, and is an admirer of Joe Biden in 2020 and 2020 Democratic challenger, Tulsi Gabbard in the CNN primary, as well as in the primary race for Vice Presidential candidates in 2020, and in 2016's Democratic primary debates and the Democratic primary battle against Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton's primary challenger, Amy Klobuchow, Alexandria Ocasio-Coff-her, who is running for the Democratic nomination, Julian Zelinsky, who has been named after him in a recent CNN poll, Joe Biden. , Russell Brand explains why he thinks Jon Stewart s return to the Daily Show is a good ole job, and what it means for the left and why it s time for him to run for president. . And he explains why Jon Stewart represents a political category that s starting to disappear from the political landscape, and explains why the media is losing ground to Joe Biden s old age and what s going to do in 2020. Stay Freezing in the face of the establishment elite, and much less so than it used to be, and that s becoming more accessible, not less, and begins to look like a little less so, and more focused on the media s ability to be funny.
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00:01:06.000A changing media world that can't accommodate Perhaps one of its key and landmark figures, Jon Stewart.
00:01:12.000When Jon Stewart was last on The Daily Show, he showed how current affairs could be handled comedically and more intelligently than the actual news.
00:01:21.000People were watching The Daily Show to get their news.
00:01:23.000Now Jon Stewart is back, and I would say brilliant and Perhaps even better than ever.
00:01:28.000But what's marked, observable and challenging is the world has changed since Jon Stewart used to last be on TV.
00:01:35.000Now you're either for the establishment or you're against the establishment.
00:01:39.000And the establishment figures from the left have been facing more and more criticism.
00:01:43.000Remember, I was associated with the left for a long time because I believe in Liberalism and freedom and be who you are and leave me alone and that kind of stuff which I know a lot of you in the comments will say those are conservative ideas but anti-establishmentism when you have corporatist leaders previously was always assumed to be coming from the cultural left shall we say.
00:02:02.000Well now that very same cultural set can't tolerate or accommodate criticisms of Joe Biden for being Old.
00:02:08.000Which seems like a pretty high threshold given that Joe Biden is pretty old.
00:02:13.000Let's have a look at Jon Stewart's return and some of the criticisms of it before analyzing what's changed in our culture that means that Jon Stewart is now more controversial than ever.
00:02:22.000These two candidates they are both similarly challenged and it is not crazy to think that the oldest people in the history of the country to ever run for president might have some of these challenges.
00:02:32.000Now Democrats will say that any criticism like this, especially of Biden, is unfair.
00:02:37.000That's weird because he's saying this before the criticism has happened and indeed that is precisely the criticism that has happened.
00:02:43.000I don't know how you feel in particular about the senility and decay of Joe Biden.
00:02:48.000I've always taken it to be an observable and evident symbol of, well, the decay of the system itself, and evidence that he can't be in a pivotal executive position because he wouldn't be capable of that.
00:03:00.000And it seems ludicrous and ridiculous to see a paracheek after a paracheek come out and claim that Joe Biden's sharp as a whip, he's lightning fast, it seems preposterous and inconceivable that that's true.
00:03:11.000What's interesting to me is to see Jon Stewart with his same cadence and same meter and now suddenly the left, his old allies, can't deal with it.
00:03:20.000One thing I think is important about Jon Stewart to remember is that after 9-11 he was right in there with first responders, supporting them.
00:03:26.000It's a cause that's very close to him.
00:03:27.000And what I would say is that Jon Stewart represents a political category that's starting to disappear.
00:03:31.000People of the left that are connected to blue-collar working people.
00:03:35.000That in particular is the change that the establishment elite have undertaken.
00:03:40.000An evident loathing of ordinary working people is why a lot of people don't feel at home in what was once regarded as the left.
00:03:46.000Because you just don't know Biden like they know Biden.
00:03:50.000President Biden, who I've been around numerous times just in this last year, is sharp, he's focused, he's bright.
00:03:56.000He is sharp, intensely probing, and detail-oriented and focused.
00:04:10.000We've all become more media savvy in the intervening years since Jon Stewart's departure from the Daily Show.
00:04:16.000We all know now there's a relationship between the legacy media and the government.
00:04:19.000We all know now because of the release of the Twitter files that deep state operatives are controlling portions of what's accessible and permittable on social media.
00:04:30.000We all see a montage like that now and understand that it's not a coincidence that they're all using the same terms and the same words.
00:04:36.000In a sense, Jon Stewart to a degree participated in the creation of this landscape.
00:04:40.000Critiques of legacy media, critiques of the political class.
00:04:44.000Of course, Jon Stewart isn't the creator of satire, but this kind of fast-paced, anti-establishment, quick, thinking aggressive style of comedy was very much pioneered or made more popular certainly by Jon Stewart.
00:04:55.000The problem is now the culture has changed and it is forbidden oddly on the authoritarian left to attack a leader like Joe Biden as if it's Stalin or something where if you criticize him it's like oh my god you're gonna die.
00:05:06.000Of course now it would be more a digital death or a cultural death or not being permitted to participate in the spoils of the establishment elite and I think what's most interesting about Jon Stewart's return is we can see now that the culture has radically altered since John Stewart was part of the mainstream.
00:05:22.000The culture no longer permits criticism of the powerful.
00:05:26.000There are prescribed tropes that are permitted, and that's it.
00:05:29.000You might have seen some talk show hosts talking about Tucker's interview with Putin, and it was kind of lukewarm satire, and that's what's become normal now.
00:05:37.000The aggressive attack of the powerful, that exists on online platforms now.
00:05:41.000The mainstream has extracted that from its discourse.
00:05:43.000It can no longer tolerate it because the legacy media exists to amplify and support the establishment, not to attack it.
00:05:50.000This is a man who is sharp, who is on top of his game, who knows what's going on.
00:06:38.000I even wonder if the audience laughed at his somewhat nervous
00:06:47.000We've been so coached during the pandemic period to recognise this is what we're allowed to laugh at, we're not allowed to laugh at this and part of cancel culture and part of the what you used to call political correctness but has now become far more extreme.
00:06:58.000means that we don't live in the same sort of convivial and easy comedic atmosphere that we once did.
00:07:04.000Are we allowed to laugh at Joe Biden? It's not laughing at him because he's elderly, of course.
00:07:07.000There is an equivalency between age and experience and therefore perhaps wisdom.
00:07:11.000This is not laughing at an old person, this is questioning the cognitive capacity of a person
00:07:16.000in a position of great power and querying whether or not this is at odds with what
00:07:20.000our expectations of the leader of the free world ought be.
00:07:24.000Because if you're telling us behind the scenes he is sharp and full of energy and on top of it
00:07:33.000and really in control and leading, you should film that.
00:07:37.000Of course, when it comes to Republicans, they've got a different strategy for their 77-year-old candidate.
00:07:42.000Jon Stewart goes on to attack Donald Trump, and Jon Stewart always used to attack both sides, used to attack the establishment broadly.
00:07:48.000Now, the Democrats have been very critical of Jon Stewart's attacks, as they perceive them, on Biden, but the right haven't mentioned anything about Donald Trump, and it's odd First of all, Donald Trump is not an old man.
00:07:57.000this tendency towards censorship, this inability to accommodate open conversation or humor,
00:08:02.000or even pointing out the obvious in the case of Joe Biden's cognitive decline,
00:08:07.000is an indicator of a new cultural climate where there is a sense of pervasive oppression,
00:08:11.000where there's certain things you're just not allowed to say, and that is perhaps the biggest
00:08:15.000shift that's taken place since Jon Stewart was last on the air.
00:08:18.000Well first of all, Donald Trump is not an old man.
00:08:21.000He's an old man! He is objectively an old man, on a human scale.
00:08:28.000We have two candidates who are chronologically outside the norm of anyone who has run for the presidency in this country, in the history of this country.
00:08:38.000They are the oldest people ever to run for president, breaking by only four years the record that they set!
00:08:58.000Perhaps because of the donations and financial support and ability to rake in cash, invest in companies that will benefit from laws that they're passing.
00:09:07.000People like Nancy Pelosi or that other old lady that needed to be given advice.
00:09:47.000It shows you that there are no real values or principles within that system,
00:09:50.000that it's actually governed by peculiar hierarchies, odd systemic relationships and financial partnerships
00:09:56.000between financial systems and big tech and the military industrial complex.
00:10:01.000And it was all just sort of papered over by language verbosity. This is a brave new world.
00:10:06.000I'm the only person that can oppose Donald Trump.
00:10:08.000When, in effect, what is happening, as Jon Stewart observes, is elderly people are retaining their power, retaining their positions, while claiming that the world is progressing.
00:10:17.000There's something very odd about that.
00:10:18.000Predictably, mainstream media, cultural institutions, responded unfavourably to Jon Stewart's nuanced attack on both candidates.
00:10:26.000Because, remember, he attacked Trump, he attacked Biden.
00:10:28.000I don't see anybody on the right going, you can't say that about Donald Trump.
00:10:31.000He's trying his hardest with his hair and his skin tone.
00:10:34.000I love that Jon Stewart is back, but what's so offensive to me is there's a difference between age and intelligence.
00:10:41.000There's a difference between age and vitality.
00:10:43.000There's a difference between age and really being up on things and having that quickness of wit that joy has.
00:10:54.000We're talking about Joe Biden, who sometimes doesn't look very well, or like he fully understands the magnitude of what he's dealing with in these numerous incendiary wars.
00:11:03.000Different to, like, go and do The View.
00:12:07.000This person who seems like might be a corrupt career politician is leading us into various wars that appear to be in the interest of financial institutions and institutions of dominion.
00:12:19.000Rather than representative of the will of the American people.
00:12:22.000I was taught to respect my elders, and when they want to lead us into a global holy war, I'd bloody well get on with it.
00:12:37.000It says it about both of them, didn't it, Jon Stewart?
00:12:40.000That didn't warrant that response at all, did it?
00:12:42.000Let's have a look at some cultural analysis about the changing landscape between when Jon Stewart was previously on the Daily Show to present day and why the culture has changed so radically.
00:12:52.000And let me know in the comments what you think has changed.
00:12:54.000Jon Stewart left the Daily Show in August 2015, which was not all that long ago, but was a vastly different media and cultural environment.
00:13:02.000Celebrity apprentice host and celebrity billionaire Donald Trump had taken his golden escalator ride down for his presidential announcement less than two months earlier, and the tidal wave of societal change was a mere ripple.
00:13:12.000I remember at that point, the idea that Donald Trump would become president, I thought at least, was ridiculous.
00:13:17.000This was before the primaries, this was before he proved himself to be basically hilarious.
00:13:21.000This is a tough business to run for president.
00:13:24.000Oh I know you're a tough guy, Gia, by the way.
00:13:26.000And before it became pretty plain that about 50% of the American voting public
00:13:31.000are so annoyed they are willing to vote for a renegade.
00:13:34.000Stewart is a political comedy star from an era that has completely disappeared.
00:13:37.000Ever since large portions of the American media became hopelessly addicted to the drug that is Donald Trump, obsessed with their perceived existential fight with the former and potentially future president.
00:13:47.000Stuart's daily show reign went from 1999 to 2015, spanning the full scope of the Bush and Obama years.
00:13:54.000Divisiveness in our politics and culture was rampant then, but Americans also were being served by a media that valued objectivity, basic fairness and intellectual consistency.
00:14:02.000Although in retrospect, the difference between the Obama and Bush era doesn't look as significant as perhaps it seemed at the time.
00:14:09.000Ultimately, in retrospect and subsequently, those two men have been able to form a pretty Decent relationship with one another and generally speaking, I would see them as representatives of the same financial interests, wouldn't you?
00:14:20.000Obama, George Bush, they belong to the same clubs.
00:14:23.000They'll both accept money from Raytheon.
00:14:25.000They're both turn up after dinner speeches.
00:14:27.000Not even saying this is a criticism of Bush or Obama, but they are institutional politicians.
00:14:31.000Donald Trump, a weird renegade, isn't he?
00:14:35.000The kind of first beneficiary of fervid anti-establishment feeling that was clearly present but has peaked in the interim years.
00:14:41.000In the years since Trump rose to power, objectivity has become seen as a sign of ignorance, or worse, there are hysterical screams of false equivalency and both-side-ism and what-about-ism, because if you're not focused solely on Trump alone, you're simply part of the problem.
00:14:54.000Former New York Times journalist Amy Chozik said, Objectivity is akin to white supremacy.
00:15:02.000We've said many times on this show that Pulitzer Prize winning journalists like Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald and brilliant up-and-coming journalists like Matt Taibbi or Whitney Webb or Schellenberg or Lee Fang, they're now sort of maligned and marginalized.
00:15:16.000I swear in the Jon Stewart era one, those people would be at like New York Times, Rolling Stone, getting scoops, attacking the establishment.
00:15:24.000Now it's like you lot Shut up, you right-wing fascists!
00:15:27.000And if you know those people, as I do, you can tell they're anti-establishment journalists with real integrity that are attacking corruption and hypocrisy.
00:15:39.000They are no longer radical organisations.
00:15:41.000They are about supporting the establishment, accepting cultural areas that ultimately do not affect the main thrust of power, I would argue.
00:15:48.000Stuart's daily show made a regular practice of criticising his own side.
00:15:51.000He'd go after the hypocrisy of the left, seeming to relish making his audience uncomfortable at times.
00:15:56.000Stuart was occasionally masterful at exposing the ridiculous contortions we perform to defend powerful figures we support.
00:16:01.000And he did so not by attacking the people, but by attacking the powerful.
00:16:04.000In 2024 and since 2017, the Daily Show oeuvre and the corporate media apparatus has been the opposite.
00:16:10.000It wasn't enough to simply attack Trump or his administration.
00:16:13.000No, the target was the deplorables who put him there in the first place.
00:16:16.000This is something we've commented on a lot.
00:16:17.000The left used to be, as I understood it, the party of working people.
00:16:21.000To ensure that working people, either through trade unions or in a more disparate way, could oppose and confront the corporate world and its ability to manipulate politics, the left arose to represent those interests.
00:16:50.000I don't think that the right or the left are the solution to our problems.
00:16:53.000I believe, as I think you know by now, in decentralization so that we don't have to argue about culture anymore.
00:16:57.000We just say, this community is going to be running this way, this community is going to be running that way, and our cultures can be personal matters or community matters or matters for us to determine for ourselves.
00:17:06.000This idea that 50% of the population is at war with the other half, where does that end?
00:17:11.000Which brings us to Monday night and Stuart returning with a manifesto of sorts tackling the Biden-Trump rematch that nobody wants.
00:17:18.000He set the table on 2024 by describing in detail the threat of Trump, but also spent significant time calling out the obvious cognitive decline and mental fitness of President Biden, including those Democratic defenders who are spinning a full story after the damning special counsel report.
00:17:32.000He referred to Biden as chocolate chip cookie guy and mocked Biden's awkward TikTok debut.
00:17:37.000This was capital U unacceptable for some in the press.
00:17:40.000Centrist Democrats were appalled at what they saw as a betrayal by one of their own, wrote Rolling Stone.
00:17:45.000Stewart's main segment was classic both-side-ism, wrote Slate.
00:17:48.000Those organizations, of course, being now ultimately mouthpieces of the establishment.
00:17:53.000Jon Stewart is about to learn a hard truth about the current media and cultural environment.
00:19:12.000So perhaps the return of John Stewart will be a positive thing because it will show us
00:19:16.000that authoritarianism and censorship are on the rise, that people have become blinkered
00:19:19.000when it comes to their ability to criticise their own side and that most of all perhaps
00:19:23.000when criticising elderly leaders of the only two parties that a person might vote for,
00:19:28.000for us all to take a moment to observe, the system itself is in radical need of revision.
00:19:34.000And whichever one of those parties you vote for, you're likely to end up with the same types of institution and the same type of challenges.