cover of episode Giuliani Goes Broke, Musk's Million-Dollar Play, and the Future of Clean Energy

Giuliani Goes Broke, Musk's Million-Dollar Play, and the Future of Clean Energy

2024/10/23
logo of podcast The Daily Show: Ears Edition

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Key Insights

Why did Rudy Giuliani lose his entire fortune?

He was ordered by a federal judge to turn over all his valuable possessions to former Fulton County elections workers he defamed in a $150 million defamation suit.

Why did Elon Musk launch a million-dollar giveaway during the election?

To sway voters by offering financial incentives for signing his petition in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms.

Why is Elon Musk's million-dollar giveaway potentially illegal?

Pennsylvania's governor questioned its legality, suggesting it may violate election law by injecting large sums of money into politics.

Why does Elon Musk struggle to make friends?

He has tried various methods like buying Twitter and creating self-driving cars, but his attempts often fail or alienate people.

Why is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact controversial?

It aims to change how the president is elected by making every vote count equally, potentially making battleground states irrelevant.

Why are electric vehicles (EVs) gaining popularity?

They offer significant cost savings on fuel and are becoming more accessible due to government incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act.

Why is the U.S. focusing on bringing battery manufacturing back from China?

To reduce dependency on foreign markets, boost domestic manufacturing, and create jobs, especially in the clean energy sector.

Why is the Department of Energy promoting heat pumps?

They are efficient, versatile (heating and cooling), and there are tax rebates available to encourage their adoption.

Why is the U.S. considering nuclear energy as part of its energy strategy?

Nuclear provides clean baseload power, which is crucial for meeting energy demands, especially with the rise of data centers and AI.

Chapters

The chapter discusses the financial downfall of Rudy Giuliani following a civil court order, highlighting the randomness of justice in the U.S.
  • Giuliani ordered to turn over all valuable possessions to former Fulton County elections worker Shea Moss and Ruby Freeman.
  • Giuliani owes $150 million after losing a defamation suit.
  • The chapter contrasts Giuliani's fate with the lack of repercussions for Donald Trump.

Shownotes Transcript

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From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Michael Kosta. Yes, welcome to The Daily Show. I'm Michael Kosta. We've got so much to talk about. The election enters its bribery phase. Elon Musk could use a friend. And I get school at the Electoral College. So let's get into the headlines, shall we? Woo!

All right, we are exactly two weeks from Election Day and two weeks and one day from Donald Trump complaining about voter fraud. But tonight, there's breaking news about one Trump henchman who probably won't be joining in this time. Breaking news in that civil case against former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. A federal judge ordered Giuliani to turn over all of his valuable possessions, including his Manhattan apartment, to former Fulton County elections worker Shea Moss.

and Ruby Freeman. Giuliani owes them $150 million after they won a defamation suit against him. He claimed they were involved in election fraud after the 2020 election. The judge wants Giuliani to hand over more than just his Madison Avenue apartment. He's ordered to surrender watches, signed Yankees paraphernalia, furniture, and even his TV. The only valuable he's allowed to keep is his grandfather's watch.

Poor Rudy. Poor, poor Rudy. And I'm not expressing empathy, by the way. I'm saying Rudy is literally poor now. He's broke, okay? He's got to give them his apartment, his car, his furniture, even his TV. Do you know how badly you have to lose a court case that 9-11 is the second worst thing that's ever happened to you?

It really makes you realize how random justice is in this country. This man lost his entire fortune for trying to steal the election, while the man who he was trying to steal the election for has faced no repercussions at all. It's like when I get yelled at for going to the strip club, even though there were 45 other men also at the strip club. Why doesn't my wife yell at them?

Let's move on to the current election, okay? In the home stretch of the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump has gained a critical new supporter, Elon Musk, a man, a man of gravitas, a man of dignity, a man with roughly a four-inch vertical leap, and president of the funny tummy club.

But he's also the richest man in the world. I mean, he's so rich, he bought Twitter just to drive it into the ground for his own personal pleasure. And now he's thinking, well, what if I did the same with America? Tech mogul Elon Musk making a surprise pledge while stumping for Trump, launching a million-dollar giveaway for voters who signed his petition in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms. Wow.

Elon's giving a million dollars to his fans. Now they can afford the best anime girlfriend pillow money can buy. So how exactly does this bribe, sorry, gift work? So every day between now and the election, we'll be awarding a million dollars starting tonight. Tonight's person is John Dreher. Come on.

Wow. How exciting for John Dreher. But maybe less exciting once you realize that they filled in the money section with John Dreher. Although, yeah. Although, I'm not sure it matters since Elon put his signature dead center in the check.

Which, as everyone knows, is exactly not where you're supposed to put it. But hey, he's a disruptor. Also, just a missed opportunity. Put something funny in the memo section, right? May I suggest butt medicine? I mean, my landlord loves when I do that. But forget all that. What exactly do you have to do for that million dollars? The only thing we ask for the million dollars is that you be a spokesperson for the petition. And that's it, really. That's the whole, that's it.

And, yeah, that's it. That's how uncharismatic Elon Musk is. He can hand someone a million dollars and they're just like, so I can just go now? Because I've seen people more excited to win a dishwasher on The Price is Right. And I know what you're thinking right now. How can Republicans sink so low? And also, can I sink low enough to register for this? Well, yes, but you better hurry up because it's not quite clear if this whole thing is cool with Johnny Law.

Pennsylvania's governor, Josh Shapiro, questioned the legality of this giveaway and said it's something law enforcement should be taking a look at. When you start flowing this kind of money into politics, I think it raises serious questions that folks may want to take a look at. Yeah. Yeah, okay. This whole thing may violate election law, but good luck to the Democrats trying to stop it. You know, that'll win over voters. We're taking a million dollars from you. Vote Harris-Walls.

But, of course, billionaires in politics isn't anything new. Democrats have George Soros and Mark Cuban. Republicans have Steve Wynn, Dan Snyder, and I think the Monopoly man? I mean...

But Elon is also getting personally involved in a way that we've never seen before. Not only has he donated $75 million to Trump's reelection effort, not only has he spoken at Trump's rallies, but his super pact, America Pact, is essentially running Trump's entire get-out-the-vote campaign. And fun fact, he wanted to call his pact at America on Twitter, but someone else already had that handle. So he just took it from them. He literally stole America. Wow.

But don't worry, in exchange, he gave them the handle at America123 underscore 12. Really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? You couldn't have given him a cooler handle than that? Give him at Henry Kissinger. He's not using that anymore. But look, any of us can funnel millions of dollars into an election. Musk's real influence is turning Twitter into Donald Trump's personal propaganda machine.

Musk also uses X, formerly Twitter, which he owns, to promote Trump to his 200 million plus followers. According to a CBS News investigation, Musk has used X to amass 3.3 billion views on posts about election security so far this year. 55% of the posts contained or amplified false or misleading information, including unsubstantiated conspiracies.

Holy shit, 3.3 billion views for conspiracies and misinformation? And yes, a billion or two of those views come from sex bots that only tweet things like, click here to see crypto in my p***y. But that's still a huge amount of propaganda. 55% of the posts had misinformation, so he's wrong half the time. Well, thank God he only controls Twitter and not some sort of rocket company, you know? And...

If you're on Twitter like me, you know that he doesn't just tweet the stuff out to his followers. He puts it in your feed whether you follow him or not. It's gotten so bad that the other day, I almost closed Twitter and talked to my family. Can you imagine? Honestly, I should just get off Twitter entirely, except I've been talking to this smoking hot Russian chick whose is made of crypto. Um...

So Elon has formed a very close alliance with Donald Trump. So close, in fact, that Trump says if he wins, he'll give Elon a job in his administration cutting government waste. And Elon already has some really dumb ideas for how to do that. So we've talked about kind of a government efficiency commission or the Department of Government Efficiency. We just take a look at that.

at all the federal agencies and say, do we really need whatever it is, 428 federal agencies? There's so many that people have never even heard of. Yeah, I mean, that tracks, you know? If you've never heard of something, then that means we don't need it, right? Seriously, the parietal lobe? I've never heard of it, all right? Don't need it. For more on Elon Musk's cash giveaway, we go live to Tesla headquarters with Ronny Chieng. Ronny...

Get me into Elon's mindset. What's Elon's goal here? Don't overthink this, Michael. All Elon's trying to do is make a friend. That's it. Back to you. Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie. Hold on. He's not giving people millions of dollars just to make a friend. Yes, he is. That's why he makes the winner come up on stage to get the check. Because that's the only way he can get anyone close enough to try to be friends with them.

And then he's like, here's a million dollars. And then people run away as fast as they can because he's a loser with no friends. Okay, all right. Come on. Come on, Ronnie. How could he have no friends? He's a man with billions of dollars. No, no, no. He's a loser with billions of dollars. Making a billion dollars is not the same skill set as making friends, okay? I mean, just look at how he jumps up and down when people clap for him.

Yo, does this look like a man you want to be friends with? That looks like the kid at school with no friends. Like, you know how there's like a giraffe at the zoo that was raised in isolation so it doesn't know how to be a giraffe? That's him. Okay, okay, but there's easier way to make friends than to pay them a million dollars. Yeah, and he's tried them all. He bought Twitter to make friends, and what happened? We all left Twitter.

He built self-driving cars so the cars would be his friend. And what happened? The cars blew themselves up. He tried to make friends by having a thousand kids. And what happened? They were all like, can Nick Cannon adopt us instead? Yeah, I guess that makes sense. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not done. This man is a f***ing loser, Costa. His group chat is... Yo, his group chat is him and a burner phone he bought so he wouldn't be alone in the group chat, okay? No.

The only reason he wants to go to Mars is so that he can be the first human to meet aliens, because once-- he knows that once the aliens meet other humans, they'll be like, "Oh, wait, this one sucks." - Right. - Right. - This man is 53 years old. He's got to have at least one friend. - Uh, no, no, no. And you know how I know he has no friends? Because he made a Cybertruck, okay? A real friend would have told him, "Hey, bro, that's the stupidest shit I've ever seen in my life.

You should punch yourself in the dick, okay? Because friends don't let friends make cars that look like a Batmobile that had to repeat the first grade. So, so what? Our democracy is gonna collapse unless this guy gets a friend? Exactly. We just need one sad, pathetic, pasty loser to be his friend, which is why I'm awarding you, Michael Kosta, $1 million.

All you need to do is be Elon Musk's friend. That's it. That's all you have to do. Congratulations, Michael. You won. So proud of you. Wait, wait. Is that check made out to you from me? Yeah, yeah. Don't overthink it, man. Just sign here. Okay? I mean, Ronnie Chang, everybody. You know what? When we come back, we'll find out why your vote doesn't count. So don't go away. I'm going to hide it.

Hey everybody, Jon Stewart here. I am here to tell you about my new podcast, The Weekly Show. It's going to be coming out

Every Thursday. So exciting. You'll be saying to yourself, TGIT. Thank God it's Thursday. We're going to be talking about all the things that hopefully obsess you in the same way that they obsess me. The election, economics, earnings calls. What are they talking about on these earnings calls? We're going to be talking about ingredient to bread ratio on sandwiches.

And I know that I listed that fourth, but in importance, it's probably second. I know you have a lot of options as far as podcasts go, but how many of them come out on Thursday? I mean, talk about innovative. Listen to The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to The Daily Show.

November 5th is election night, and we all know how we'll be spending election night watching John King smugly point to battleground states on the election map. We get it, John. You know where Pennsylvania is, all right? Some of us didn't go to grad school, but a new initiative might change election night forever. Take a look. With the race for the White House at a virtual deadline. A tight race in every battleground state. If there's one thing I know as an American, it's that our elections are perfect, so

So when I heard there was an organization trying to change our system with something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, I had to find out what it was. National Popular Vote is an agreement amongst the states that when enough states join it, will move this country to a national popular vote for president. It makes every voter in every state relevant in every presidential election. But voters do elect the president. Yeah, no, battleground state voters have all of the power

with the American president and that's one out of five states. So four out of five states are totally ignored in presidential election. It's a way to deliver to this country a president every time who wins the most amount of votes across the country. And so it doesn't take every state to participate. Okay. And I will tell you that interstate compacts are not controversial things. Every state's in dozens of them. And I think you've probably participated in an interstate compact before. Absolutely not. Have you ever? Powerball. I'm an avid

Well, that's an interstate compact. Are you telling me the president of the United States is going to be determined by the Powerball winner? No, no, no. I guess I misunderstood. I may have misunderstood the question, but I definitely know what the electoral college is. And I certainly understand the national popular vote interstate compact. This breaking news just in. The Daily Show's Michael Kosta doesn't understand the national popular vote interstate compact.

He may not even understand how the Electoral College works. What the hell are you doing here, King? Well, Michael, if anyone says Electoral College three times, it's like a genie. I'm cursed to appear to break it down. So let's do it. Each state has their own system of appointing electors to vote in the Electoral College. Now, currently, almost all states have a winner-take-all system.

where the candidate who wins the most votes in that state then wins all of that state's electors. Maine and Nebraska do it a little bit differently, but once a candidate gets 270 electoral college votes, they win. Now, with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, states in that compact have agreed to award all of their electoral votes to the winner of the National Popular Vote, regardless who wins that statewide vote. That means every single vote across the country counts, and battleground states would essentially become irrelevant. Wow.

Is it true that you wear a diaper in an election night? Let's go back to the interview. How often has a president become president and not won the national vote? Yeah, it's happened five times. Five? The most recent, President Trump and President Bush. Republicans overwhelmingly benefit from the Electoral College. So why would a Republican ever be on board with a national vote initiative? How dumb would they have to be? What?

Well, I happen to be a Republican. You're a Republican? Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, a pretty conservative one, too. Are you sure you're a Republican? There's lots of Republicans who support a national popular vote for president. And what about you? What are you? I'm a Democrat. Are we getting this? A Republican and a Democrat. This is one table we can both sit at. This is a nonpartisan reform with bipartisan support. Everybody's bi these days. I got nothing on that. But...

This is just idealistic tomfoolery. I mean, is anybody gonna get on board with this? This isn't a fantasy. It's not an academic fever dream. It's a law that's been passed by 17 states plus the District of Columbia. I have to admit, you know, when you guys sat down here, I thought there's no way these imbeciles know anything. But you've convinced me.

-It's pretty legit. -Mm-hmm. -What's next? What are we missing? -All eyes on Michigan. And as a battleground state, it'd be a critical domino to fall to create the momentum to get us over the finish line. -Michigan. -Michigan. -That's my home state. They're great legislatively. I bet they're working on this right now as we speak. -You should weigh in. Weigh in with the speaker. He needs to schedule a vote on the national popular vote bill. -Yo, look at me. Shh. I'll handle it. -Thank you.

When Costa says it happens, it happens. More breaking news now. The cocky clown Michael Costa headed to the battleground state of Michigan, going there to see if they will pass the national popular vote. Currently, let's pop it up and show you on the map here. We currently have the states right now. These states right here on the map, you see them calling it in blue. They have officially passed the

The compact. That means they're in. Their bills have passed into law. Now, if you add them up, that would be 209 electoral votes right there. These states, like Michigan, currently have bills introduced in one or more legislative chambers. Now, passing it in Michigan is a long shot, especially for someone as inept as Michael Kosta. Oh, oh, oh, I get it. You know, you're just worried that once I do get this thing passed, you and your precious magic wall will be out of a job for good. Hey, hey, hey.

You can insult me, but you leave the magic wall out of this. Besides, even if it did reach the 270 thresholds, there's always the potential for litigation, for the lawyers to get involved, lawyers from any of these states or from the candidates themselves. Plus, you still need 46 more electoral votes. Jesus, are you always this much of a bummer, King? Yes. Watch out, Michigan. You're about to be costed. When we come back, Jennifer Granholm will be joining me on the show. Don't go away.

Huge.

Huge Department of Energy fans here. I love it. All right. What is the Department of Energy? We have 17 national laboratories, 40,000 scientists all trying to solve the biggest problems of our time. It is the Solutions Department. And now we are deploying, deploying, deploying clean energy. I'll tell you what. You have, yes. You've got a nice energy. Hey. Oh! Saving it.

You know, doing this piece that was on in the second act, I went to the state capitol of Michigan, and I noticed your portrait. And I'm a Michigander. I wasn't necessarily living in Michigan when you were the governor, but I love your portrait, and it's here. And there's so many cool things here. There's a wind turbine. Your hand is on a globe. Many Michiganders didn't even know that there's other countries in the world.

I think there's an electrical car in that, right? Yeah, there's an electric vehicle. Yeah. It was the Chevy Volt, the first electric vehicle to come off a lift. They know. I was struck that that might have been a little bit ahead of its time. Oh, you know, you are so smart. Do you see why they put me at this f***?

It's obvious. It's obvious. But this is Michigan. This is gas-guzzling Michigan. Did that ruffle some feathers? Well, let me just say that when the... You remember when the auto industry went bankrupt? Yes. And that was in a 2008 Great Recession, right? Yes. So it was the same time that Obama and Biden were elected. They said, we're going to help to save the American auto industry, but we also want it to move into vehicle 2.0, which is the electric vehicle. Right, right.

They provided a bunch of incentives for battery companies to come to Michigan. And it's true. We were a little bit ahead of our time. We put the cart of supply before the horse of demand, if you will. But it's all smoothed out now. And electric vehicles are now 10% of the vehicle market. Is it perfect? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It feels like electric... Sorry to be the bummer. It feels like EV has slowed down a little bit. Well, a little bit. What are some of the challenges you're facing? First of all, we've sold 4 million EVs since the start of this administration, which is more than all EVs ever sold before. Right. And the hiccup... Well, first of all, I think there's been a lot of talking down of electric vehicles, unfortunately. I think once we get past...

November, we'll see, I think, more positivity because J.D. Powers, they do a survey of, like, who wants to buy. I mean, people who have electric vehicles, they will never go back. And people who don't have electric vehicles, if they're thinking about switching and they want to save money on gasoline, they're looking at it. And because of the Inflation Reduction Act, you know, one of the laws that was passed, that provides incentives for consumers to buy electric vehicles. So you can get $7,500 off the dealer...

to purchase one. So there's... So we're seeing, you know, year over year, quarter over quarter increases, you know, and that's good. And we, you know, we've got electric vehicle charging stations. As of today, here's news. 200,000 public charging stations across the country. Saved it for The Daily Show. Yes.

Well, that's one thing that fascinates me about EV. I mean, as an American who drives a car, we just are so used to, I'll drive till it's empty and then I'll fill up somewhere. That's not what it's like necessarily with EV. Do we have to rethink our mindset a little bit? Well, I think, first of all, battery. Is that something that the Department of Energy focuses on? We're totally focused. I get my departments mixed up. This is so smart because we have a joint office with the Department of Transportation on this. But

The bottom line is the batteries for electric vehicles are making the vehicles go a lot longer. So you can go 300, 300 plus miles on a charge. And to fill up your average sedan, it costs about 48 bucks as average, right? To $3.17 per gallon.

If you charge, you may charge at home if you have a garage, it costs you about $16. So the difference between $48 and $16, and if you're filling up every week, that's a good amount of money that you're saving. And yet, you have to plan to find an electric charging station. But now that there's 200,000 of them, with a goal of getting to 500,000 by 2030, and, you know, most people charge at home. I hate to bring this up because it's petty, but I have this desk, and it's a responsibility to...

My electric toothbrush needs to be charged more frequently, more often. But let's get into batteries. You know, are we... Americans love cheap shit, so all these batteries are being made in China? No! No. Well, let's talk about that. They are not. We are bringing... This is the

thing. Oh, you guys, this is such a great story. Well, this stupid audience has no clue what we're talking about, but I know. Explain to them. So, yes, batteries for electric vehicles and the stuff that goes into the batteries all has been like... Battery juice. The battery juice, the anode, the cathode, the separator material, all of that has been built in China. Much of it, right? They cornered the market on if they had a strategic plan to do it. We just, we allowed it to happen. We just watched until this administration came in.

And they said, no, we're going to bring manufacturing back to this country. We're going to make it irresistible to invest in America. As a result, since the start of this administration, 450 EV assembly and battery companies have announced they're opening up in America. Okay. 450. That's amazing. Yeah. I love that. You're supposed to be like, wow.

No, I mean, I drive gas. And you know what? I'm a bad person. No, you're not. But I do want to ask you, when I am ordering a bunch of stuff from Amazon, and then it says, hey, do you want to get this a day later and just use one box? I click yes. Am I a hero? You are. Clearly a hero.

Renewable energy. I mean, some of the pushback is, hey, a wind turbine is cool when it's windy. Hey, solar panels are great when it's sunny out. But that's not always the case. Is that a dumb pushback on renewable energy? Well, let's just say they may not be aware that you can combine...

that kind of energy with these big utility scale batteries that have 10 hours, sometimes much longer storage so that it basically makes renewable energy like base load power, clean power. And these batteries give the opportunity for everybody to use energy all the time. And that's why we're seeing so much deployment of clean energy across the country. Can I just give you a quick stat on this? Yeah, please. I love stats.

And you should feel really great about this, America. Yeah. Because of the incentives in these laws that the president passed, developers of clean energy have been going gangbusters. Right. This year, just in 2024, we will add 30 Hoover dams worth of clean power to our electric grid. Okay. 30 Hoover dams. Yeah. That's a record amount. I'll tell you what.

She came with numbers. She came with numbers. Can I plug my electronic toothbrush into one of those huge industrial... No. Winter's coming. You are a Michigander. I'm a Michigander. We both know winter's coming to kill us. Heating a home, you know, maybe it's not always the first thing everyone talks about on television, but it's something to be taken very seriously. I'm hearing heat pumps. I'm hearing heat pumps don't work when it's actually freezing. What is a heat pump?

I don't get to talk with the Secretary of Energy very often. What is a heat pump? Should more Americans be doing heat pumps? Is there a tax credit for heat pumps? -Yes! Yes, yes. -Tell me everything about heat pumps and, God damn it, finish with some numbers. -Okay. -I'm just kidding. You don't have to do numbers. -Well, first of all, the heat pump basically transfers warm or cold energy to where you want it to be, right? -Nice. Okay. -And so it not just heats your home in the winter, it cools your home in the summer. -I like that. -So it's both a heater and a cooler.

Shitty name. I know, I know, right? Heat and cool pumps, yes. It is so true. We can work on that, yeah. But they are outselling your basic HVAC system in America now for a couple of years going because people are understanding how great heat pumps are. And yes, they do work in the cold. Okay. And yes, um,

There are tax rebates right now. We're talking in New York. Many states like New York have developed a rebate system. You can get a rebate for the heat pump that you purchase. Or if you're not in one of those states, you can get a 30% tax credit for a heat pump. This would be the time to do it. These incentives are...

for not just heat pumps, but honestly for insulation, for solar panels, for, you know, stuff that makes your house button down and running on clean energy. Well, this is something that I'm afraid to ask, but if administrations change, and when they do change, does everything you've been working on go bye-bye too? Is it like the energy in my electronic toothbrush? It just doesn't seem to make it?

Do you think stick around? The administration will change, and so it will depend on who's elected, right? Right, right. But let me just say this, that the incentives that were embedded in Biden-Harris industrial strategy, I'll just say,

Those incentives are working all across America, in every pocket, in red communities, in blue communities. Honestly, 60% of the funding, all those factories I talked about, just in the clean energy space, there's been 900 factories. That includes wind and solar as well as batteries, et cetera. 900 factories. About 60 or even more percent of the investments have gone to red factories.

and red districts. It would be, you know, political malpractice, really, to undo that when your community, especially a community that previously had had a factory and the factory was gone, and now you're getting a whole new opportunity. That would be a bad move to undo it. I'm sure Trump would take care of the liberal cities and states of this country. Um...

AI. Yes. You know, I'm not sure where I stand. Actually, I know where I stand. I don't think we need it or want it. I think it's here to stay. A lot of people I work with love making Mount Rushmore have boobs on it through AI. But it uses a shitload of energy. What is our energy strategy with AI? Is this where nuclear is coming in? Yeah, it is. I mean, first of all, many of the companies that are building these data centers are

Like Google and Meta and all that. So it's a data center. That's what it's called. That's the AI data center. Well, there's data centers that are specifically directed toward AI, training the AI models. Those companies largely have promised to their shareholders that they want to operate on 100% clean electricity. So our message to them is, if you get a data center coming in which uses a lot of power, don't make everyday citizens pay for that.

power. Bring your power with you. BYOP is what we're calling it. But make it clean. It's like bringing your own charger over to a friend's house. There you go. So we think we could do it.

So continue. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. No, no. We think we can. They it's anticipated that it will you'll see an uptick, obviously, in demand. They want we want them. Actually, we want these data centers built in the United States for economic reasons, but also because of national security reasons.

So we would like them to be built in the United States. We can provide the power. As I mentioned, we're putting so much power on the grid right now. If they are willing to do these small modular nuclear reactors or create additional nuclear power, provides clean baseload power. Why are you giving me that look? Nuclear. You just don't like it. You know, there's a phrase, going nuclear. It's not a positive phrase.

Is this really-- are we moving towards nuclear? Well, we have nuclear now. We have 94 reactors in the United States. Nuclear provides 20% of our clean power, of our-- you know, I mean, we-- it's a clean baseload power. So nuclear is good.

if we can figure out the waste issue, because it does provide waste, right? And so we have a whole process going on in this administration called consent-based siting. There are some communities who are willing to raise their hand and say, we will take on that waste for, you know, for some sort of compensation to be able to do that. But that issue, which is an important issue, is solvable.

And nuclear helps to solve the bigger issue, which is energy creation. -As just a regular Joe, can we-- can I just encourage everyone to take the nuclear stuff very carefully? -Yeah. Well, that's a good thing. And just to give you some comfort, in the United States, our Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we are the gold standard of nuclear safety in this country. And it takes a while to get something licensed as a result. And it should. So we are doing it very carefully. -Go nice and slow. Double check. Check again.

Hey, did we check that? Let's check it again. Last thing, you've been very generous with your time with us. I know you're very busy. What can the average American do to improve their carbon footprint, use less energy? Is there something that you would advise us? Totally take advantage of all of these.

All of these rebates and tax credits. Put solar panels on your roof if you've got-- get a heat pump if you have a home. If you are thinking about switching out your car, think about trying out an electric vehicle. There's so many technologies that are available now at a discount to be able to become more energy efficient and improve your carbon footprint. Thank you for coming here today. We appreciate it very much.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Graham. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back after this. Thank you so much. Show for tonight. Now here it is. Your Moment of Zen.

An airport in New Zealand is now putting a three-minute time limit on goodbye hugs in the drop-off zones. You know what I do? I do this. Bye. That is not true. For the record, that's the exact opposite. And that's what I'm doing. No, you are one of the best huggers on the planet. There's no way you're doing a peace hug. Do you see me not coming back? She actually is leaving. She's gone for real. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been CNN News Central. Sarah's gone. Newsroom up next.

Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+. Paramount Podcasts. Hey everybody, Jon Stewart here. I am here to tell you about my new podcast, The Weekly Show. It's going to be coming out

Every Thursday. So exciting. You'll be saying to yourself, TGIT. Thank God it's Thursday. We're going to be talking about all the things that hopefully obsess you in the same way that they obsess me. The election, economics, earnings calls. What are they talking about on these earnings calls? We're going to be talking about ingredient to bread ratio on sandwiches.

And I know that I listed that fourth, but in importance, it's probably second. I know you have a lot of options as far as podcasts go, but how many of them come out on Thursday? I mean, talk about innovative. Listen to The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart wherever you get your podcasts.