Trump’s 2024 Victory, Political Apathy, and the Power of Identity Politics
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You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Desi Lydon. I slept two hours last night and I feel like shit, but here we are. Let's get right into it with Indecision 2024. Indecision 2024.

Decision edition. Is it too late to undecide? Well, if you're just joining me in this waking nightmare, yesterday was election day. We were all hoping it would make history, and boy, did it ever. Mr. Trump made history last night. He will be the first convicted felon to be president of the United States.

Yeah, it's official. America's elected its first criminal president before electing its first female president. What a day for proud felonists. What the actual f***, America? We have had two qualified, accomplished women nominated for president, and both times they lost to the worst man in the whole country. Yes! Woo!

At this point it's starting to feel like we're gonna get every other first before we get a first woman president. First Amish president. First, uh, Wahlberg president. Hey, there's no rule that says a dog can't be president. As long as it's a boy dog. But instead of breaking the glass ceiling, last night America decided to get back with her dirtbag ex and I had no idea how much she missed him.

Overnight, a stunning victory for Donald Trump. Blowing through the so-called blue wall of Midwest states. In county after county across the country, improving on his margin of victory in past races. Suburban areas, rural areas, even big cities and bluer parts of the map all tipped in his direction. It is a sweeping and stunning victory unlike any in our history. Will be studied and debated for generations. We're going to last generations?

That is the optimism I was looking for. Thanks, George Slopidopoulos. That's your legal name now. But that's right, Trump is on track to win every single swing state and the popular vote. Just like the relationship between Trump and Eric, this one wasn't close at all. Oh, my God. I have four more years of Eric jokes. F*** me. F*** me.

But just think about what happened here. America voted this guy out in 2020, and what has he done since then? He tried to overthrow the government. He was convicted of 34 felonies. He spent an entire campaign promising vengeance against his enemies. And if you're wondering who, after all of that, would want to back him up, well, buckle up. It's a long list.

- The former president winning with a coalition driven by white voters, men, and first-time voters. - Young men in union households. - Those older voters. - Voters age 45 to 64. - Those younger than the age of 30. - Black men, Latino men, suburban women, Arab Americans, and white men. - So all of America, all of America. You just listed all of America. Seems the only group she can't blame for Trump's victory are black women and people in comas.

Oh, and puppies. Or puppies in comas. God damn it, I just made myself more sad. It's undeniable that Trump gained with practically every demographic. It's mind-boggling. But thankfully, cable news is on 24 hours a day, so pundits can incessantly play the blame game. How did this happen? I think Democrats went way too far to the left. Got it. Okay, Kamala was too far left. Didn't embrace centrists.

It is perhaps the strategy so forcefully embracing Republicans like the Liz Cheneys. OK, sorry. I see she embraced centrists too much. What else? She wouldn't really stand and back the Israelis.

Uh-huh. She wasn't pro-Israel enough, all right? The base of the party, it cares about Gaza, and they, by not bringing a Palestinian on stage to the DNC, these are not the value, the base values of the Democratic Party. Or pro-Palestinian enough. Okay, was that it?

I think that Kamala Harris had this albatross around her neck and it was Joe Biden. She couldn't distance herself from Biden and couldn't think of anything that she would have done differently. Right, right, right, right. I see it now. Kamala didn't distance herself enough from Joe Biden. And let me guess.

It is probably not the best idea that Democrats orchestrated a very public stab fest, a proverbial stabbing in the front of the sitting president of the United States of America and then didn't use him in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Okay. So she betrayed Joe Biden but was also too close to Joe Biden. Uh-huh. This is all making sense if I just pull the pieces together. Oh!

Look, as productive as this feels right now, I'm not really interested in gaming out how exactly this happened. This defeat was so resounding that you could literally say anything and it wouldn't be plausible. She should have picked Mudeng for her VP. She should have gone on the Hop to a Girl's podcast. Maybe she visited Wisconsin too much. Sure, that makes sense. Why not?

Honestly, I don't really care why she lost. I care why he won. We have spent so much time diagnosing Donald Trump and what his actions say about him. He's a dictator. He's a fascist. He's a malignant narcissist whose blood type is fryer oil. But it's pretty clear that America is the one that needs the diagnosis because whatever's wrong with him, we f***ing love it.

In this moment, Donald Trump is holding up a mirror to the American people, and it might be time to take a good hard look. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I told myself that this show would be uplifting tonight and give people hope and inspiration, but unfortunately, I'm too depressed and, quite frankly, very, very hungover.

I will say it's times like these when I can lean on the wisdom and support and the vision of the best f***ing news team in the world. And we'll start with Troy Iwata. Troy, it's up to you. Please give us something. Let us hear some optimism and hope to lift our spirits. Like lift, lift spirits. I thought I was reporting on Senate results.

No, we don't need that right now. We need someone to find the perfect words to explain to us that everything's going to be okay. So go. Okay, put that on me. I can't help anyone. I can barely help myself. I am in a deep pit of despair. Don't look at me. I'm still wearing yesterday's bow tie. I am a mess. Okay, go ask Costa. He's been here longer. Okay, okay. Michael Costa, let's go to you.

that will single-handedly fill us with joy? Uh, pass. I pass on that. That is way too much pressure for old Costa. I didn't even vote. What? But, but, but, but, you know what? You know what? Grace said something this morning that really made my heart sore or whatever bullshit you're looking for. So she can lift your spirits. Go to Grace. Okay, okay, great. Grace Kuhlenschmidt. Let's,

to hear your words of comfort. Yeah, I didn't say anything to comfort Kata. I just asked to borrow a phone charger. But sure, okay. Comfort, comfort, got it. We will not go quietly into the night. We're going to survive. Today we celebrate our independence. No, no, no. That's Bill Pullman's speech from Independence Day. That does not count. No, it has to be your own words. Desi.

how to give a rousing speech. I'm... I'm a boy! That's Notting Hill. You blew it, Grace. Josh? Josh? What about you? All right. Don't worry, Desi. Don't worry, Desi. I got this. Okay. You ever go to the clinic thinking you have herpes?

And then you find out, you find out that you do have herpes. But it's kind of nice because now at least you know. Was that inspiring? No. No, not at all. Please. Please, Josh. Give me something. Yeah. Hold on one second. Real quick. Oh, I'm sorry. My mouthful. No. I can't. No. You took that bite

Jordan Clapper. Jordan. No. God damn it. No. No. No. No. No. Okay. Yes. Desi, I'll be happy to inspire you. Just hold on for a second. No. No. No. You spit that out. You spit it out, Clapper. Spit it out. Spit it out. You say something inspiring right now, young man. Desi,

Listen, I'm just a girl standing in front of a door asking that question. No, no, no. You stop it. You inspire the nation. I don't have the words for that, Desi. You know what? You know what? The way you were talking earlier about how we, as a news team, are inspiring to each other. Now that, that was some soaring rhetoric. Let's go to Desi Lydic for that. No, no.

No, I throw to you. No, I throw to you. I throw to you. I throw to you. Okay, okay, guys. I'll do it, you babies. Thank you. Would you please say something to inspire our spirits? Yeah, yeah, this is easy, easy. I got it, I got it. Just give me some music. Okay. America, I love you. If you are feeling upset or hurt,

or depressed about the turn towards fascism that your beloved homeland is taking, then all you have to do is this. Just look into your heart and you take out your foreign passport and you go back to Malaysia where you came from until Trump leaves office. We all have Malaysian passports. How is that inspiring to us? Oh, I don't know. It's inspiring to me. All right, later, bitches. That might be the

When we come back, we find out how to not care, so don't go away. They got what they wanted yesterday, and many didn't. But there was also a third group. Grace Kuhlenschmidt has more. Every election leaves a third of the country feeling like complete shit. But there's a large group of people who have immunized themselves against political disappointment.

Their strategy is surprisingly effective. I am choosing not to vote during this election. Oh, I'm not voting for anyone. I just don't want to play the politic game. I literally took the word political and I blocked it on all social media, so I don't have... Did you for real? Yes, I don't have no clue. Like, on your apps, you blocked the word political? Yes. And these are the people who are going to be

And these non-voters practice political abstinence for a range of reasons. Is there a reason you're not voting? Not really into politicians like that. Gotcha, gotcha. I just became really disgusted with the whole political process. Yeah. We waste way too much time and money and energy trying to get somebody in the White House when what we should be doing is focusing on our community. Did you think about voting for your local election?

I don't think either of them are good leaders, in my opinion. One of them is definitely going to bring about more violence. So one candidate leading to more violence didn't get you to vote? Yeah, no, I don't know why. I just don't. No, it didn't.

Most people resented choosing between two candidates they didn't like, but this non-voter had the opposite problem. I think either way, we have two great candidates. One is an accomplished attorney, and then one is an accomplished business person, but I feel like we need both skills. So if we had an attorney business person, then you would maybe vote for them? Yes. That makes sense. Yeah.

Have you voted in past elections? I have voted in past elections. Okay, gotcha. And you're choosing not to vote in this election just because why? I have literally detoxed myself from a lot of toxicity, which includes live television news and that kind of thing recently. When you think about the word toxicity, it's about digestion. And digestion comes from what we eat and consume, which also is what we see, what we hear. So I'm honestly genuinely inspired, and I, too, want to learn how to get toxicity out. I mean, don't get this on camera. I've been having diarrhea for, like,

So not voting could actually cure my diarrhea? But without politics, how could I meaningfully spend my time? So if you don't pay attention to politics, what kind of stuff do you follow? Christianity and music. What kind of stuff about Christianity do you follow?

Just like updates on the Bible and stuff? I'm reading a lot of James Baldwin. James Baldwin, humblebrag. I recommend all Americans read. That's the only thing that'll help make a better country. Well, you're not voting, though. So I feel like you can't really tell me how to be better. So what's your pitch to people who they don't want to worry about politics either? What do you say to them? Stop giving a f***.

That's it. It's that easy. So if you don't follow politics, what do you look at on your phone to get dopamine? I look at chess videos. Chess videos. To inspire me. I didn't know you liked chess. I love chess. I had no idea. Sorry, checkmate. I've never even played chess before. Sorry, loser, but winning isn't everything. The good news is at least you'll get to play another game someday. Adam will be joining me on the show to talk.

award-winning author, sociologist, UNC professor, and cultural critic who's also a New York Times opinion columnist. Please welcome Tressie McMillan Cottom. ♪♪

Oh, Tressie, I was hoping to have a different conversation with you today. As was I. As was I. So many people turn to you for guidance. I know. No pressure. No pressure. Those poor people. Yeah. OK, yeah. No, but people do. People look to you to sort of make sense of the world in times like this, this day in particular.

That's a lot of pressure. How are you feeling how are you feeling today. I think I would be feeling more of the pressure if I wasn't already.

Full, right? Full, full. This was a very short campaign, and yet it felt like it went on forever. Yes. I tried to be pragmatic. If people read me and followed me, you know I really tried to keep myself grounded. But even I, up to the end, had a little, I think, secret hope hanging around in there. I'm a little embarrassed to admit. How dare you? I know. I'm ashamed. How dare you? I went to school a long time. I should not be hopeful. I know.

But it was in there. And so I'm still a little hungover like everyone else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You actually talked pretty openly about being a little bit doubtful that Kamala would take the win. You were hoping that you were wrong, but you did sort of foresee this happening.

Yeah. You don't want to be right. Well, I think that there were two things. I think that if you only read what, frankly, my colleagues, people like myself, write, that it can give you a really limited view of what's happening in this country. It's one of the reasons why I choose to live in North Carolina. I say to people, I want to talk to real people.

as much as I possibly can. And frankly, I was talking to people and they weren't nearly as terrified as I think the Democrats assumed that they would be. Of a Trump presidency. Of a Trump reelection. And that stuck with me, especially with young voters. And we've seen how well Trump did with young voters. It isn't that they didn't remember Trump's presidency. A lot of people misremember it.

They misattribute what they remember as positive to Trump when in fact it was just, right, government working the way government should or that, you know, they survived COVID. But they misattribute that to Donald Trump and he is happy to take credit that he doesn't deserve. And that is also very helpful. He's shameless in that regard.

So people misremembering, misattributing their memories to a positive Trump era really worked in his favor. And I was hearing that from a cross section of people. This was not just white voters, although white voters,

It wasn't just men. This was people of color. This was these were immigrants, a lot of people who just weren't terrified of Donald Trump. And the Democrats took as their default that people would be terrified of Trump being reelected. And that's how they campaigned.

Why do you think they saw it that way so differently? I mean, they obviously had a different picture of what his presidency was like back then, but is it the news source? Is it Trump's messaging? Is it the way that he knows how to communicate to his base, the way he tells his story? For a lot of reasons. I think most of them related to just hubris and ego. I think those of us on the other side really need to believe that Donald Trump is just stupid and lucky. And...

It feels good. It explains away a lot of stuff if he is. But the fact is you can be stupid and lucky and have a weird gift.

And he has one what is this weird guess we're gift is he knows what people really want not what they say they want not what they report to a pollster not what they say at Thanksgiving dinner. What he has been consistently good at since he entered into electoral politics is he goes to the heart of what they really want they want to feel like they're winning even if everything around them says they're losing.

They want to feel like someone is fighting for them, even when it's obvious he's only fighting for himself. They want to think that they are on the precipice of owning a great country at the height of its history, right? And he is willing to tell people anything. Right.

And that is very useful when you're trying to tap into people's, I think, deep anxieties and their desire to be deluded about reality. It doesn't have to be factual. He doesn't have to actually have a policy in place. He can just say, oh, the border, I'll fix it. Yeah, and this really flummoxed Democrats who kept saying, but where's his plan? Where's his plan? People don't care about plans nearly as much as we thought they did. Right?

And I think, truly, I think that is a lesson for us. I think that professional politicians and administrators and the people we elect, they should know plans, right? And certainly they should exist out there for those of us who do want to know about them. But I think most Americans just want a really good story about how their lives are going to be better. And in this election, whether that story resonated with you or not, Donald Trump's story was simple,

and you could remember it and you understood it. Things are bad, I will make it good. Everybody gets that story, right? It's fairytale 101. You can't counter that with policy proposals. Right. Right? I know we wish that's how people made decisions, but it's not. People make decisions from gut and instinct and feeling. I think you're so right. You're so right. You wrote a piece in The Times just today, and you said...

It is time for us to accept that American politics is identity politics. Tell us what you meant by that. I meant that we have spent a lot of time, and by we, again, I mean myself, people in the media, I think academics, researchers, and politicians certainly have spent a lot of time saying that identity politics is dangerous, or at least it's murky, right? This is why we said Occupy was a distraction for the Democrats. Black Lives Matter was a distraction for the Democrats, right?

the feminist movement is a distraction for the Democrats because they won't focus on real issues that matter to real Americans. The problem with that is that you assume that the only people with an identity are women and people of color. But as Donald Trump has proven, what he has proven and the way he has won has proven is that every voter has an identity.

Every voter has an identity. And he tapped into one of the most powerful of American identities. He tapped into white identity. Right. Right. And he said, you don't need to be ashamed of this identity. I'm going to give it a name and I'm going to make you feel good about it. And you don't have to sacrifice a thing. Donald Trump played identity politics like a fiddle. So when you say that the Democrats lose because we pay identity politics, it simply isn't true.

This is about whose identities win when you appeal to them. That means you should double down on the identities of your base. You should go out to them, something I think Democrats really only did cosmetically this time, but to take seriously what the members of your base want based on who they are and how they view themselves. I think if we did that, we would have understood why young men are anxious.

I think we would have understood why young women could yes be afraid of a post Dobbs America but not think that the woman president would help them.

Right? I think that if you appeal more directly, actually, to people's identities, how they see their identities, then you could play the game that Trump has played, but without all of the nefarious, self-serving, self-aggrandizement. Do you feel... What do you think that his character says about American masculinity? Oh, I think it says, unfortunately, almost everything. Yeah.

I'm sorry. I am. But I want you to know there's another way. You can live another way, people with masculinity. There's another choice. But right now, his choice does look pretty compelling because he's winning, right? In America, we think of ourselves as winners. And so when somebody's winning, they must be the right choice. But I think what he says about masculinity is that when masculinity feels threatened,

It lashes out. And when it lashes out, it will not, it doesn't care very much about who it takes that out on. What Trump embodies is just our national masculinity crisis of not knowing what it means to be a man when you can't rely on a job to define that.

when you cannot rely on a woman's position to define you as a man, right? When you don't know what your role is in a family where everybody has to take care of the children. Everybody now has to take care of their parents because it's expensive and it's labor intensive. And he is promising you a version of masculinity where none of those things are happening.

That doesn't change the fact that those things are happening and they are coming for you. They're coming for all of us. But he is a nice little stopgap for people who want to continue to pretend a little while longer. Yeah. It's so challenging in this moment in time. I have a son and I don't know how to explain to him that a convicted felon, a bully, can be president. Yeah.

Like, what do you even say to that? You know what I find fascinating? I actually think children get it a little better than some of the adults do. I believe that. Because they do actually deal with bullies. I think some of the problem with adults, especially those of us who reach, you know, certain places in life, we haven't been punched by a bully in a long time. Yeah. Yeah.

We got to start getting gut punched a little more. I'm just saying. I'm saying it couldn't hurt. I'm going to rough up the crew later. I'm going to take that to heart. It's great advice. What do you think? There were a lot of women that voted for him. Do you think that women were in denial about what he's been accused of? Are they ignoring his allegations? Do they believe it's not true? Or are they just a willing participant in the patriarchy and...

believe that that's just par for the course. Yeah, when I'm not feeling generous, I go with that one, a tool of the patriarchy, for the record. When I am feeling a little more generous, I think that anxiety works on women, too. And I think that when we-- no one is really addressing-- the Democrats aren't either, by the way, aren't doing a much better job than the Republicans-- aren't addressing our fundamental problems. Our fundamental problems are housing is expensive,

Child care is expensive. Caring for our parents is expensive. Our children, for the first time, probably won't do better than their parents. People feel that on a visceral level. But if nobody's giving you an actual solution to that, you will take what they are giving you. And what Donald Trump is giving both men and women is an answer where at least it is clear what they are supposed to do. People don't like ambiguity.

This wait, we'll figure it out. Wait till we get through our 10-point plan, right? Wait until we get back the house. You'll see. It'll be fine. And all of that may be true, but that doesn't help you go to sleep at night. What does help you go to sleep at night is a guy who says, forget all about that.

Right. Get you a man like me. You won't have these problems. See, look at Melania. She doesn't care about child care. Right. And that does look like a certain kind of solution. But I do think that the root of that is still anxiety about how are people supposed to make it. Right. How are you feeling right now in this moment in time? Where do we go from here?

There's where I think we're going to go, and then there's where I hope we're going to go. I think where we're going to go is a lot of blaming for the next couple years. I don't think Kamala Harris deserves blame. This was an historically odd, short campaign.

campaign cycle for a relatively unknown candidate at the federal level who had to try to go out and make a pitch without being able to do that in the low stakes early days of primaries, et cetera, where maybe the pitch could have been refined, all of that kind of stuff. She inherited a lot of stuff from Biden. This is, you know, I don't think Kamala Harris or her team deserves a ton of blame. I don't actually think Biden does either. This is just where we are.

But I suspect it's going to be too attractive not to do the blaming because the Republicans didn't just do well. They did very well. Yeah, they did. We're talking about Trump, but also the House, the Senate, some down ballot races. They did very well. What I think we should be paying attention to is that a lot of people were able to parse the difference between defending abortion, but also voting for Trump. Right, right. That means people actually can do nuance. That, to me, is the upside. If you've got a good clear... Oh, okay. That's not how I looked at it, but all right.

Thank you. That's helping. You know, is this something people, if you give them a story that doesn't challenge their identity too much, they're able to split a ticket. I think that's good news for Democrats who are going to need a lot of split tickets coming up. And one of the things that I hope happens on the other side is I hope the Democrats go back and make peace with the people in their party who tried to say these are the things that mattered to us. This is who we are. These are our identities. And we're the people who vote for you. Yes. Yes.

That's what I hope happens. - Right, I do too. From your lips to God's ears. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you. You just voted. - I did. - And who did you vote for? - For Harris. - And tell me about how you came to this decision.

So I wasn't going to vote at all until my girlfriend was blowing up my phone telling me to go vote. And if I didn't, she was going to break up with me. So now I'm here. Was she seriously going to break up with you? No, I made that up. She didn't say that. 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+.

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