The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Carter Funeral Guest List, Politicizing LA Fires, Sports War: Bonuses vs. Ratings

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Desi Lydic tackles the historically awkward reunion between Trump and all his political enemies at Jimmy Carter's funeral. Conservatives blame DEI for the raging wildfires in LA, so Michael Kosta is stepping in to help with his straight white maleness. Sports War: Desi & Jordan Klepper Clash Over NFL Bonuses, NBA Ratings, & Bowl Game Mascots. Academy Award-nominated actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste sits down with Desi Lydic to discuss her critically acclaimed new film, “Hard Truths.” She discusses the real-life inspiration behind her character Pansy, the collaborative process with director Mike Leigh on set, and gets into character with reactions to today’s headlines.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. I'm Debbie Light if we've got so much to talk about tonight. The real presidents of America have a drama filled reunion. We look at why NBA ratings are la broken and move over black Little Mermaid conservatives have a new fish to be mad at. So let's get into the headlines.

Let's kick things off with a historic day in Washington, DC, where former President Jimmy Carter's funeral was being held in the Washington National Cathedral. And look, I don't know how you measure the life of a man, whether through their personal accomplishments or the lives they touch, but if you measure a life by the VIP guest list at your funeral, then Jimmy Carter was a

f***ing pimp! Funeral services fit for a president. Today's funeral service bringing together five living presidents. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump to honor Carter, the longest lived commander in chief. Wow, that is incredibly rare to have five American presidents in the same room together

and even rarer to have Donald and Melania in the same room together. Kudos to President Carter. And it seemed pretty uncomfortable that they all had to sit next to Donald Trump. Just think about the history there. Trump tried to put her in prison, accused him of murder, said he was the secret Muslim founder of ISIS,

said she was pretending to be black, and did his entire family dynasty, almost got him murdered, tried to overthrow his presidency, and paid off a porn star behind her back. And by the way, basically all of them have said that he's Hitler. So yeah, it's a seating chart so awkward that it probably had them asking, is there any extra room in that coffin? Although there was one surprising moment of chemistry.

During Carter's funeral, President-elect Trump chatted with former President Barack Obama. Of course, we don't know what they discussed, but the interaction seemed friendly, with both presidents talking and occasionally smiling. Ooh! Someone's trying to make Elon jealous? It's a little weird for Obama though, right? To go from this guy is future Hitler to,

oh man, cool story future Hitler. And by the way, Kamala noticed. I don't know if that funeral music was for Carter or for her. Oh, oh. I don't know if that funeral music was for Carter or for her. Kamala did the look that I do when someone behind me at the movie theater is talking. I didn't pay 20 bucks to hear you sing defying gravity. Also, this is Conclave. Why are you singing defying gravity?

She did not seem happy to be sitting that close to Donald Trump. She basically spent the rest of the day flipping through that funeral program like she was going to find 44 electoral votes in it. But of course the story dominating the news right now is the Los Angeles wildfires. There's been so many challenges as LA workers try to control these fires like water shortages and manpower shortages. But there's one thing that we have an endless supply of. Good old fashioned, made in America blame.

And of course one of the country's leading blame producers is Donald Trump. I've been trying to get Gavin Newsom to allow water to come. You'd have tremendous water up there. They sent it out to the Pacific because they're trying to protect a tiny little fish, which is in other areas, by the way, called a smelt. And for the sake of a smelt, they have no water Okay, we'll come back to the smelt but Can we just talk about how weird it is that this senator is staring so hard at Trump the entire time?

That's the kind of behavior that makes me change subway cars And for the record no the LA fires have nothing to do with smelt. But in Trump's defense, words are hard. And smelt only has one syllable, while climate change has three. Now obviously Trump supporters aren't just blaming fish for the wildfires. They're also going back to the hits. Of course we haven't even mentioned the idiotic DEI priorities that have infected the hiring of senior personnel throughout the state.

She's the first female LGBTQ plus fire chief. She's been putting her her her firefighters through DEI training. Focusing on DEI. This state has been hijacked by the extreme left. Remember, Karen Bass is the socialist mayor who said Castro's a great guy. It is V.E.I. That's V.E.I. which is so sickening.

What does V.E.I. have to do with putting out fires? But you got a city fire chief who thinks V.E.I. is the number one issue. It's insulting. Okay, Leo, you're at a 2.0 right now. I'm going to need you to bring it down to a 1.0, okay? This whole argument is so annoying. Women can't be firefighters.

They let dogs be firefighters. Society is so hypocritical. Although, to be fair, there are some signs that DEI and firefighting is a little over the top. Remember, only gay Muslims can prevent forest fires. Smokey bear, more like wokey bear, am I right? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Honestly, these people really seem to think that if anyone in the LA Fire Department isn't a straight white man, it must be that the mayor used lower standards when hiring them. In fact, they're so obsessed with this, it's getting a little creepy.

70% of our hires have been based on DI. Not muscularity, not experience, not size, not competence. This guy's talking about firefighters like the only thing they do is pose for sexy calendars. Not muscularity, not size, not girth, not cut or uncut. Sorry, where was I? not girth, not cut or uncut. Sorry, where was I? For more on the Los Angeles fire, we go live to Michael Kosta.

Wait, Michael, what's going on? Why are you at the airport? Well, obviously I'm flying to LA to help out their gay fire department. You see, you heard those Fox News pundits. There's too much DEI, so they need a straight white man with big chest muscles and that V thing going down. My doctor said not to mix steroids and ozempic, but the results speak for themselves, alright?

Do you even know how to fight fires? Of course I do, Desi. I mean, I've blown out birthday candles. How much different can it be? And I'm not one of those pussies that needs two tries or for their mom to come over and help. What I do is I make my wish, usually to get that V thing going down,

and then I f***ing own those birthday candles. That's not gonna help you with this fire, Michael. Okay, well you know what will help, Desi? One of these floppy tubes that I see firemen always pointing at fires. It's called a hose, but beware, Desi, as a straight white male, I'm obliged to put bros before hoes. You get it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. How exactly does you having a white male identity help you fight fires?

Well I'm white so the fire will respect me. I'm straight which means I won't leave the fire halfway through to go see Wicked and I'm male which means I can always bust out Firehose 2.0. I'm talking about my peeing, Desi. Yeah, yeah, I got that. You know what, go ahead, fight the fire in LA. Just get on your flight. Oh, I miss my flight.

But I told United to let me pilot my own plane out there, so that's what I'll be doing. Do you know how to fly a plane? No, but it can't be that hard. It's just a matter of defying gravity. Ha! You did see wicked. Oh, Desi, girl, sexuality's a spectrum, okay? Oh my God. Michael Kosta, everyone. When we come back, we find out who's right about sports, so don't go away. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome back to The Daily Show. It's a new year, and if one of your resolutions was to spend less time with the people you love and more time with those who will never love you back, you're in luck because there's so much going on in the world of sports.

So let's get into it in a new edition of Sportswar. Get ready for battle. It's time for Sportswar. Brought to you by Gambling. Gambling, the sport Michael Jordan was best at. Woo! Woo! Woo!

Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! I'm Desi Lydic.

I'm Jordan Klepper, this is Sports War, the show where we are legally not allowed to agree with each other. So if I say baseball should get rid of the designated hitter. Then I say everybody should have to hit. The umps, the hot dog vendors, the 90-year-old organists. Choke up, Seymour. I wish I was designated to hit you

with a sock full of quarters. I'd like to see you try that again when I'm sober. Speaking of being incentivized to hit people, it was the last week in the NFL's regular season, and that means it's time for some players to cash in. Now with the final game of the season you get those players going all out to earn big-time bucks hitting incentives

escalator clauses in the contract von Miller needed just one sack to stack 1.5 million dollars in bonus he barely gets a couple of fingers on the quarterback but it counts Miller only played 3 snaps in this game, but that's all he needed. The Tampa Bay Bucks could have just taken a knee with seconds to go, but their future Hall of Famer needed just five more yards to earn 3 million bucks

in a bonus, and he got it. Whoa! $3 million bonus. These players are putting the damn in irreversible brain damage. And I got to tell you, Desi, I love it. You can't put a price on $3 million. I mean, if you did, it'd probably be $3 million.

Bad take, discount Joel McHale. Why do professional athletes need more money just for doing their jobs? Isn't the pussy enough? Sorry, Jordan, I should explain. Pussy is slang for vagina, which is a woman's genitals and what your face looks like without a beard.

Oh. Wrong again, Lydic. It's what my face looks like with a beard in the 1970s. My point is, Desi, how could you not like this? Even we get performance bonuses. Every time I interrupt you, I make an extra 50 bucks. What are you even talking? Interrupting, interrupting. Oh! Easy 50 bucks.

The system works. Maybe you should use that 50 bucks to get a haircut that doesn't look like you're the stunt double for Tilda Swinton. Boom! I just hit my $20,000 Tilda reference bonus. You keep Tilda's name out of your filthy mouth. God, I wish you were adopted but didn't know it.

That way, I could break it to you when you were at your lowest and most vulnerable. Which brings me to my Can't Lose, Bed of the Week. Which notorious serial killer is probably Desi's real father? Brought to you by Gambling. It's barely addictive when you compare it to smoking crack Moving on if you missed the big NBA game last night between OKC and the Cavs don't worry You're not alone. The NBA is in trouble TV ratings for pro basketball games have flopped this season Viewership is down nearly 20 percent. What's to blame? According to many, the three-point shot. Critics accused Team Tub becoming

excessively reliant on the deep ball in recent years. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The ratings are down because of three-pointers? Hard disagree. In fact, I got three-pointers for you right here, huh? Yeah. And you want to guess where the third one is? The giant boil on your back that's growing eyes? Correct. What is happening to my body? But they are so fun.

I love these three pointers. So why would fans stop watching because of three pointers? Jordan, just because you only date threes doesn't mean they're fun, but... That's not the real reason the NBA is bleeding viewers. Woke destroyed the NBA. Ratings have collapsed. Some say it's that, some say it's DEI kind of stuff.

I mean, what the heck is going on? Bingo! It's DEI. I'll say it. There are too many Eastern Europeans in the NBA. Pack your bags, Luca Doncic, and take your little sea symbols back to Transylvania. Whoa, Desi. Desi, look, I'm surprised you don't like diversity, given you were a diversity hire for this job.

Oh! Why? Because I'm a woman? No, because you're a moron, Desi. Which brings me to my Jordans, Juiced and Jack, better than Ike. Could Desi correctly spell D-E-I if given both the D and the I? Brought to you by Gambling.

Gambling. Did you know if you rent a storage unit, they don't check if you're sleeping in it? And finally, College bowl week is over. But no matter who won, there's a clear, undisputed national champion, giant novelty VATS of food. This bowl season, a lot of the attention is on the mascots of the bowls drenching Minnesota's head

coach, PJ Fleck, with a five-gallon tub of mayonnaise. The trophy is a functioning toaster, and there goes the Pop-Tart mascot, Cinnamon Roll, going down. And look how he comes out. Yep, ready to be served and enjoyed by everyone as they break off a piece of Cinnamon Roll mascot. Wow, wow! I love this.

We should be able to eat more mascots. It's funny how everyone's happy about the Pop Tart, but when I put the Philly Fanatic in my mouth, it's sexual assault. How was I supposed to know that was his penis? If you know, you know, and you're absolutely wrong, Jordan. College sports should not be humanizing breakfast pastries, because then when I eat them, I imagine how they were burned to death in a toaster,

screaming, why, God, why? And as those hot coils roast its pastry flesh, I wonder if the pain makes them taste even better and ask myself what that says about me, but then I take another bite of their delicious, jammy, pop-tart blood and smile. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which brings me to Desi's bankruptcy

Buster Bed of the Week. Well, Jordan Klepper faced justice for what he did to the Philly fanatic. Brought to you by gambling. Gambling. 20 million homeless you by gambling, gambling. 20 million homeless people can't be wrong. Well, that's all the time we have for Sports War. Join us next time when we debate whether Aaron Rodgers

should resign with the Jets or accept the nomination for Surgeon General. No way, no way. Secretary of Interior. Check your brains, Interior Dunn-ass. Come on, where are your backers? Check your brains. Check your backers. Check your backers. dunnit. Come on, where are your backers? Check your brains. Welcome back.

Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back to the Billy Show. My guest tonight is an Academy Award nominated actor whose new film is called Hard Truths. Please welcome Mary Ann Jean-Baptiste. ["Hard Truths"] ["Hard Truths"]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What a delight it is to have you on.

Your performance in this movie is remarkable. Right. Remarkable. Thank you. And congratulations. You're getting all kinds of accolades for your performance in the movie as a whole. You play the character of Pansy. I do.

Who might be described as, as we saw in the clip, as a bit of a difficult woman. Just a bit. Just a bit. She lashes out at pretty much everyone around her, including perfect strangers. I found her quietly quite relatable, honestly. The thing is, a lot of people do.

I've been getting a lot of people saying, that's my mother-in-law, lots of mother-in-laws by the way. Oh, yes. That's my mother-in-law, that's my auntie, that's my friend. Few people have professed to being her. Oh, really? Yeah.

And I'm like, you're too self-aware. She's not self-aware. You know. She thinks she's nice. Of course she does. But that's a real testament to your performance in this because a character like that would possibly be hard to want to follow along and relate to and watch,

but you make her so vulnerable and raw and captivating. Right, thank you. Yeah, well, it's true. This has continued a, you know, decades-long relationship with Mike Lee, who's an incredible filmmaker. You were nominated for an Oscar for your performance in his other movie, Secrets in the Eyes. Whoo!

And you got a little bit of buzz going on right now for this movie, too. I might say he has a really interesting creative process. There's no, you're not handed a script and asked if you want to be part of it. You're part of the collaboration process from the very beginning. Yeah, oh, totally.

He'll call you or email you and say, I'm doing a film. I don't know what it's about. I don't know what you'll be playing in it. But we're going to have fun. And you go, yes, of course. I love that. I love being terrified. Is he just trying to trick you into writing it for him?

Yeah, no, it's a really sort of creative, collaborative, rewarding experience. Because he respects you as a creative artist, and not just an interpreter of his vision. So you really do work on it with him. I heard that he asked you to write down 100 people that you knew with all these different characteristics. And you made a list.

Or did you do that on your own? Oh, no. He always says, at the start of every project he'll say I want you to bring in a list of people you know from real life and you go in I mean I had over a hundred on my list but he doesn't ask for a hundred but he wants more than five or ten. You are an overachiever. I would be like, how's six? I'll give you a hundred. I think it was about 140 actually. Oh my God.

And you sit there and you describe them all to him and talk about them. It's like being in a therapy session. Only you're analyzing someone else. And then, you know, that list gets smaller and smaller and smaller until you settle on about three, between three and five people. And then you do these exercises to merge them until you've got one person, and then you start building the character from there.

And days and days and days of improv with the other actors who are cast who are also phenomenal in the movie. I mean, all the performances in the movie are fantastic. Yes. Absolutely, yes, You can see that. I'm curious because you did so much improv for this character and you were part of the collaboration process,

was someone like Pansy hard to shake? When you went home, would you bring a little Pansy home with you? You know what? We've got a really disciplined process. We never refer to ourselves as the character. It's always in the third person. You never say, I, otherwise he'll kill you.

So you're used to getting out of character, but I'd have her thoughts in my head. So I started to sort of hear her voice with me, saying, look at him. What's he got that shirt on for? Looks awful. And I'd be like, shut up, pansy. Please, just for your love.

But when I got home, I'd cook. I'd play music, drink wine, all the things she doesn't like doing. Right. So I was like, yes! Just shake her a little bit. I own me. It's me.

Yes. I imagine that she comes in handy every now and again. I was thinking after I watched the movie, I kept thinking about that character. I think, what would Pansy think about this? I was wondering if you would play a little game with us. And I'm curious how Pansy would react to some of these news stories and things in the world.

Well, we'll see if we can conjure her. OK. Do you think, do you need, do you have her processed? Do you need to? I'll warm up slightly. Okay, warm up scene. All right. First question, how does Pansy feel about AI? What's that? That's right.

That's right. That's right. What does Pansy think about congestion pricing? It's disgusting. It's another way to get money out of people. If people stayed inside, we wouldn't have the problem in the first place. So maybe there should be more curfews. What does Pansy think about Mark Zuckerberg's new look? I think we have a photo here.

She thinks he needs to be checked into hospital straight away. Straight away. And should Mary Ann Jean-Baptiste get another Oscar nomination? Who on earth is that? Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Woo! Ha ha ha! I think this world needs a little more pansy in it. I really do.

What types of roles? Is there a particular role that you're dying to play? Anything you haven't done yet that you love to sink your teeth into? I quite like the baddies, you know, the Bond baddies and, you know, the criminal mastermind, that sort of character. Like superhero villain. Yes, well not quite, yeah, but sort of, I mean, yeah.

Okay. I love it, I'll take it. Well, the truth that you are so unbelievably talented, you could do absolutely anything you want. So congratulations on everything. Thank you so much for being here. It's such a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.

Our two recipient theaters nationwide January 10th. Marianne, John, Betsy, we're gonna take a quick break but we'll be right back after this. Thank you. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. They are on the ground working with local fire agencies and community organizations to provide support to impacted residents. If you can, please donate at the link below. Now here it is, your moment of Zen. The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.

God gives us a capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes and we must. 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 Plus.