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You're listening to Comedy Central. Hey, this is Roy Chang. The Daily Show is off this week, but don't worry, we put together some of our favorite moments from the show in case you missed them.

We'll be back with brand new shows on September 10th.

Until then, enjoy today's episode. Welcome back to The Daily Show. My guest tonight, he is the former mayor of South Van, Indiana, ran for President in 2020. Please welcome to the program, Pete Buttigidge. I'm going to tell you something about this.

I'm

That is all the time we have. I got to tell you, so I was coming out.

I came out earlier just to talk to the audience, have some words. There was a lovely woman in the audience. She stood up and she said, Is the future Madam President here tonight? I said, I'm not sure what you're She said, Kamala Harris. I said, Oh, you thought Kamala Harris is here tonight? She's not. There was a sadness that creved over her face.

But you just healed it. You just healed the sadness.

I swear to God, though, you are, for liberals, watching you go on Fox News and discuss things in a rational manner. It is for liberals. It's like when Gossling hosts the hell? It's just like, Oh, he's so good at this. Is that an uncomfortable thing to do? Is it something you enjoy?

A little bit. I never thought that Fox News would be a specialty of mine. It's not something I watched a ton of before I found myself going on it.

You ain't missing much, sir. You ain't missing much.

What I found is it is important to reach people where they are. Even if I'm skeptical sometimes that the network work is covering things in good faith, I know lots of people who are tuning in in good faith. In the same way that back when I was running for President, I specialized in counties that had voted for Obama and then for Trump. That's how I want Iowa, really. It was partly through that outreach and finding people who are not hardcore partisans but do usually get their information in a very certain, and I would argue, very narrow way. I have a chance to, as long as they'll have me on, I have a chance to pop that, puncture that bubble.

Do you find anecdotal feedback that it's heard other than a clip going viral or something like that? Will you be at home in Michigan? Will you be somewhere and someone that you know is more red partisan? Will say to you, Hey, I caught you on.

Yeah, it literally happened to me today. To be clear, it's not like somebody says, I was a rock rib Republican and I saw your four-minute Fox news segment, and I've seen the light, and now I'm a Democrat. But I do hear There are people I know who are more conservative or probably don't usually vote the way I do. But they'll say, I saw the way you laid things out. I think I understand where you're coming from, or I think the way you laid it out could make sense. I'm under no illusion that you can just, on the strength of a witty argument or Man, are you preaching to him?

Yep, you're right. Doesn't do. But I get it. I get the-Politics is a conversation, right?

What is the point of having a conversation if you're not speaking to people who don't already Can we agree with you?

Son of a bitch. That's so smart, and it's exactly the right to be. Are you right now, by the way, unbelievably tumultuous, I mean, week, eight days. Has it felt that way inside the administration, how did you find out about it? In that situation, does the President call everybody together and go, Hey, everybody, got some news? How does it work?

No, I mean, that would be a very long list of everybody to talk to. I found out the way everybody did. I was actually on a plane, fittingly enough, taxiing in, and Chaston was sitting next to me checking Twitter and saw the post. We found out the same way everybody else did. Yeah, ever since, I think a lot of us Our heads are spinning. So much has changed. But part of what's changed is this incredible energy that we have now. I was home over the weekend, stopped by the field office for the Now Harris campaign next to where we live in.

Did they literally just take the poster down and slap another one up there? It's the same office with the same people? Pretty much.

And that's okay because it's the same values and it's the same effort. No, it's just funny. They just literally went like, I will say they got those yard plans ready really quick. Yeah, it's not. But more than that.

There's got to be a kinkos almost everywhere.

Obviously, she represents a lot of continuity with the values of the Biden-Harris campaign and the Biden-Harris administration, but also a different messenger, a different style, a different approach. People are clearly really fired up and excited about it. I know I am.

This is such a strange question, and I don't know if you've spoken to him or not, but do you think President Biden sees that and is like, Oh, fine? I would imagine it would hurt your feelings. If that were me, it would hurt my feelings.

I don't know. I think part of what he achieved with what's a really extraordinary thing, I think even now we might be underselling how world-historically rare it is to be literally the most powerful person in the world.

And just be like, Yeah, it's fine.

Lay power aside, just because it's the right thing to do. But in doing so, I also think he's consolidated his own standing as one of America's great presidents. I also think he's very conscious that that means spreading through the tape and continuing to deliver for the next six months.

What is the narrative about, They bullied him. He was bullied. Can you do that to a president? Can you be like, Get out. And then the president will be like, Stop Stop yelling at me.

No, I mean, that's the thing. It was his call, and he made that call. And people may second guess-Because those delegates were his. Right. Yeah. People may second guess the manner of it or the timing of it. But at the end of the day, it was his choice. He made that choice, and that must have been an extraordinarily difficult choice, but also the right choice.

Now, she is on a vice presidential search. Are you being vetted right now? Would you know if you're being vetted right now? When they vet you, do you feel Is it a physical sensation? You're being vetted.

You know. Yeah, you know.

You know when you're being vetted? Yeah. I'm going to vet you right now.

Please don't. Please don't.

Pretty good. All right. What does it require? Is there literally a physical exam that goes along with being vetted?

Not Not that I'm aware of, but look, all I should say about it is that she is going to make this decision. She's got a process to help me make the decision.

Oh my God, you're being vetted. Everything you say, even that is being vetted.

Probably, probably.

It's so uncomfortable because don't aren't you... Do you think the vetting process is different? To be in the administration, you probably have to go through a process.

Yeah, in fact, I was thinking about it because I was vetted to be part of the cabinet. Then pretty soon after that, Chaston and I were through the process of adoption. It was the same thing, but with a social worker instead of a white shoe law firm. Really, the law firm is like, Okay, now tell me about your finances. A year or two later, as a social worker, I was like, Tell me about your finances. You go through step by step. One of the things you think about is the journey that adoptive parents go through. It does involve that...

You feel like you're under a microscope. The bar of adoption is that high. It's similar to getting a high-level security security clearance position in government?

Yeah, not the exact same, obviously, but a surprising amount of overlap.

Were there questions? Was there certain parts of the vetting process for government where you were like, You're going to let me get away with that? Was there anything... You know what I mean?

If there was not, but if there was, would I describe it on television? Of course.

This is cable. See, that's my problem is the vetting process, because being vetted to be a road comic is... The bar is, Don't die. But for public service, I've got pictures in a shoe box that would disqualify me for working for the post office. It's bad. But you were in the military. You did things pretty clean.

Yeah, I think so. I don't want to say anything, but it sounded to me right there like you're hiding something. When will they tell you...

Do they come to you afterwards and say, Hey, we're about to announce it, and you made it to the quarterfinals, and you were great. But will they announce that or do you find out on Twitter like everybody else?

I don't know. What I know is that there's a flying for me.

You're going to talk values again, aren't you?

Yeah, I probably should. No. What I'll say is no matter what the flying formation is going to be, I'm really excited to be part of this. I'm excited to be part of this campaign because I really believe in it, and I feel that energy. I felt it on the ground over the weekend.

You've been back out on the road since this happened?

Yeah, I kicked off a canvas in the Traverse City field office, and it felt amazing. It was an energy I hadn't felt since I was campaigning in Michigan in 2022 for the midterms, which went really well. But as you memorably pointed out, three or four months is forever, so a lot of things are going to happen. There's going to be a lot of ups and downs. It's going to be a roller coaster. But I think we're ready for that, largely because I think now we have a renewed awareness, not just of what we're against, but what we're for. And I think that's really important.

Well, the message before was literally, It doesn't matter what you see. That's worse. Which is not... It's not so compelling. You know what I mean? And people were thirsty. I don't see that to be disrespectful. It just seemed like what people were experiencing.

Yeah. I think, look, there is a temptation to have our message be entirely about Donald Trump because we're so disturbed by what his return would mean. Maybe a little more also about JD Vance because of how odd he's turned out to be.

I got to tell you, boy, did that dude drop a turd on launch? I've never seen anything like that, where they were like, one day, they were The heir to the MAGA fortune and the MAGA, the Prince JD, shall march. He comes out and he's like, I hate cat ladies.

No, it's rough. It's just like, systematically, consulted so many people. It's not just the things he said, but the policy idea is behind them. He has this idea that you should get extra votes if you have kids.

Extra votes?

Yeah. He suggested that you should have extra votes if you're a parent. Really? I think there's lots of things-You don't even get that in your own house.

I'm a parent. You don't get anything. It's true.

I'm starting to find that. I mean, ours are not yet three. It's rooted in this strange idea that it's not just... He doesn't just say that being a parent gives you an important role as a citizen, which I agree with, that it gives you unique perspective on the future. It's that not being a parent makes you less.

I think that's absolutely how they feel.

He said people people who don't have children, this is a quote, have no physical commitment to the future of this country. Wow. I just think about how no physical commitment to the future. When I was deployed to Afghanistan, I didn't have kids back then, but I will tell you, especially when there was a rocket attack going on, my commitment to this country felt pretty physical.

Can I tell you something? This is why people love seeing you go on your shows, because that framing is perfect. Because it does, it points to that idea that Who are you to tell what's in someone else's heart about what they feel about the future or what they feel about this country? The sacrifices that you made, as you said, without having had children, were tremendous. It's shocking. I also have to address There's this strange, I think, false populism on the right, the economic populism. The Roberts Court has been the least worker friendly court in God knows how long. Their policies, they complain about globalization hurting workers. I do think that's a correct formulation. I think we didn't do enough in that moment. But I don't think they realize what right to work states. What they think Mexico is to the United States, Texas to New York. It's a race to the bottom. There's all kinds of studies that show right to work states depress wages. They depress worker safety. They do all kinds of terrible... What is this economic populism based on?

Well, it's not based on policy. It's just body language. It's this idea that if you just act like you are populist, that that counts. Look, I'm under no illusions that elections are just a policy exercise. A lot of it is vibes, a lot of it is style. But if your party has been systematically against unions, against a higher minimum wage, against things like paid family leave, against overtime, then just because you found Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock and put him on stage, it doesn't make you a friend of the working man. The substance actually matters.

I would only say it does make you a friend of the working man in the '80s. I I think that was helpful. In terms of that, I wonder, ever since Reagan, and I think Democratic administrations have gone along with it too much as well, the shift from a labor economy to an investment economy and the penalties that labor faces versus... There's no question that equities and the investment market have done unbelievably well since the '80s, and that labor has wallowed much further behind. It's a shareholder economy. Why Why is it so difficult to get workers, forget about even unions, a place at the table at the companies? If these companies have done so well for their shareholders, why can't the workers share in that prosperity in the same way? As why can't they be shareholders?

I think that's right. Although I will say one thing that unions are increasingly doing is getting employees a chance to participate in that profit sharing for exactly that reason and getting that seat at the table. But that's That's exactly why it matters not just what your style or your affect is, but what you're actually proposing to do. I would say part of what we can be really proud of from the Biden-Harris years, and I think in a future Harris administration, too, is a real focus on returning a little more to a worker-led economy or worker-oriented economy that includes-Rebalancing. Yes, the financialization, a lot of those trends have been very powerful. The role of the information economy, which is merged in some ways with manufacturing because even a car is increasingly part car, part computer. But it's still really important that we make the cars here, and that's part of what we've been working to make happen. There was a manufacturing recession during Trump, even before COVID. There was a manufacturing boom now. You have to go back decades to find anything like this much investment in terms of the amount of places around the country right now where factories are being built.

There was just a guy, I think it was the mayor, it was a city in Arizona, might have been Mesa, wrote an op-ed, almost saying exactly that. He's a Republican, and he's in a border town, and he was saying, I'm supporting Harris because of the Investment Act of Infrastructure, because of the Chips Act, because of what they've tried to do. Maybe that is the key, is to get that out in those places where people might not normally hear.

Yeah, because I remember being a mayor in the industrial Midwest. Actually, the one time that Trump fooled me, I'll admit it, something he said he would do that I believed him was when he said he was going to pass this big infrastructure law. I thought he He would do it because it's good politically and why not? Of course, he failed to do it. Joe Biden did, by the way, with a lot of involvement from Kamala Harris. Now it's something that I wish back when I was mayor, that we had that wind at our back as a city.

It's terribly hard. It's funny. I went to his college. I thought for sure. I saw the ad and I went to it, and it turned out I'm not a doctor.

But I'll say this. I think the really The most important thing to watch with him isn't the promises that he broke. Yeah, he broke the promise about infrastructure. He broke the promise about 6% growth. He even broke the promise he made to that January sixth mob when he said he was going to be right there with him when they marched on the couch. Sure. But actually, the promises he kept are the really interesting ones because I think they tell you what the next Trump administration, if he got one, would be like. He really kept two. One was the promise he made to the Christian right to eliminate the right to choose. Sure. The other was the promise he made to corporate America to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Those are the promises he followed through on. That's what he's about, Hulk Hogan or not.

I think every... That's great. Keep moving. From now on, every political conversation in this country has to end with Hulk Hogan or not.

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