Trump Sends Troops to Portland & Shootings Trigger Left-Right Blame Game | The Daily Show

Trump Sends Troops to Portland & Shootings Trigger Left-Right Blame Game | The Daily Show

Welcome to The Daily Show. My name is Jon Stewart. We have a fabulous
show for you tonight. Historian and Professor Jill
Lepore will be here later. [cheering] She’s going to be
discussing her latest book to discuss
the Constitution of the United States–
or what remains of it. [laughter] Boy, we should have
laminated that thing, huh? [grunts] Because, well,
as many of you know out there, we had another just
blessed weekend in America of chaos and carnage. There were six mass
shootings in 24 hours– two in North Carolina, two
in Louisiana, one in Texas, the terrible scenes
out of Michigan. But fear not, because the
president is on the case. REPORTER: This morning,
President Trump declares he’s deploying
troops to Portland, Oregon. Oh! Portland. You just missed it. You’re going to want a little
to the– you’re going– you’ve got the right country. [laughter] But you’re going
to want to shift the– why Portland? REPORTER: Trump posting, “I’m
directing Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to provide all
necessary troops to protect war-ravaged Portland.” [laughter] [audience booing] Stop it. No no, no. People are– uncontrollable,
these people. [laughter] In the orgy of mass
shootings in America– Portland? Did I miss Vancouver attacking
Portland in a fierce battle of mellow artisans? (IN STRANGE ACCENT)
Don’t shoot ’til you see the whites of their
cold foam, half-caf latte art. [laughter] (IN REGULAR ACCENT) I’m not sure what that
accent was, by the way. Here’s the craziest part. The people of Oregon– Portland in particular– were
also caught off guard by this. And the governor
of Oregon tried to explain
to the president that they were not in a state of war. And the president’s
response was– well, it was telling. REPORTER: President
Trump, in an interview with NBC on Sunday
morning, said a phone call with
Governor Kottak showed him a different
perspective, saying, “I spoke to the governor. She was very nice. But I said, well,
wait a minute. Am I watching things on
television that are different from what’s happening?” [laughter] A. I don’t think
any of us know what you’re watching on television. [laughter] But if it’s Game
of Thrones, I’d say yes. Conditions
in Portland may vary. And B, this explains so much
about the governing philosophy of the Trump administration. There is reality. And then there’s this. REPORTER: “My people
tell me different. They are literally
attacking, and there are fires all over the place.” And dragons. [laughter] There be dragons. So the President
of the United States, alone in his
be-screened bunker, sees reports of conflict
in Portland on TV. His lackeys
reinforce the chaos. And rather than take a breath,
rather than take a beat, rather than not acting
rashly, rather than using the resources available
to him as the president of the United
States to find out what the realities
on the ground are, he just goes, code red. Red team go. Because he sees it on [bleep]
TV and acts impulsively. He sends out the National
Guard the same way you or I might make a late
night ShamWow purchase. I saw it on TV. It looked– it was on TV. [cheering] In reality, it’s
just a [bleep] rag. But at 3:00 in the morning– [laughter] –it’s magic. Meanwhile, the non-Portland
area of the country is going through some shit. As we mentioned, there’s
a mass shooting now like, every couple of hours. Previously, the routine would
be we express our shock. We express our sadness. We offer our thoughts
and prayers. We spend a day,
maybe two, arguing about the appropriateness
of bringing up guns at all. And then we do nothing
until the next time. But as our politics
becomes more polarized, even that learned
cycle of helplessness has been replaced by a new
post-shooting pastime. That new pastime is,
was this one of yours? The shooter was
a radical leftist. REPORTER: The guy is
a right-wing Trump-supporting evangelical Christian. He is a Biden
supporter, case closed. We know the suspected
shooter is MAGA. REPORTER: The shooter,
a leftist whack job. It’s America’s new
gender reveal tradition. Boom, it’s blue. Ha, ha. I’m so happy to blame
the left for the violence. The game is so ubiquitous, now
we often play it before we even know who the perpetrator is. The killer’s identity may be
unknown, but his point of view seems pretty clear. That’s why I’m calling it
political and from the left. That’s Kudlow’s
lock of the week. Lock it up. Next, murder rate
in Chicago next weekend– well, it’s getting cold there,
so I’m taking the under. [laughter] By the way, playing,
Was this one of yours? is also certainly
a speculative endeavor. So we are treated
in the aftermath of these horrific
crimes to the news media’s active,
politicized scavenger hunt. Which piece
of inconclusive arcana proves which half
of the country is to blame? The shooter reportedly voted
in the 2020 Democratic primary. The Butler,
Pennsylvania, shooter was a registered Republican. REPORTER: The suspect wasn’t
registered with either party. REPORTER: He grew up
in an area of Utah that is mostly Republican. The shooter was a registered
Republican while election records show that
in 2021, he gave $15 to a Democratic-aligned
organization. [laughter] He’s a Republican but cheap? [laughter] Republican but donated
to a Democrat? Maybe he just wanted
the PBS Ken Burns tote bag. I don’t know. I don’t know who to hate. Sometimes the clues
aren’t even expressly political but live politically
adjacent in the culture. REPORTER: Social media
photos show Mr. Robinson shooting and posing with guns. REPORTER: There’s his pickup
truck, the huge American flags. This person was a gay man
who was in a relationship with another man who
believed he was a woman. And they were both
into a phenomenon that can only be described as furriness. [laughter] I love that this dude
has to pretend like he doesn’t know what furries are. [laughter] I mean, uh, it can be only– I don’t know. [applause] It can only be described
as a sexual costume party with animals. I mean– I mean, if you
were going to do something like that, how would you
even get the stains out of the costumes? I mean, especially if they
had set for three days. What would you use?
Club soda, lemon? I’m just asking. [laughter] Or do you just
throw the costume out after each experience? Now, call me old fashioned,
but I miss the good old days of mass shootings,
when networks took a principled stance
to not shower attention on acts designed to get attention. We will not say the gunman’s
name or show his photograph. REPORTER: Fox News will
not show you his picture or give him any attention
by repeating his name. We don’t like
naming the gunman because so often, they do
things just to get attention. We don’t want to bring
more undue attention than is absolutely necessary
to the cowards that bring out, carry out these
types of attacks. (IN ELDERLY VOICE) That’s
right, boys and girls, you know. When I was a boy, there was a
brief period in American media where not only wouldn’t they
say the suspected killer’s name, they wouldn’t constantly
show the suspected killer’s OnlyFans hot shots. They wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t– oh, dear Lord. Oh. Oh my god. [applause] [grunts] He could have
so– he could have done so much good with those. And yet, he chose
the dark side. Ooh. [laughter] So why has the news
media become obsessed with right,
left framing of violence? Well, part of the reason
is, they are following the lead of social media. Social media is
doing it crazier and faster than anybody else. So the media is
trying to keep up. The fire in the church
in Michigan was still burning when online
influencers were inferring that the number
of Muslims in Michigan are what obviously made
this attack happen– until police released
the suspect’s photo, which looked like it came from
a Duck Dynasty fanfic account. And then the left
got to celebrate. And then they found a
Trump-Vance sign on his house– case closed– except that sign
was placed near a stop sign. So some on the right
said, no, no, no. He’s saying stop Trump, Vance,
like it’s some leftist Rebus that he was creating. But here’s the thing. Who the [bleep] cares? These mass shootings
don’t fit– who honestly cares? [applause] These mass shootings
do not fit neatly into our left-right paradigm. Mass shootings are
probably caused by a complex fusion
of mental health and access to weapons and
attention-seeking, delusional nihilism married to an
algorithmic underworld that sets these horrific
acts in motion. But unfortunately,
right-left paradigm is the only way our
narcissistic media ecosystem sees anything anymore. That’s the system
they built. So it must fit into the right-left
paradigm, because that binary
is the foundation of all of their programming. So that helps them pretend that
the solution to this violence is a simple change
in our right-left rhetoric. The violent rhetoric
that is coming from the extreme right wing. Democratic
Party, they are not just tolerating
political violence, they are cultivating it. The right wing has
gotten so incensed, so dangerously violent,
at least in its rhetoric. What is your message to your
fellow Democrats in Congress? Stop with the rhetoric. You’re getting people killed. I don’t think
the rhetoric is getting people killed, honestly. I don’t think any
of these psychotic mother-[bleep] that are doing
this are watching MSNBC. I mean, I’m only judging
from the ratings. I’m almost positive
they’re not watching it. To suggest that we
don’t need to tackle any complex, deep-rooted issues
haunting American society, we just need to stop saying
a few choice bad words and all our mentally
broken young men will be fine is not realistic. And I’m pretty sure
that these people don’t believe that either. When you equate federal
agents with literal Nazis, you’re no longer
offering an opinion. You are giving
permission to escalate. Mm, permission
to escalate, right. So dangerous. So– This is what Hitler
did with the SS. This is what Nazi
Joseph Goebbels said about the Hitler Youth. Nazi tactics are
progressive tactics first. Permission
to escalate granted. Look. In America, we disagree. That’s fine. That’s the democratic process. But your political
opponents are not Nazis. Except when– The Democrats, they
are authoritarians. They are jackbooted thugs. Ooh. No, no, he’s not
calling them Nazis. I’m sure that’s just
a fashion critique. Jackbooted thugs–
I mean, those boots and white pants in October? Are you mad? [laughter] Only Hitler would pull
something like that off. Look, getting our arms
around why this is happening is maddening and scary. But the media’s ability
to memory hole mass shootings that they can’t neatly
fit into right left is almost as maddening
as not really knowing why these killings
are really happening, even when the suspected killers
leave supposedly explicit cues on their bullets. One inscription
read, “Hey, fascist! Catch!” Giving some indication about
the mindset of Tyler Robinson. All right. No, it’s very clearly
anti-fascist, very clear. Unless– was there anything
written on the other bullets? “If you read
this, you are gay. LMAO.” OK, that seems kind
of homophobic to me. “If you read
this, you’re gay.” I don’t know what that means. [laughter] Well, read it again. [laughter] [applause] It means– yeah, it’s
got to mean something. REPORTER: New York City College
meme and digital culture researcher we
spoke to said could refer to a video game
called Helldivers 2, the same for other inscriptions
found on an up arrow, right arrow, and three
down arrows, which is how you drop a bomb in that game. What the [bleep]
are we even– the world that these
kids now live in is so cynical and impermeable,
this online nether world. If only there were
a man, one man, a man who looks square
but is hep to what these kids are laying down, man– REPORTER: There’s a lot
talk about the chat platform, Discord. And Kurt the CyberGuy joins us
now to tell us what Discord is. [laughter] [applause] Oh. Kurt the CyberGuy
guy has shown up, fresh off of doing
the weather in Sarasota. [laughter] Thanks for the lowdown, Kurt
the CyberGuy, you old cyber dog. Say hello to your partner
in crime, Meme Maven Gary. Meanwhile, why are
we all just taking the bait from these psychos? Authorities have not
released the motive. But of course, here’s the
ammunition, the words anti-ICE, that phrase hyphenated, written
on one of the bullet casings. We just had the facts
laid out for us. This was an individual
motivated by anti-ICE. He wrote it on a bullet. We saw the bullet
yesterday, anti-ICE. Case closed. He wrote anti–
doesn’t anybody think it’s [bleep] weird
that these people just started writing on bullets
all of a sudden, like that’s the most
effective way to get out their deeply-held
political beliefs? Anti-ICE, enough said. Or is there the slightest
possibility that these people are [bleep] with us? REPORTER: According
to his friends, the alleged gunman was
not overly political and was mainly interested
in video games and internet culture. Clearly, it’s
anti-ICE, right? And his friends say, I
wouldn’t interpret it that way. He was never a sincere guy. Everything he said was laced
with irony and sarcasm. What kind of [bleep]
psychotic internet culture– what’s happening? Can’t we just go back
to the cinnamon challenge? Is that so hard? What is wrong with you– look, we would definitely have
a healthier political discourse if we weren’t constantly
calling each other fascists and communists and Nazis. But we are the only place
in the world where this shit happens all the time. But we’re not the only place
in the world that name calls. So what is this? Perhaps we need to look
back at our founders, who, through their infinite
wisdom, designed and operated a more mature system
with checks and balances and a respect for all
that prevented this kind of corrosive
infighting and radicalization. REPORTER: John Quincy Adams
taking aim at Jackson, asserting that Jackson
didn’t know how to spell, was too uneducated
to become president, while newspapers portrayed
his wife, Rachel, as a short, fat dumpling. [laughter] A delicious dumpling indeed.

After a string of mass shootings across the U.S., America swaps out “thoughts and prayers” for a left vs. right blame game, Republicans hypocritically criticize the Democrats’ “violent rhetoric,” and Trump escalates a nonexistent problem by deploying troops to Portland. #DailyShow #Portland #Trump #JonStewart

0:00 – Jon Stewart’s TDS Welcome
0:26 – Multiple Mass Shootings Break Out Over the Weekend
0:45 – Trump Declares He’s Deploying Troops to Portland, Oregon
4:22 – America Starts Playing “Was This One of Yours?” Game for Shootings
9:06 – Jon Stewart Analyzes Why the Media Has Become Obsessed with Placing Blame
13:00 – Newsmedia Tries to Analyze Messages from Shooters

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