>> from comedy central's world news headquarters in new york, this is "the daily show" with trevor noah! ( cheers and applause ) m>> trevor: welcome to "the daily show"! i'm trevor noah! thank you so much for tuning in! thank you, everybody. my guest tonight is a writer for the "new yorker" magazine, evan osnos is here, everybody. we're going to have a great chat with him about russia! russia! ( cheers and applause ) but before we begin, some news from the affecten -- african continent. every year the mo hebron

foundation gives a 5made prize for anyleader who steps down when they're supposed to. no one qualified for the prize again this year because no one has stepped down. 54 countries, which, you know what? i'm proud of those o african leaders because they show they have principles -- you think you can give me money to step down? i don't oppress people for money! i do it for the love of the game! ( laughter ) you laugh but soon america will have to do the same thing with president trump. laugh now. donald! it's been 16 years! please! it's only been eight years twice... but let's move into the story of the day. since tuesday's speech to congress, donald trump has been riding high on a wave of praise. media applauded him, people called him presidential, bannon

even let him sit at the desk. after a rough start to his presidency, felt like trump entered a long-awaited honey noon, but like most of his honeymoons, soured fast. >> "the washington post" reported tonight attorney a senator and advisor to the trump campaign had meetings with russia's ambassador to the u.s. -- >> trevor: wow. no matter how hard the trump administration tries, russia just keeps coming back. i'll say that russia is trump's hherpes. not that i know. i'm more of a gonorrhea guy. ( laughter ) from the middle of his campaign, trump has been hounded by accusations he's in cahoots with putin. at one time he said putin is a great leader, supports putin's policies, asked putin to hack hillary's e-mails and signs his executive orders beyond d. putin. so who knows.

( laughter ) what we know from a "washington post" reporter last night is jeff sessions, first attorney general to come from middle earth, met with russian officials during the campaign with which, people, is not a crime. everyone meets with russians. i don't know what the issue is. >> the issue, at this point, really seems like one of transparency. he didn't disclose the fact he had those conversations when directly asked about it at his oven medication hearings earlier this year. >> if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the trump campaign communicated with the russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do? >> senator franken, i'm not aware of any of those activities. i have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and i did not have communications with the russians. ( audience reacts ) >> trevor: i can't believe jeff sessions lied to america.

( laughter ) especially after this country spent so many years buying his cookies. ( laughter ) what makes it worse is that he lied under oath while interviewing to be the guy who prosecute people for lying under oath. it sort of makes sense for trump's cabinet when you think about it. it makes sense for all of trump's administration since trump's e.p.a. chief hates the environment. energy secretary wanted to abolic the department of energy, and secretary of agriculture is an actual swarm of locusts. so it all works out. before you judge attorney general jeff sessions, at least -- at least let's hear his explanation. no judging, people. no -- judging. >> a spokesperson at the department of justice noted that as a member to have the armed

services committee last year the senator had conversations with foreign ambassadors. >> there was not strong recollection of what was that. >> they said mr. sessions did not remember the meetings or consider them relevant to his answer. >> trevor: guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty! ( cheers and applause ) i'm sorry. that is not a decent excuse. how do trump's people keep forgetting that they've met with russians? this is the thing. let me tell you something, if you meet a russian, you will remember that (bleep). those people make an impression. the moment they say hello -- (russian accent) -- it's an meet flight or fight response. you don't forget that. you could meet an alien after a russian and you will be, like, you will never guess what happened on the way to the alien, i met a russian!

( laughter ) i'vevery time we dig deeper into his campaign, a new person connected to the russians. manafort, then flynn. the whole thing is like one of those russian nesting dolls, you know? ( laughter ) yeah. every time one person goes away, someone else pops out. you're, like, oh, now it's sessions, but then, if you open, it, up -- ahhh! ( laughter ) what the (bleep), guys? ( cheers and applause ) no, no. no. how many times do i have to tell you snakes are not funny! now, look, trump just appointed sessions, and there is a republican congress, soist very unlikely he's going to lose his job, but today we saw that

doesn't mean there were no consequences. >> i've now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for president of the united states. >> trevor: allow me to recuse myself! my name is jeff! ( laughter ) ah, jeff sessions is out. that's right. he announced that any investigations into russian interference in the election will not be handled by him, but by somebody totally independent, and that person will be -- his friend uri. yep. everything will be fine, people. for more on jeff sessions' decision to recuse himself. we go live to jordan klepper, everybody! ( cheers and applause ) >> thanks, trevor. i'm in attorney general sessions office, and what you need to understand about attorney general sessions --

>> trevor: i'm sorry, jordan, but where are you? looks like a dollhouse bed and breakfast. >> i believe the word you're looking for is "the shire." >> trevor: oh, i get it saws jeff sessions is a hobbit. >> i don't really like that word, trevor. they prefer the term "ring bearer." >> trevor: i can't say hobbit? >> well, they can call each other that. it's not your word to use. >> trevor: anyway, jordan, jeff sessions already recused himself from any probe into russia's involvement with trump, but shouldn't he quit if he admitted he did something wrong? >> recusing yourself is not an admission of guilt. it's not like he lied, he just didn't tell us the truth. >> trevor: but today he admitted he met with the russians. >> well, sure, they met but that didn't make it a meeting. you saw the white house statement, sessions met the russias as a senator not a

presidential advisor. it's kyle by the mile. >> trevor: jordan, ridiculous. >> you could park a car on those lips. >> trevor: no, jordan, that rationale. >> who cares. it's not like they talked about the campaign. >> trevor: but a trump administration official said they did discuss the campaign. >> trevor, let's not lose sight of what matters. even though sessions met with the russians, he didn't do anything wrong unless he did do something wrong in which case he dill still didn't do anything wrong. i'd really like to explain this better but it's time for me to finally disappear. ( laughter ) >> trevor: jordan, that's just your wedding ring. it's not going to make you disappear. >> made my sex life disappear. am i right? ( audience reacts ) seriously -- you want to hang out tonight? i have nothing to do. >> trevor: no thanks. jordan klepper, everybody. we'll be right back. ( cheers and applause )

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immigrants, muslim, cnn. ( laughter ) but one group of people have experienced an unexpectedly drastic uptick in hatred. hear to talk about that is it our jewish correspondent adam lowitt, everybody. ( cheers and applause ) >> thanks, trevor. it's never good to be here. >> trevor: never good? >> yeah, my very presence at this desk is a sign that something has gone wrong. think of me like the blinking light on the modem of judaism. but here we are again. last year during trump's presidential campaign, he did a lot to put jews on edge -- waiting to renounce david duke, retweeting white supremacists, sharing offensive jewish memes, which is pretty ballsy for a guy who splits his time between new york and florida. but that got us jews wondering, when trump gets into office how is this going to play out? it turns out like this. >> the jcc association of north america says there have been

more than 90 threats against jewish centers and schools across the country in just the last two months. >> and, today, there were 22 bomb threats to jewish centers and schools in 13 states. >> but finding the answer to who is behind this is something not even the f.b.i. has been able to do yet. >> somebody could simply buy what i like to call a throwaway cell phone from duane reed and give a fake name. they could be robots making the calls. >> first off, this is all horrible, but robots making the calls? that is the laziest form of terroism i've ever heard of. you might as well start sending your roomba to a klan rally. ( laughter ) now, for people who don't know, the jcc stands for jewish community center. they were started in the late 1800s to help jewish

immigrants to assem late into american society, and today a place where jews of all ages can feel at home. that's why the bomb threats are so messed up, they disrupt a sense of community. unfortunately, it hasn't been just threats. >> investigators are look through surveillance tape after a suspected attack on a synagogue in indiana. a rabbi discovered a bullet hole in a classroom window yesterday. >> another disturbing act in a jewish cemetery in philadelphia. between 75 and 100 too many stones overturned saturday night, after a similar incident when the same thing happened in state lois. >> get ready to be haunted by the ghost of some jewish grandparents -- ooh! why don't you ever come and visit?! ( laughter ) there has been some level of response by the administration, first by mike pence who visited one of the sites and took the bold action of doing what you

normally pay your neighbor's kid to do. >> vice president mike pence visited a jewish cemetery where vandals damaged more than 150 headstones. >> make, we appreciate the help, but a rake? no one was complaining that a bunch of vandals threw leaves at the too man too tomb stones. yes, get some super glue or something. that's like bush showing up after katrina with a swiffer! ( laughter ) but at least pence showed up. it took trump weeks of dodging and denying and lashing out before condemning it this week in his message to congress. shouldn't be hard to find out how temperature stands on this. we know how he feels about "snl" and meryl streep, but he's harder on nordstrom than nazis.

so it's not a surprise a lot of us are on edge. trevor, do you mind if i talk specifically to the jews for a moment? >> trevor: i feel like you have been doing that the past four minutes. >> fair enough. ( laughter ) what's up, jews? it's me, adam, from camp. ( laughter ) ( applause ) and if you didn't go to my camp, just imagine the 12 other adams that went to yours. look, our people have gone through a lot, okay, from slavery in egypt to our fraught relationship with dairy. growing up, we thought anti-semitism was something our grandparents and brendan fraser had to deal with. the last 80 years has been a training montage for how to deal with this stuff. it's time to stand as one people because together we can conquer

any threat, considering the dope jews we've added to our roughster. not just streisand, but we've got seth rogen, drake! and don't forget, our story is the same as his! we started at the bottom! now we're here! trevor? >> trevor: adam lowitt, everybody. we'll be right back! ( cheers and applause ) big tobacco must love diversity.

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ooh, this is cool. it smells like gum. yummy! this smells like strawberry. are these mints? given that 80% of kids who ever used tobacco started with a flavored product, who do you think tobacco companies are targeting? do we get to keep any? ( cheers and applause ) >> trevor: welcome back to "the daily show." my guest tonight is a staff writer at the "new yorker" whose latest piece active measures appears in the current issue. please welcome evan osnos! ( cheers and applause )

>> good to see you. thank you. >> trevor: welcome to the show. >> thank you. >> trevor: and what a time for you to be here. you just published a big cover story in the "new yorker" about russia's interference in the election. what i found particularly interesting in the story, i mean other than, you know, the little tidbits you added, was that russians themselves or russia as a whole was surprised that donald trump won. >> yeah. you know, i think the analogy somebody said to me, a security analyst said was this is a little bit like guys who went to blow the door off a safe and actually ended up blowing the whole safe apart. >> trevor: looking at trump now. you're reading some stories coming out of russia that say the russians are not so sure now about that decision. they're watching and they're like, oh, no, maybe not so good, you know. ( laughter ) is this something you're coming across in your journalism? >> buyer's regret, yeah. ( laughter )

you have seen on the evening news in russia, in the first days after he won, it was exuberance. he's a real man, was the term they used in russian. over time -- this was generating blowback in the united states. in our politics, people were starting to say, what's going on here? and they began to say, let's tone it down. we actually confirmed that there was an order given to news anchors on russian television to say, lay off donald trump. so people charted it on a graph that the numbers of mentions of donald trump actually dropped sharply in the last two weeks. >> trevor: wow, can you imagine an administration telling the news what the do? wow! ( laughter ) that is insane! unbelievable! ( cheers and applause ) what a world! you are obviously up to date with what has happened with jeff sessions. what do you make of all this? >> it's a bit of an odd situation, right? i can tell you when we were reporting this story, for instance, we learned jared

kushner met with ambassador kislyak at trump tower in december and i went to the white house and said i gather this is what happened and they said, we'll get back to you. they came back and said, all right, it happened, there was a meeting in december, and what we're going to tell you is they wanted to do it to open a line of communication. that's all we're going to say on the subject. i went away and put it in a story. it's an odd situation that we're trying to piece together an elephant in the dark where you have your hand on one piece, the other hand on another piece, but you don't know what you're looking at. you don't know what the creature is. >> trevor: seems like there is no story other than the fact it seems there is a story. some people go there is no proof trump had any connection with the russians, there is no proof any discussions were add about the actual campaign, there is no proof, yet it seems like trump's people keep on lying about something that doesn't exist. could bit one of those situations where the coverup is worse than the crime? >> well, when you look back

through political history, oftentimes the coverup is the problem. in fact, if you look at water gate as an example of a scandal, there were more than 30 people who pled guilty or were convicted of crimes. most were for the coverup, not for the burglary of the democratic national committee. laying out concisely what we actually know about the case, because it's confusing to people, we know the russians did three things, hacked the d.n.c. and john podesta's email, two they generated fake news, propaganda -- very good at that, they have been doing ate long time -- and the third piece, the hardest for us to understand, the one we're all trying to deal with now in real time is to what degree did they seek to cultivate people in the trump campaign? and what we know is because people in the intelligence and law enforcement community told us and other news organizations is there was a lot of evidence of contact but not clear whether there was evidence of collusion. that's the point we're at now.

we're trying to get the white house to explain, why was there contact? what were you talking to the russians about and why does it matter? there is a way to put it to bet. this is not partisan. we said we took a hit. let's get to the bottom. let's set up a commision, equal republicans and democrats. let's interview people. for 9/11 they produce add report and we know the intelligence failures that contributed to this and that's where we're headed. >> trevor: exciting. i feel like i'm in a spy thriller. thank you so much, my friend. thank you so much for being here. appreciate it. >> thank you ( cheers and applause ) >> trevor: the current issue of the "new yorker" is on stands and on newyorker.com. evan osnos, everybody. we'll be right

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