on, everybody. welcome to "the daily social distancing show." i'm trevor noah. today is tuesday, the 15th of december, which means christmas is only 10 days away. now remember, when you wrap up the two turtle doves, put some air holes in the box. you don't want christmas day digging a grave. anyway, coming up on tonight's show: president trump is on his way out, president biden is on his way in, and president obama is here on the show! so let's do this, people! welcome to "the daily social distancing show." >> announcer: from trevor's couch in new york city to your couch somewhere in the world, this is "the daily social distancing show," with trevor noah." >> trevor: let's talk about christmas traditions. every culture has them, whether

it's americans leaving cookies for santa, the dutch putting on blackface to play santa's magical negro helper, or brazil, where santa grooms his beard specially for the occasion. but in wisconsin, the government grinch is trying to steal one very special christmas tradition. >> a wisconsin tradition may be under attack after the wisconsin d.h.s. warned against consuming raw beef sandwiches this holiday season. the popular treat, known as "cannibal sandwich" or "the wildcat," is often served at holiday parties and other gatherings here in wisconsin. >> since 1986, there have been eight raw-meat related outbreaks in the state of wisconsin, and that includes a salmonella outbreak affecting more than 150 people in december of 1994. >> despite the warnings though, many people say they have no plans of ending their tradition. >> it's a christmas tradition. every year, our family eats it. >> before christmas and new years, we might go through three

to four hundred pounds each day. we warn the people. we say, "this is raw meat. you should be cooking it." but when they take it home, they can do what they want. >> trevor: "a cannibal sandwich?" okay, i don't want to hear any more shit from americans about what other countries eat. "ew! africans eat bugs!" yeah, but we cook them first. i mean, raw ground beef? you savages! why would you even do that? i've never eaten a burger and said, "this is good, but i wish there was a chance i would die. although, i love how they dress it up with the onion. because raw beef by itself is gross, but you add a raw onion, and now it's like, "ooh, cuisine!" honestly, guys, i can't even follow christmas anymore. it just started out as the birth of jesus, then we added elves in the north pole and magical snowmen, and now you guys are adding cannibal sandwiches? i mean, at some point, there won't be anything the holidays aren't about. guys will be like, "yes, baby, i texted my ex, but it's a christmas tradition. it's not cheating, all right?" moving on to video games-- the other reason your nephew's wrist hurts.

blockbuster games these days are so huge that sometimes even with years of testing, developers still can't get everything right. but one new game has so many bugs, the company was forced to accept responsibility. >> the creators of one of the year's most-anticipated video games is apologizing just days after its release. "cyberpunk 2077" has been plagued with bugs and crashes since its debut. now cd projekt red is offering refunds for customers unsatisfied with the game. cyberpunk 2077, which features cameos from keanu reeves and elon musk, is an action role- playing game set in megalopolis. developers say the $60 game was pre-ordered more than eight million times. >> trevor: wow, guys. do you know how bad something has to be to have keanu reeves in it and people still don't like it? i mean, someone could serve me the cannibal sandwich, but if they said it was keanu reeves, i'd be like, "i hate what you did to keanu, but that's probably a ghd sandwich. am i right in?

and in case you're wondering what kind of glitches would be so bad that people would demand their money back, well, in some cases, players would suddenly see their character's penis poking out through their pants. yeah. and that is a huge glitch! i mean, not like a huge glitch, an average-sized glitch, really. look, it's not about the size of the glitch anyway. let's move on! still, i can't believe there are it's not just about penises, either. some characters would have their breasts pop out of their shirts, too. and can i just say, kids today are soft, man. you're seeing dicks and boobs in a game, and you want your money back? in my day, if there was a glitch where you could see boobs and dicks, we'd pay double for that. i dreamed of getting to see any kind of genitalia in a video game! i used to have to take a sharpie and draw a dick on pac-man! you youngbloods know nothing about the struggle! moving on to something with even more bugs than cyberpunk 2077-- american democracy. it has been three years since joe biden won the 2020

presidential election. but yesterday, he did it again. >> president-elect joe biden took another critical step toward the white house today with the vote by the country's electors known as the electoral college, formalizing his victory. >> the ceremonies at state capitols across the country are usually a mere formality, but with the president refusing to accept defeat, the electors today found themselves in the spotlight. >> legislative offices in michigan were closed yesterday amid threats of violence, and state police had to block a group of pro-trump supporters from entering the capitol. >> the capitol is closed unless you have to conduct business or if you're taking part in the electoral college process. anyone else, not permitted. >> we're electors. >> we're electors. >> the electors are already here. they have been checked in. >> trevor: i love that officer's patience. "but we're also electors!" "yes, you are, and you look so good in your elector costumes! but this meeting is only for grown-ups, so why don't you guys

go to the park and play your sore-loser game over there, mm-kay?" and don't get me wrong, i'm glad that the system worked, but it is weird that this is the system. everyone has known that joe biden was elected for a month, but if those guys had somehow managed to sneak into the room, they could have screwed up the whole thing? i mean, what would have happened if that cop had been 50% dumber and let those guys in? you don't want your democracy to depend on a bouncer. but, yes, for the 30th time, donald trump's attempts to undo the election have once again finally come to an end. and even some of his biggest enablers are accepting reality. >> president trump refuses to concede but top republicans now congratulating biden. >> i think he should concede. i think the race is over. >> pennsylvania republican senator pat toomey is telling "the philadelphia inquirer," "the outcome of the election is clear, and that is that joe biden won the election." >> senate majority whip john thune of south dakota said, "it's time for everybody to move

on." >> the electoral college has spoken. so today i want to congratulate president-elect joe biden. >> overnight, russian president vladimir putin finally acknowledging biden's victory, congratulating him in a telegram, reportedly writing in part, "i am ready for interaction and contacts with you." >> trevor: "i am ready for interaction and contacts with you"? putin sounds like a self-checkout at cvs. "ready for interaction. please to place item in the bag." seriously, guys, what a weird phrase: "i am ready for interaction and contacts with you." it sounds like what mike pence getting frisky. and you know trump's luck has run out now that mitch mcconnell has conceded the election, because forget putin. if mitch can't find a way to subvert american democracy, then it just can't be done. and there's another sure sign that trump's time is coming to an end. one of his most-loyal minions is peace-ing out. >> moments after the electoral

college made mr. biden's victory official, president trump said william barr resigned. he will leave his post next week after the pair met yesterday at the white house. >> lately, president trump has been upset that barr said the department of justice found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, a direct contradiction of the president's false claims. barr has also admitted the president's interference at the department of justice made his job impossible. >> trevor: yes, bill barr has oficially resigned, which surprised some people, because for a long time, it seemed like he was ride or die with trump. he whitewashed the mueller report. he protected trump's cronies he even reportedly ordered peaceful protestors to be teargassed so trump could walk over to a church and wave a bible next to it. and when the white house chef prepared brussels sprouts, barr would hide under the table so trump could feed them to him. the point is these two were like batman and robin-- if batman and robin couldn't fit into their tights.

but trump also wanted barr to overturn the election results, and barr wouldn't do that. so one of two things happened: either barr quit because trump became too batshit crazy even for him, or trump fired barr because he's not batshit crazy enough to roll in this white house. either way, this works out the best for barr, because everyone is heading out on january 20, so this way, at least bill barr is beating the traffic. but let's move on, because it's easy to forget that donald trump hasn't always been the president. and earlier this week, i sat down with president barack obama for a wide-ranging conversation. we talked about the challenges facing the world, his message to young activists, and workshopping slogans with michelle. enjoy. are you going to filibuster me. i don't have all the time-- >> do you want me to be-- is this a roundabout way of saying you want me to give short,. iy answers. >> trevor: no, i don't want quick answers. >> do you want me to speed up? >> trevor: no,

mr. president-- >> i will not purposely filibuster, but sometimes i will have a pause as i'm formulating my thoughts, as you well know. michelle-- michelle has been speeding up my auto-- my audio book. so, you know, i guess you can press a button so it plays -- >> yeah, yeah, you can two 1.25 or one and a half. you're a one-and-a-half-guy. you're definitely a one-and-a-half-guy. >> i was a little offended by that, but that's okay. that's fine. it doesn't communicate the depth of feeling with which i'm doing the reading. but it's okay. >> trevor: how do you like being referred to, like, just as a human being? do you like "mr. president?" >> people call me barack, but sometimes some folks feel awkward doing it. obviously, that's what my friends call me. so i consider you a friend, but you may feel, you know, so... >> trevor: no, no, the people will feel like-- like, even africans, they'll write me letters saying, "how dare you--" >> this is my point. i don't want to get you in

trouble. you can say, "mr. president." you can call me "potus." >> trevor: my favorite was obizal. >> please call me that. >> trevor: mr. president, welcome to "the daily social distancing show." >> i am very happy to be here with you. >> trevor: you're out there promoting a brand-new book "a promised land," a 700-page book, if i may add. i love reading your stf-- don't get me long, but i would have liked 350, 350. why 700 pages? >> i would have broken it up even more but, you know, the publishers thought that breaking it up into two volumes would be about right. and... look, the goal of the book was to give people a sense of what it's like to be in the white house. >> trevor: right. >> as a normal person, finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances. and i think part of the goal, particularly for young people, i wanted them to get a sense that,

you know, not everybody's going to end up being president. but if you decide that your voice makes a difference, if you decide that you can have an impact, then through the ups and downs, you will end up having some pretty extraordinary experiences. and i wanted to be an encouragement for people to say, "eh, you know, the guy, yeah, he's okay, but he's not so special and look what he ended up doing. maybe i can do something as well." >> trevor: it feels like this book is barack obama convincing barack obama to remain optimistic. and what i mean by "convincing barack obama," i think of, like, a young barack obama. i think of a fledgling barack obama. not trying to emulate you per se, but rather knr anyone who is trying to make a change in their world or the world. that's what it feels like. if you are writing to young people to be optimistic in the book, what are some of the frustrations that you understand on their side that may hinder

that optimism? if a young person says, "yeah, but the system right now is crumbling more and more," how do you-- how do you maintain that optimism? or do you think there has to be a point where they go, "i'm not optimistic. i'm just fighting to break whatever it is to create something new." >> part of the reason it's 700 pages long is because by reading the book they'll see, man, there are a lot of structural problems or barriers in making this place better. we're learning right now in vivid-- a vivid example of the fact that our democracy is not the way we would imagine it to be. there are all kinds of elements to it where the most votes don't necessarily translate into the equivalent amount of power. very popular proposals can whither on the vine because of a filibuster in the senate. and so i don't try to gloss

those over. you know, the paris accord did not solve climb change, but it created the first global framework, whereby all countries agreed we have to do something about this and here's a mechanism to do it. you can still be terrified about the pace at which we are burning up the planet, and yet think that was a worthwhile endeavor because it gives us at least the opportunity maybe three, four, five years down the road to keep building on that. so that is the kind of mentality i want young people to have, a certain impatience, a certain frustration, a certain anger about the status quo. there are times now where, you know, you have younger activists criticizing me for-- "obama, why didn't you take care of this or that or the other?" and i-- i welcome them feeling frustrated and impatient, because that's how i was before i got started.

and then they'll get their own knocks on the head and some stuff won't work out exactly the way they want. but the intul impulse is the oni want to encourage. because it's as a consequence of that constant striving and imagining something better that things don't get exactly as we want it, but they get better. >> trevor: you're a very serious person because, i mean, you're a president of the united states, but at the same time, you're a lot more fun than a lot of people think. you know. >> i'm constantly trying to explain to people i'm a funny guy, but-- but, i don't know. >> trevor: but you really are. you really, really are. what i liked in the book there are moments where there's just a roasting of people or life. like the g-20. i've never-- i've never heard a world leader describe the g-20 the way you do in the book it's high school of it all. i wondered on a personal level have you maintained connections with those leaders? do you send angela merkel memes.

who are you close with as a human being? >> i don't send angela merkel memes, but i talk to her sometimes. sometimes she'll give me a call. i'll give her a call. we'll trade notes. there are a hand full of folks who you've been in the fox hole with, right. you've done some good, important work. some of them are still in power, so i don't want to mention that know-- that i'm giving them a call because who knows? it might get them into trouble. you mentioned somebody like an angela merkel. look, the stance she took in europe relative to immigration and the enormous political cost she paid for that. and, yet, there was something inside her that said, look, i'm not going to simply abandon a million people who are in dsperate need. you know, you see that in somebody, and you say... it-- it

encourages you that for all the cruelty and venality and corruption around the world, there are a lot of good people doing good work. and some of them actually rise to significant positions of power, and in that sense, democracy can work the way it's supposed to if we have a vigilant citizenry, and that's not always the case. >> trevor: all right, don't go away. when we come back, i spend more time with president obama and he tells me the biggest challenge of his presidency. stay tuned.

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name's sam. dig in. love is like boston lager. rich, complex and it's over too soon. right, chrissy? oh my god. ♪ daily social distancing show." here is more of my conversation with president barack obama. we talked about leadership and what he wrestled with the most as president. you started leadership programs, not just in south africa but all over the world. the obama foundation has set about on a journey to inspire young people to grow up to become leaders. growing up in south africa, i was taught about the different levels of what a struggle is going to be. you know, the freedom fighters may not necessarily be the best politicians. the best politicians may not necessarily be the best leaders. the best activists may not be the best organizers and so on and so forth. everyone has a role to play in trying to get to a certain place. i wonder, when you set up this leadership academy that's all

over the globe, you're clearly trying to create many obamas everywhere, which is probably a fever dream of the right. but what you're trying to do is create something specific. and i would like to know what that is. what do you-- what do you believe a leader is-- not just somebody who? power but a leader? >> the program we did in johannas berg, we gathered up 200 young leaders from 50 countries on the continent of africa. and it was as varied-- you had young women who had started rural health clinics. >> trevor: yeah. >> you had m.p.s who had taken a more conventional political route. you had entrepreneurs. the thing they all in common, though, was this-- this sense not only that the world could be better and that they had a role to play in it, but also the belief that they couldn't do it by themselves, and that they had

to in some ways unlock the potential and power of other people. a speech i gave in johannesburg in conjunction with that-- it was for the anniversary of mandela's 100th anniversary-- where i-- i contrasted that sort of democratic inclusive leadership to the strongman leadership that in some ways we've seen ascendant in certain parts of the world, in some ways was ascendant here in the united states. and those are two different stories of what it means to be a leader. and power. and that conflict, that battle between a more democratic, inclusive vision, and one that's top-down, dominant subordinate, that's a contest taking place here in the united states and around the world. it's not going to be finished

just because the election's over and donald trump was defeated, because you see examples of this in the fill beans, in hungary, in a variety of countries-- in africa and asia. and so that contest is going to continue. >> trevor: what i find fascinating about the conversation that a lot of americans are having now-- and you talk about this in the book as well-- is how america's influence in the world has diminished over the past few years, you know, how countries around the world have no longer said, "what is america doing? we're work with them." it's been more like, "no, guys. we can't wait for america. we're doing our own thing." but i wonder, as somebody who has grown up in other parts of the world, as someone who has family in other parts of the world, is there an argument that maybe that's a good thing that the world doesn't follow america anymore? or what would the inverse of that argument be? like, should the world follow america? or is it time for the world to start doing its own thing and america to be less the world police? >> i think it is a good thing

that other countries catch up and have their own capabilities and their own agency. that's not something that i think america should fear. my argument would be that even in a more multipolar world where you don't have just one big power but you have other countries who are coming into their own, the principles that america articulated at its best about rule of law, human rights, freedom of speech, democracy-- those values, at least i choose to believe, are not exclusively american. you, as somebody who lived in south africa know the play in other countries sometimes you hear where somebody who is doing something entirely for power and money and influence will say-- i they're criticizing-- say, "you've been just influenced by

western thinking. that's colonial thinking." no, no, no, no. you are stealing from your people. don't-- and when we criticize you, don't claim that somehow this is some american hegemony being asserted against you. we're calling you on the fact that you're a thief. i think it's important for us to recognize that for all its failings, the values that america is often articulate on the world stage had been ones that i would still believe in and that a lot of people took comfort from. and when we are not asserting them, oftentimes, they don't-- you know, they don't play out on the world stage. >> trevor: i sometimes wondered if you ever grappled with the dichment o difficulty e paradox of what america was trying to do in the world and

what its actions were sometimes creating in the world. i think about that in the middle east, wars that have been started under false pretenses. people who have been killed who had nothing to-- as someone who had to make decisions and someone who was in that leadership position, do you sometimes grap welhow america did or did not help itself in how it acted with the world? because, in the world, i'll tell you an an international person, we would oftentimes go, "man, yes, america is great and doing wonderful things, but also, man, sometimes they break the rules and no one can say anything about that." >> absolute, and i record examples in the book of where i'm grappling with this. and one of the interesting challenges of being president of the united states, but i think being head of government or state in any country, is you inherit a legacy, right. so if i come in as president-- i can't undo the iraq war, the

decision to go into iraq. now, i can manage as best i can how we can wind down that war, mitigate some of the damage that's been done, but i can't reverse it. >> trevor: did you ever-- did you ever envy, though, how trump came in and basically broke shit, though? because he didn't care. >> no, i didn't envy it because i do care. and i do not think that is an option to simply pretend that the legacy of problems or issues that you inherit are somehow things you can just brush aside. so the answer is, yes, i-- i would struggle with the fact that any action i took, particularly when you're talking about, you know,

counter-terrorism. >> trevor: right. >> that's probably the area where i wrestled with this most. my obligation first and foremost in the united states was to make sure people didn't get hurt. that's sort of the bare minimum that you expect out of a nation state that you're living in is that you can defend against harm. because you're dealing with nonstate actors, that meant by the time i took office, you had networks that were embedded in societies, not necessarily supported by those societies, but they're there, and they are plotting and they are planning. and that wasn't made up. and there were organizations that if they could blow you want new york subway system, they would, if they could get their hands on a biological weapon, they would use it. you then are wrestling with how do i protect the american people

from those actors, but do it in a way that is morally and ethically justifies? >> trevor: right. >> and war is madness. kinetic action of any sort, military action of any sort that results in death and destruction at a certain level is not the thing i would want humanity to do. and what happens to people is tragic. it is not-- it is not something you gloss over. what-- what it does to our soldiers and our troops, you know, as i talk about in the book. it's not just the harm that our young men and women suffered-- and i would witness in walter reed-- but it's also how it changes them internally when they have engaged in violence, even if necessary and justified against others. >> trevor: right. >> so the best i could come up

with was to never glorify it, to never pretend like it isn't a dilemma. and so those kinds of questions i think are ones that not only should american leaders have to grapple with, but i think the american people have to be aware of. and sometimes the media does not do a very good job. it's a very binary-- you know, the iraq war, it's glorious for the first year and a half, and then suddenly, it's not. >> trevor: yes, yes. >> and we're shocked that us invagd another country might turn out to be messy. hopefully, that's not a lesson we have to repeatedly relearn. >> trevor: when we come back, president obama talks about how he really feels about the black lives matter movement. stay tun

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>> trevor: welcome back to "the daily social distancing show." here is more of my conversation with president obama. he told me how he would talk about police reform with white folks and with people like michelle's mom, and why progressives should avoid taking cues from the republican party. 2020 was a year for many of racial reckoning. it was the year when people of all ages to be to the streets-- black and white alike-- and said we need to change the way the police deal with people in this country, predominantly black people this this country. it was an interesting time as well. your presidency, as you know, better than everyone, people thought, that is it. we're now in a post-racial utopia. barack obama is in the white house. we have half blark half white, let's have a good one. and people saw there was a lot

of work to be done. let's talk a little bit about the movement as you see it. the problem i have with headlines sometimes is people take things out of context, ebt. et cetera. but some activists criticized you for saying they have to be careful of snappy slogans like "defund the police," because it loses people. but i wonder, do you think that the slogan is-- is the thing that makes people for or against you, or do you think people are just going to be for or against you, and the slogan doesn't really mean as much? what i mean by that, like donald trump's "make america great again it's it's not a very divisive slogan. why would anyone not want to make america great again. as someone who is great at slogans-- "yes, we can." it's snappy. it worked. >> as i said in the book i actually thought it was corny. i didn't like it that much. ( laughter ) when my team came up with it. and then they went to ask

michelle, and michelle said, "no, it's not corny. it's fine." clearly she had a better political brain than i did on this. i-- i'm glad you actually brought this up. because what's been fascinating while i've been on this book tour is people have asked me what's my source of optimism? and uniformly what i have said is nothing made me more opt mish during a very difficult year than the activism that we saw in the wake of george floyd's murder. >> trevor: right. >> and black lives matter. and i have consistently believed that their courage, activism, media savvy, strategic resolve far exedz anything they could have done at their age. and i think it has shifted the conversation in ways that i

would not even have imagined a couple of years ago. so throughout this slew of compliments, i then said, "well, what do you think about the particular slogan 'defund the police'?" and i said, well, that particular slogan, i think the concern is that there may be potential allies out there that you lose, and the issue always is how do you get enough people sosupport your cause that you can actually institutionalize it and translate it into laws structurures, and so forth. >> trevor: right. >> there were two or three writers, who i admire, who brot, "obama's making it a mission to chastise black lives matter." and you're like, wait, hold on a second. i just spent the whole summer

complimenting them. what are you talking about?" the reason it caught attention, i suspect, is there were some in the democratic party who suggested the reason we didn't cobetter in the congressional elections this time around was because of this phrase. >> trevor: right. >> and i think that people assumed that somehow i was making an argument that that's why we didn't get, you know, a bigger democratic majority. that actually was not the point i was making. i was making a very particular point around if we in fact want to translate the-- the very legitimate belief that how we do policing needs to change and that if there is, for example, a homeless guy ranting and railing in the middle of the street, sending a mental health worker,

rather than an armed, untrained police officer, to deal with that person might be a better outcome for all of us and make us safer, right. if we describe that to not just white folks but let's say michelle's mom, that makes sense to them. but if we say, "defund the police," not just white folks, but michelle's mom, might say, "if i'm getting robbed, who am i going to call, and is somebody going to show up?" right. >> trevor: right. >> so the issue here becomes at any given time how are we translating and using language not to make people more comortable-- quote, unquote-- right. because that's always a strain historically. the concern in these debates is also-- is often, "oh, are we just trying to make white people

comfortable rather than speaking truth to power?" right? that's the framework we tend to think about these things. >> trevor: right. >> the issue to me is not making them comfortable. it is can we be precise with our language enough that people who might be persuaded around that particular issue to make a particular change that gets a particular result that we want, what's the best way for us to describe that? >> trevor: so what you're basically saying is we should workshop all of our slogans with michelle. that's what i hear you saying. >> that probably would be wise. it would probably work. but i want to go back to something you said earlier which i think is really important. and i-- i said this in the wake of some of this criticism. i said, look, part of this is also everybody has different roles to play. an activist, a movement leader is going to provide a prophetic

voice, and speak certain truths that somebody who is going to be elected into office will not be able to say. i re-read james baldwin's "a fire next time" this summer. how is it that something written 50 years ago, 55 years ago... >> trevor: right, yeah, germany. >> ...applies directly today, right, despite everything that's happened? to me, that is as searing and as honest a portrayal of the gaping wound of race in america. but, of course, james baldwin can't be elected to the u.s. senate or unlikely that he would want to be the mayor of a city, who's responsible for figuringut how i do deal with the police union? that's somebody else's role. and all these roles are important. and so know-- >> trevor: why do you think-- if i may interrupt-- why do you

think, though, that republicans or right-wingers now do that, though? that's something that i've struggled to understand. you see now, even in this election, i mean, some of the republicans who were running were qanon, and some of them were winning. some of them were so extreme and they're winning. i sometimes wonder if there's this-- is it just a political thing in america where if you're in the republican party you can be completely bombastic in what you believe in, and then as a democrat you're trying to toe the line between centrist and left leaning? or-- >> well, because i think in fact the republican party is the minority party in this country. the only reason that it doesn't look like they're the minority party is because of structures like the u.s. senate and the electoral college that don't render them the majority party. so they have certain built-in

advantages around power given their population distribution and how our government works. but the truth of the matter is that 60% of the people are occupying what i would consider a more reality-based universe, and those are the-- those are the constituents we're speaking to. and that is a more-diverse group. you know, i describe-- in the book, the first time i go to the-- to the republican house caucus to speak to them. and i think there was an asian guy, or gal, and maybe a couple of hispanics, and that was it. it is much more homogeneous. which means that, yes, they have to do less work, but it also means that they can talk to themselves and, as a consequence

of the way our democracy, our republic is structured, they don't have to appeal to as broad of a base. that's not fair, but, you know, i at least would prefer not having the progressives model ourselves out of-- or model ours on the current republican party. that doesn't feel like a good strategy to me to get the outcomes that we want. >> trevor: when we come back, president obama reflects on whether he should have roasted donald trump back in 2011. you don't want to miss it.