♪ ♪ >> announcer: from the most trusted journalists at comedy central... an actually live special report! "the daily show" presents "indecision 2024":

the first presidential debate again! now with 50% less old man. here is your host, jon stewart! [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ [cheers and applause] >> jon: hey, everybody! hello! welcome to "the daily show"! [cheers and applause] my name is jon stewart. the second presidential debate has just wrapped up. we are live -- technically, i guess, this is the second presidential debate. the first presidential debate of

this matchup. i can't wait to see who the winner will take on next. i think -- we are coming to you live, ladies and gentlemen. the stakes couldn't be higher as we all try to figure out who will be the next president... it's it's an exciting night for citizens of that esteemed nation as the rest of us watch with great interest from the neighboring country of no one gives a shit-istan. by the way, if you have any friends there, can you see if they can do anything about congestion pricing? forget about it. so far, it seems like this presidential race is going to be a tight one. >> the election now i did hate the. >> separated by razor-thin margins. >> neck and neck. >> for all intents and purposes, we are shoes and hand grenades, it is a tight race.

>> the tightest race in a generation. >> as tight as it can get. >> as tight as they too tight bathing suit in and too long car ride home from the beach. [laughter] >> jon: bat -- that seems very tight. it is as tight as a teenage boy's cans during a sydney sweeney film festival. it is tighter than sydney sweeney's scheduling windows, given how busy she is with projects and demand as a producer, to say nothing of -- anyway, she is very talented. of course, with an election this tight, it is important to build out a more diverse coalition and recently, donald trump aspect of the unexpected support of former democrats rfk jr. and tulsi gabbard, and might even have picked up one of jeffrey epstein's most

esteemed former lawyers! >> i am no longer a democrat. i am no longer a member of the democratic party. >> this was not my party. i just felt appalled when i watch the democratic national convention. i can't associate myself with the party itself. >> jon: no, wait, don't go. oh, you are no longer in the democratic party, alan dershowitz? guess what, the democratic party has standards, okay! we don't -- >> former vice president dick cheney endorsed vice president harris. [laughter] >> jon: would you excuse me one minute?

i don't know what came over me. anyway, going into the debate, one thing -- i'm sorry, dick cheney, can you meet me dick cheney, can you meet me dick cheney, can you meet me over my camera one? [bleep] off. seriously! [bleep] off! you came this close to destroying the entire world! we were this close! closer than a teenage boy's pants! no, i'm not going to have any fun with this! and by the way, who in god's name is that endorsement going to sway? well, i like the democrats' policy on child tax credits but are they bombing enough middle eastern countries? they are still some buildings standing. someone should really do something.

i'm fine. it's fine. seriously, though, [bleep] not god. obviously, though -- please. [applause] what an erudite takedown. obviously, each candidate was going to have their goals and strategies. for kamala harris, it was going to be quite a needle to thread. >> she really wants to make sure that americans know her back story, walk away understanding her policy stances, make sure she needles donald trump, get him to lash out, calm and ready for all attacks. >> jon: she's got, like, 2 minutes. is there anything else? >> there are some people who were worried that you might be over preparing. >> jon: really? after doing all that. you know, trump was encouraged to take a simpler approach. because they expect some coding remarks, they stressed to him,

do not respond. if you're going to respond at all, use facial expressions, not to actually go out there and say anything. >> jon: "kamala say everything! trump say nothing!" here is what you do, mr. former president. if kamala says something that surprises you, you just go... and if kamala says something that makes you angry, you just go... and if kamala something that makes you feel exley sexy time, you go... oh, yeah. so those were the goals. both candidates have now entered the arena. biden and trump did not greet each other and kamala -- she went for the handshake! ladies and gentlemen! what an incredible display of the awkward tension that happens when your son is dating a biracial girl like you meet her parents for the first time.

do i -- konichiwa! the first question is always asked by the most handsome person and a 10-15-mile radius. >> in terms of the economy, do you believe that americans are better than they were? >> jon: first, yowza. [applause] yeah. second! answer the question from a miss vice president. >> i imagine and have actually a plan to build what i call an opportunity economy. my plan is to give a $50,000 tax deduction to start up small businesses. i intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000. >> jon: holy shit, [bleep], we

are all millionaires! oh, my god! donald, your response to the question, is the economy better than it was four years ago? >> we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, for mental institutions, and insane asylums. they are dangerous, they are at the highest level of criminality, they are taking over the talents, they are taking over buildings, they are going and violently. >> jon: ladies and gentlemen, i just want to say, after surviving the ptsd of the last presidential debate, how unbelievably refreshing it is to go back to the same old "nobody is going to answer any [bleep] question! this is unbelievable! we are back! america is back! [cheers and applause] yes! you ask them a question, they just answer whatever they want to answer. now we are returning to the cliches, the standards of american political theater. i think it is only fair if someone would do the honors of

the first baseless ad hominem. >> she is a marxist. everybody knows she is a marxist. her father is a marxist professor in economics and he taught her well, but when you look at what she has done to our country. >> jon: oh, [bleep]. she is about to be like, [bleep], let's just do this. i am going to... [cheers and applause] she was about to -- a marxist? she is about to open up a cup of ass kapital on donald trump. you better change it before the fingers on, loews hands unite. >> i want to turn to abortion. >> oh, boy. i am not superstitious but this is where the wheels fell off for biden. he was asked about abortion and he somehow spun it into why are immigrants raping people. he ended with a classic phrase we will never forget, "and that is when we finally beat medicare."

they are feeling it too, ladies and gentlemen. as before, president trump, you have the first crack at answering why you killed roe v. wade. >> we have gotten what everybody wanted. democrats, republicans, and everybody else and every legal scholar wanted it to be brought back into the states, and the states are voting, and i did something that nobody thought was possible. >> jon: jon stewart from the i was watching this live, what you just said, yeah, that is actually insanely false. the majority of people wanted it, you know what, kamala harris, can you address this with a bit more eloquence? >> i have talked with women around our country. you want to talk about this is what people wanted? pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she is bleeding out in a car in the parking lot?

she didn't want that. >> jon: holy [bleep]. she crushed that! [cheers and applause] this is like -- [cheers and applause] what? this is like one of those groundhog day movies where you get to go back and fix the bad way that something happened earlier to the good way, and then you learn italian and the piano and then you get sad and then despondent and then you learn how to love yourself. anyway, trump will now finally have to answer to his abortion policy. >> you know what it remains me up from her when they said they are going to get student loans terminated and it ended up being a total catastrophe. >> jon: oh, you don't have an answer to that! student loan smoke bomb! poof! we are settling into a rhythm, a nice back and forth, i got to give to trump, he is sticking to his guns and he's not letting

come letting kamala harris get under his skin. i actually think she's not going to be able to needle him. >> i'm going to invite you to attend one of donald trump's rallies. he will talk about windmills cause cancer and what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. [audience reacts] [cheers and applause] >> jon: oh, [bleep]! [bleep], let's go! the eagle has landed! she has attacked what is donald trump's most cherished family member, his rally crowd! donald, remember your training. the question is about why you killed the bipartisan immigration bill. you don't need to think about that -- >> first let me respond to the

rallies. she said, people start leaving. people don't go to her rallies. >> jon: son of a bitch! >> people don't leave my rallies. we have the biggest rallies come the most incredible rallies in the history of our politics. our country is being lost. we are a failing nation. in springfield, they are eating the dogs, the people that came in, they are eating the cats, they are eating -- they are eating the pets of the people that live there. [laughter] >> jon: what the [bleep]? people don't leave the rallies -- in springfield, the immigrants are eating people's dogs! which reminds me, if i made for just one moment... a quick reminder to all of the

pet owners out there. always remember to lease your dogs. [applause] it is an important way to keep your dogs from fighting other dogs are being hit by a car or being eaten by your immigrant neighbors. oh, i am sorry. also, [bleep] off, dick cheney. i'm sorry. you were saying? >> i just want to clarify here. you bring up springfield, ohio, and abc news did reach out to the city manager there. he told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community. >> people on television -- >> let me just say -- >> people on television saying my dog was taken and used for food. maybe he said that and maybe that is a good thing to say for

a city manager. >> i'm not taking this from a television. i am taking this from a city manager. >> the dog was eaten by the people that went there. >> again, this winfield city manager says there is no evidence of that. >> jon: having spent some time in springfield myself, i believe i know what is happening here. i believe trump himself may be becoming one of springfield's most famous residents, and i believe we have some footage. >> it's rotten being old. no one listens to you. [cheers and applause] >> jon: someone ate my dog! [laughs] and finally, no debate with a former president would be

complete without addressing the arbor president's closing member of the trump show's first term. >> mr. president, january 6, you told your supporters to march to the capitol. you said you would be right there with them. is there anything you regret about what you did on that day? >> it wasn't done by me. it was done by others. it would have never happened if nancy pelosi and the mayor of washington did their jobs. i wasn't responsible for security. nancy pelosi was responsible. she didn't do her job. i had nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech. i showed up for a speech. >> jon: you spent two months riling up your base that our country had really been stolen from them for it through fraudulent means beer that you could never even get a whiff of in a court of law, and let yourself just abuse them. you pressed on. you abused their trust. you showed up for a speech?

you [bleep] showed on january 6. it will be wild, but suddenly, i would use a hired magician! i didn't do anything! i showed up with a hat and a rabbit and then the whole party went out of control! and this is it, ladies and gentlemen. i don't know if this debate is going to change anything. i really don't fear people are awfully set in a manner that they view these proceedings. but i think is a home run answer for one candidate, someone else views as a dodge or a lie or any of those other things, in some ways, it doesn't matter what they say anymore. but one thing will always be true, and it is the quality of the former president that i respect the least. whatever he is cornered, and forced to face even the smallest of consequences for his own mendacity and scheming, he reverts to the greatest refuge of a scoundrel, as shaggy would

say, "it wasn't me." i did nothing wrong. i just showed up! they are the ones who went crazy! this man, who constantly professes to be our champion, who says they are going to have to go through him to get to you, will always, when the vote is going down, be the first into the lifeboats, because in that moment, he will always say the same thing. "i didn't know anything about it! i was just told to show up for a cruise" even though everyone knows he was the [bleep], and any other country, that in any other country. in any other country, that lack of accountability would be disqualifying. but in this country, it means the race is tighter than a -- would you excuse me for just one second? we'll be right back after this. [cheers and applause]

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[cheers and applause] >> jon: hey, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. a quick bit of breaking news. if you'll excuse me, i just have some breaking news.

i have just been handed this bulletin of breaking news. so we talked a little bit earlier about these debates, do they even mean anything, do they even do anything? apparently, they did move the needle enough for one undecided boater, amos taylor swift has endorsed kamala harris. [cheers and applause] that is what happened. so you know what this means... taylor swift and i were watching tv of the same program at the same time. [cheers and applause] [laughs] my guest tonight is the former ceo of microsoft. he owns a los angeles clippers

and is the founder of usa facts, please welcome to the program mr. steve ballmer! [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ so nice to see you! >> good to be here! >> jon: now a storied career. you are one of the first employees at microsoft. you become a ceo at microsoft. you on the los angeles clippers. you have this dream life that as a kid you probably never even thought that those were the heights you might be able to attain, and in that moment, you turn your attention to creating a fact website. >> exactly. i retired from microsoft, and i have nothing to do, except to dive deep, dark into government

numbers, seriously. >> jon: it feels like an anti-midlife crisis. it feels like a man who has decided, well, i'm just going to give up. >> wealth, my wife kind of got after me to start helping with the philanthropy, and i kept saying, no, no, government takes care of all of those things, and she said, you are coming with me, and i snuck in the back and said that i'm going to look up the number is. >> jon: and you did look up the numbers and what you have done is -- and it is a phenomenal site and i make jokes but it is so necessary in this world to provide the data from reputable sources. how do you even -- how do you decide what to put in there? how do you decide what are the sources? we have a guy here, we trust him. he is a researcher extraordinaire. he is the one who aligns us with that is kind of a partisan site, might want to stay away from that. is that how you operated? or is this an algorithm? how was this done? >> we started with the concept that said, let's look at

government in its totality, because if you look at little pieces, boom, i grab a number and i can make it sound large, i can make it sound small. so let's put things in context. let's put them in context with history, let's only use government numbers. 100 different government databases, and we said, what does government do? we turned to the prologue of the cost -- the preamble of the constitution, it lays out four missions, we took everything government spends money on, boom. how much taxes are we raising and other money? how much are we spending? and what kind of outcomes are we getting? because government is a lot like a business. >> jon: so that, to me, is a crucial aspect. when democrats talk about, we need to tax billionaires more, no offense coming out when we need to do these things, i thint falls short is, i don't think people feel that more money is necessarily the answer, but maybe efficacy. the way -- it's not like we

don't spend money on antipoverty. the efficacy might not be there. did you discover programs that seem to be really effective and other areas where that money seems to be squandered? what were some of the data points that you found that give you a clear picture? >> let me start with 86% of all federal, we can talk separate about state and local. but 86% of all federal spending is in a few simple areas. >> jon: okay, let's go. >> number one, got to pay the interest on our debt. >> jon: how much goes to the debt -- i've seen breakdown of taxes. i've heard that the third largest or second-largest portion of our tax money goes to pay down the interest on the data. >> it is creeping up there. it is number five right now. social security is number one, medicare, number two. >> jon: okay, so two things that we pay into but don't get until we are older. >> correct. >> jon: what is number three? >> number three is the military. >> jon: okay.

>> medicaid -- >> jon: is four. >> medicaid is four, exactly. sorry, the debt is four. medicaid is five. veteran benefits, see if i forgot anything. >> jon: let's stop right there -- >> it is only efficiency so far. to be when i would disagree with you. >> go ahead. >> jon: if i'm thinking about this country, i'm looking out into the audience and i'm saying, what is the tension in their lives? i don't necessarily know that because we have only worked together as an audience once before. but i would say it is the squeeze, it is people that had some college debt but now they are in their 40s or 50s and just as they are clearing out all of those things, they are getting into a decent turning place, their kids are getting ready to go to college, and the costs have exploded and just as that is happening, their parents, who they thought were going to be fine with their social security and medicare and all those other things are now needing real elder care and assisted living care, so now, all the equity that they have

built up over that time is now dissipating between those two groups. so child care, health care, eldercare, all all of those things. the first six tranches of where our tax money goes doesn't seem like it is spent efficiently on relieving that pressure on families. now that might be the wrong way to look at it. >> let me push back. >> jon: please. >> i give you -- you give me come i'm 68w give me a social security check. >> jon: i take money from you. that is just my premise. >> okay. probably a good one. probably a good premise. >> jon: all right. >> a family get his social security check. that is going to help that a senior who may need care, may need this, may need something else -- >> jon: but designed mostly by the government because they thought we would all be dead by 65. we have lived longer than the government thought we would. >> the promise of fdr days, we have outlived it.

nobody is quite sure what to do about it. we do know that people are doing less of their own elder care, more of that is getting paid for by the government and the market through third parties. >> jon: you do see a lot of people who their elder care is paid for whatever equity they had left so they can leave anything to their kids. they mortgage their house or they go through things where they converted into liquidity and they use that money, hopefully, and it is there until they pass. >> it is a little bit of whack a mole, though. >> jon: yes. >> you can increase taxes, we can borrow more money, or we can live with the kind of spending profile we have today. i mean, something gives in that equation. and me personally, i will confess, nonpartisan view, for usa facts, we just give you the data, you make up your own mind, i'm a businessman, balancing the budget seems good to me, and so i look at it, it is that simple. we probably need some more taxes, probably, and we probably

need less spending, probably. >> jon: less spending or more efficient spending? is it a question of are we using, for instance, mark cuban was on and you guys go to billionaires brunch. which, by the way, i never understood, why do they do that at waffle house? it feels like you could get a better -- forget it. >> it is billionaires basketball lunch in that case. >> jon: billionaires basketball lunch. so he finds out that these pharmaceutical benefit managers are jacking up and hiking all of these pharmaceutical prices. the government is not really allowed to negotiate with them so he creates this business in which he does that. it is too much of our money that we spend on poverty, programs or elder programs going through these middlemen that are enriching themselves? even the aca, right, you think about obamacare, what it really is is a boon for insurance companies, to jump into another marketplace where the government says, well, we will keep the same inefficient system where you get to deny care when you

want to, and the pricing is as transparent and it is not really a free market system because health care isn't a free market system, and we are just going to subsidize that insurance policy. it doesn't really change the dynamic of how health care is given. isn't that inefficient? >> yes and -- >> jon: son of a bitch! >> you put it in a little bit of context. it is inefficient. but if i tell you it is less than 1% of total health care spending in the u.s., less than 1%, you can say it is an efficient, i agree with you. i can say it is 1% and so even if we crushed the issue you are talking about down to nothing, down to absolute nothing, we still have a problem with health care spending. we still -- the need to deliver health care. >> jon: isn't some of the problem we have with health care spending because the largest tranche of customers are unable to really negotiate effectively because it is not -- we have a

for-profit health care system when you can to comparison shop for heart attack doctors. you basically get driven to wherever is closest. >> there is three people basically who ensure almost everybody. 92% of americans but let's just talk about who the 3r. medicare, where they can negotiate some things but not others. for example, prescription benefits, except for the new caveat. medicaid, where government negotiates really hard, really hard. i am really impressed by what the government negotiates on behalf of the medicaid patients. >> jon: okay. >> and then private insurance for private insurance company, and they are grinders, baby. they are delivering health care, thousand dollars a person. medicaid, the most vulnerable people in our population, $10,000 a person. harder to take care of. and then seniors, $16,000 a year medicare. >> jon: how many people are satisfied with their care and there were three challenges?

>> private insurance, no