Desi Lydic explores Nikki Haley’s campaign against Trump, and how she’s become characterized as the "moderate" candidate despite her staunchly conservative, and even extreme, policies. Meanwhile Beyoncé becomes the first Black woman to top the country charts, a new report gives more details about Commander Biden's White House biting spree, and Troy Iwata enjoys an unplugged morning thanks to a major AT&T outage. And Grammy-winning musician Jason Isbell discusses his latest album “Weathervanes,” sharing his method for approaching songwriting and how past real-life experiences and political issues like gun control inspire his songs. Isbell also reflects on his first experience acting on the set of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and how filming inspired the songwriting on his latest album.
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This is the Daily Show with your host Jazzy Line.
I'm Denny Lynneck. We've got a great show for you tonight. Joe Biden's Dog turns the Secret Surface into and all you can eat buffet. We learn why your grandmother's butt dials weren't going through, and we put an end to a terrible rumor about Nikki Haley. Plus Grammy winner Jason Isball.
So let's get into the headline.
Let's get things off with a scandal that's been rocking the White House. According to a new report, Joe Biden's dog Commander bit Secret Service agents at least twenty four times before he was banished from the White House last October. Twenty four times. I'm sorry. Even John Wick would be like, you got to get rid of that job. That's ridiculous. Let's move on to another world leader, Beyonce. She just made history by becoming the first black woman to top the country music chart Huge with her hit song Texas Hold Him. So grace yourselves, girls and gays, because half your friends on Instagram are going to spend the summer thinking they can pull off cowboy hats. They can't. This is very exciting for everyone, well except for jay Z. Lemonade was great, but if you get caught cheating in a country song. Thoughts and prayers, jay Z, thoughts and prayers. And in tech news, tens of thousands of people across the country lost cell phone service this morning when AT and T and other companies were hit with a massive outage. No one got any calls or texts. Thousands of Americans finding out what it's like to be ted. Cruz and I met cable companies. We're feeling pretty cocky this morning. Well well, well guess the landline isn't so useless anymore, is it now? If you'll excuse me, I'm getting a call, it's a telemarketer. For more on this ballout of the service disruption, we turned to Troy. WAA, No, Troy, were you affected by this awful outage?
Awful, Desie, This was the best morning of my life.
I reconnected with an old friend and his name is Troy. I looked up at the world around me. Children were laughing, people were chatting.
Okay, I'm glad you had a nice time off the grid, but what can you report about the impact of this outage? Emergency services had trouble all day, and.
You know who didn't know about that me because I had no service. I wasn't reading dumb notifications. I was taking a walk with a beautiful stranger I met on the train, and we took a horse carriage ride and we sat by the lake and we watched two swans make love.
It was.
It was very loud. I've never seen a swan finish before. Then I meditated under a tree, and I entered a transcendental enlightenment and I experienced ego death. I also baked these snicker doodles.
Oh I love sneaker doodles. Troy. I have to admit I didn't realize that there was such an upside to this outage.
From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank whoever was behind this, whether it was whether it was Russian operatives or al Qaeda, or just good old fashioned case of people sucking at their job. Thank you, Thank you so much for this morning.
That's wonderful. It sounds like this was a transformative experience for you. So how will this new outlook and form your life now that the service is back on, Troy.
Troy.
Oh sorry, some guy on TikTok is reviewing a fake burken idiot.
All right, what's up?
Welcome back, Troy Troy, you want everybody? Let's move on to the presidential race and our ongoing coverage of Indecision twenty twenty four. There's been a lot of talk about Nikki Haley this week and how she's staying in the race despite having worse odds than the New York Mets winning next year's Super Bowl. I have to say I'm actually glad she's staying in the race, because even if you don't agree with her politics, she still really pisses Donald Trump off, and that's a beautiful thing. She is clearly on his enemy's list, along with the law and wastebands. But she's not just the only Trump alternative in the GOP race. According to the media, she's also the only moderate one.
Nikki Haley has sort of this moderate old school Republicanism.
She has become the candidate of the moderates, a moderate candidate like Nikki Haley, who is increasingly an outsider.
In the Republican Party. Yes, obviously, Nikki Haley is a moderate. It's something that everybody knows, like Joe Biden is old, or RFK is a biohazard, or Tim Scott is crying on the inside. It's just a fact that nobody disputes.
But is it a fact?
Is Nikki Haley the moderate in the race? Because when you actually take a look at her policies, they aren't that different from Trump. She also wants to build the wall. She also wants mass deportations. She's also opposed to Obamacare and the Paris Climate Accords, and in fact, on abortion, she's even more extreme than Trump. She supports a national band after six weeks, before most women even know that they're pregnant. At six weeks, the symptoms are fatigue and stomach issues, and women can't take a pregnancy test every time they get bubble guts. It's not that she doesn't care about women's issues. It's that she has a very unmoderate idea of what women's issues are. The idea that we.
Have biological boys playing in girls' sports. It is the women's issue of our time.
Really, Nikki, that's the women's issue of our time, not abortion, access or equal pay or even how to part your hair, so teens don't bully. You never thought I'd say this, but Nikki Haley is so bad at knowing what women actually want. I think maybe her husband should order for her at restaurants. So most of her policies aren't more moderate than Trump, And if you ask her, she herself doesn't identify as a moderate.
On the campaign trail, Haley has made it very clear that she says she's not a moderate.
I have been a conservative fighter all my life. I was a Tea Party candidate when I became governor, and we passed one of the toughest illegal immigration laws in the country. We passed pro life bills, We took on the unions, and we took on Obama when it came to the Union, se Syrian refugees, and everything in between.
Guys, she says she's not a moderate, believe women. So again, if she doesn't say she's a moderate and her policies aren't moderate, why is everyone calling her a moderate. I guess it could be her demeanor. She's certainly the only candidate speaking at her moderate volume. And you got Trump screaming so loud at and t satellites are exploding, and then you got Biden at every press conference whispering to the ghost of Christmas hat. Just using a proper inside voice is going to seem like a breath of fresh air. But that can't be all of it. When it comes down to it, there's only one real difference between Nicky Haley and Donald Trump that's getting her this label. Do I think Joe Biden is the legitimate president? Yes? Wow, what a reasonable, middle of the road answer. The man who won the election won the election. But that's where we're at. That is the big split in the Republican Party today. Do you think Joe Biden won the election? Or did you take a shit on Nancy Pelosi's death? But the media is not used to discussing democracy versus fascism. They're used to discussing left versus right, So they put Donald Trump on the far right and anybody who didn't storm the Capitol becomes a moderate. But that means that any Republican, no matter what their views are, gets labeled as a moderate just because they believe in democracy. Like Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. He's been called the most conservative governor in Georgia's history, but he also doesn't think the election was stolen, so now people call him a moderate or Liz Cheney. She denies climate change, she's anti abortion, and she loves bombing other countries just as much as her dad. Yeah, she's a neppobomber. She loves bombing other countries so much. She thought Oppenheimer was the first season of an ABC sitcom. But because she says that Trump lost, guess what she's called. You've got Liz Cheney being a female voice in the Republican Party demanding a more moderate approach, the thoughtful moderate pro constitution Republicans like Liz Cheney, And you might be wondering, why does it even matter? So what if the media mistakenly calls some conservatives moderates? Sometimes I call my husband my ex boyfriend's name. It's fine, he barely notices he left me. But it does matter because the word moderate means much more than just believing Joe Biden won the election. Most people still think that it means not extreme or willing to compromise. So when the media attaches this label to candidates who support abortion bands and endless wars, that makes those beliefs sound moderate, But they're not, and the media should not be labeling them as moderates just because they pass the low bar of not overthrowing the government. I'm sorry, I'm sorry if I'm getting emotional about this, but I just believe that having biological conservatives competing in moderate sports, that is the women's issue of our time.
When we come back, we'll talk to Jason Iggle, So don't go away.
Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest tonight is a Grammy Award winning musician whose latest album is called Weather Veins. He can also be seen in the Oscar nominated film Killers of the Flower Moon. Please welcome Jason Invall. Oh my goodness, congratulations, thank you you got another Grammy.
I did. I got a couple of this time.
It was crazy, My god, this is how many?
Six? This is six?
Good lord?
I'm yeah.
Well deserved, well deserved. And not only are you an accomplished musician, but you are now an incredible actor. You were in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Fur Moon, which has been nominated for all of the Academy Awards, and you're great in it. Now did you did you find that the grind of touring and performing prepared you for the pure stamina you needed? To sit through the entire movie start to finish.
Yeah, I do really good at not peeing and that helped a lot.
You're well trained for it.
Yeah, yeah, it was.
It was an incredible experience to see all that go down. I didn't know why I was there.
No, don't be so much. You're incredible in the film.
Well, thank you, And I do believe they didn't let me screw the movie up. No, but it took a little while for me to realize that. So they had this guy who was like a dialect coach, right and all day every day he was working with DiCaprio and with de Niro on talking like this.
Yeah.
I went and met with him and he said, we're just going to hang out. I don't have any notes for you, just talk like you talk. And I thought, I know why i'm here. They're saving money on the dog.
Yeah, talent and a budget cut two birds Whatso that's so funny. I also heard that an incident happened on set when you were doing a scene with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Oh, yeah, yeah, there was an incident.
There was an incident, So, yeah, do you want to tell it?
I can tell you that.
Yeah, I could tell I would not have volunteered to tell the story, but.
I think we should. I have the sense of humor of a fourteen year old boy, so I would love for you to tell the story.
So we were in this very small space and we were shooting a scene where the two of us kind of get up in each other's space, and it's intense, you know, and we're not friends, and we're about to, you know, throw hands, and it gets really serious.
And we've been doing this.
For a couple of hours, and all of a sudden there were like thirty crew people in the room and me and Leo, and the camera was rolling, the film was happening, and all of a sudden, somebody in the crew flatulated.
The most polite other way. He flatchy. We assume it's a here. It could have been a sheep.
It very well could have been a she But whoever it was, you could tell that that person had lost a great battle.
Just by the sound of it, you know.
And then, of course, everybody, being the best of the best, nobody did anything.
Nobody nobody would he farted, you know.
It was like later on I called it a fartica situation because they were all willing to take the hit for this. But but what happened was I started laughing, and DiCaprio started laughing, and I thought, oh great, we're doing one of those blooper reels. Because I've never been in a movie before. I thought, this guy farted, this is gonna be great. And then he like like wove the laugh into his character, and all of a sudden, it was Ernest laughing at Beale, and I was not bal anymore. I was I was a redneck laughing at a farting man. And I realized, this is why one of us has an oscar and the other one is about a budget for an accident.
I thought you were going to say that he rolled it into his character and he just said, excuse me. It just went on and now that's part of the movie.
I'm nervous. That's what my guitar player said. I'm nervous.
I'm nervous. But I imagine when you're on stage performing that if that sort of thing happens, one of the band members farts, then you just play louder.
You do, Yeah, you do. It's well, we have cues, you know.
It's hard to communicate on stage, so sometimes it's it's intentional. It's like, oh, it's that's that's when we go to the drum solo.
Was this the first time that you ever acted before?
Really? Yeah, it was.
I done some voiceover stuff for a show called The squid Billies show that I loved.
Yes, I was. I was. I was the youth minister on that show.
I had gone to Bible School on a cheerleading scholarship, so essentially I was just playing myself on that and that was And then I was in the Deadwood movie just standing there in the background because I just loved the show so much that they let me come stand in the background and that was generous.
It was really kind. Yeah, it was really.
But this is the first time I'd actually acted like somebody other than myself or a youth minister, so it was a child.
You're really really incredible in the movie. Is it Is it true that you just started auditioning during some downtime during during COVID when you can tour?
Yeah, we we were locked down, couldn't tour. And I told my agent, if you can find anything where people are working safely and I can still keep me busy and do something creative and if there's a good story to tell. And so I got an audition, I got another audition, and I wound up, you know, on a zoom call in my bedroom with Scorsese and de Niro and uh, and then I got the part.
Yeah, it was amazing. It was my birthday actually, oh birthday.
Yeah, doesn't get any better than that. So I want to talk about Weather Vans. I heard that you wrote the entire album when you had downtime on set.
That's true, Yeah, almost all of it. I did.
Now when I have downtime on set, I play wordle.
Yes, I had gone through a lot of wordle I'd tried sometimes I'll try everything else except what I should be doing.
How did you do that? Did you now have like a creative association with your with the acting process on that film and the songwriting process or they woven it?
I think so.
But but that was incidental, really, you know, I didn't know until I went back and listened to the finished product of the album that I had used a lot of themes and names that happened to line with the movie. You know, in a song King of Oklahoma, there's a molly and that to me had I had no idea that I was spending most of my time with, you know, Lily Gladstone, who was playing Molly, and it was it was just getting into my brain and I kind of one of the tricks that I have as a songwriter as I go along, I have eliminated ways of editing myself until it's time to start editing, so I don't slow myself down. And so if I'm writing a song, I'm not paying attention too much other than just the puzzle of making the words line up.
Can you play and write in your in your head at the same time or do you write first? And then how does the process work? How do you not get in your way when you're in the creative flow.
You have to remind yourself like am I writing a song? Or am I editing the song?
You know? And those you can't do those at the same time. I can't.
Some people probably can, but I Usually I'll start by like repeating a phrase, I'll overhear something, or I'll think of something, and it may be like literally what I'm doing, Like I might say there's there's not coffee in this and that well.
You don't have to get sorry they cut the budget, Okay, we'll get your coffee.
Most of my songs are complaints at the end of the but then after a while you just repeat it and and and a melody sort of makes itself happen. And then I'll pick up a guitar and start finding the chords. And you know, I kind of look at it like there's a big, huge field full of rocks, and everything you need is under one of those rocks. And it might be under the first rock you pick up, but you might have to pick up.
A million of them. But if you just.
Keep trying things, eventually you'll get You'll get there.
That's f I feel like I'm just just a lifetime of picking up rocks, keep going. You you have a song called Middle of the Morning and you talk about being a strong but silent Southern man. Do you feel like the idea of what a Southern man is or southern masculinity has evil in your lifetime.
We're trying, we're trying to evolve that, you know, but evidence sometimes shows the contrary to be true as well. You know, in my experience, we're not always the best at talking about how we feel, and that makes us not very good at dealing with our emotions and things will come out in ways that we don't intend them to, you know, when we're not.
Able to say I am scared or I am sad.
And I don't necessarily know that that's a Southern thing, but but you know, it definitely happens a lot in the South, and that's where I came from.
And do you hope that your music can kind of act as a solve for young men to grow up and see another way of being.
I would like that.
You know, it serves a purpose for me initially, but I think if your intentions are honest and you're really trying to communicate with people, then that will happen as a byproduct of what you're doing. And I do I see a lot of big dudes crying at the shows, and it makes me really happy. It makes me really happy.
I think you're making a lot of big dudes cry out here right now.
You can do it, you can. This is a safe space, big.
Dude, safe safe, We can laugh, we can cry. You also are extremely outspoken when it comes to common sense gun laws and advocacy. You wrote a song on your album that's about the fear as a parent that you have in this country, and many of us feel sending our kids to school every day.
Was that.
I can't even imagine how difficult that song was to write. Was it an emotional experience for you?
It was hard.
The first time I wrote it, I didn't do a very good job because I wasn't saying exactly what I wanted to say, you know. And when I rewrote it, I got closer to what I meant. And then I did it again, and finally I was actually telling the truth. Sometimes that's the process, you know, you want to be vague and you don't want to hit the nail on the head. But this one really called for that, and I went from when I'm writing about something that heavy, I find the best way to do it for me is to go from my own personal perspective. I don't have any experience in a mass shooting situation, so I'm not going to write a song about that. But what I will write about is being at the grocery store and hearing a balloon pop and the first thing that comes into my mind is, oh, my god, is somebody in here with a gun? You know, and I know it is extremely frustrating for a whole lot of people in this country to deal with. It's, you know, it's something that we shouldn't have to worry about. I think it's something that, you know, is a capitalist issue at heart. I think all those companies that sprung up after the Brady Bill was repealed are really kind of pulling the strings right now and selling people something that they don't need so they can feel proud of something that they really shouldn't be proud of, you know.
But it's scary.
It's scary, and having a child, you know, it does make you think about these things more often.
It won't necessarily make a good.
Person out of you, but if you start as one, then don't make you worry a lot.
I have to smell.
I just.
Well, you're going to stay and you're going to perform for us. You're going to perform a song called cast iron Skillet. Now, I'm from Kentucky, so I'm no stranger to Southern phrases like don't wash the cast iron skillet. That's why I never do the dishes, but these But you have a way of using these like simple Southern phrases, but there's a much deeper meaning underneath. What was the inspiration behind this song?
I like to make characters and then follow them around and see what they do. And when I start a song, I don't necessarily know how it's going to end. I just like to make characters that you can believe and that are honest, and then see how they behave as human people would behave. And sometimes that can character is the narrator, because this has got two This song has two separate stories. Both of them are true, and both of them happened to people that I was close to when I was a child. And the first story is about a couple of guys that I went to school with, who you know, went down a bad path and wound up murdering somebody, going to prison for the rest of their lives. And then the second part is about a relative I had who who fell in love with the black man and her dad just owned her and never spoke to her again. And you know, these things really happened, and this was the eighties and the nineties, and you know they still happen today. And the narrator is trying to give advice, but it's not really good advice. I mean, here's the secret. You can wash the skill it. You know, it's made of cases it'll be fine. You can wash the skill it. A lot of times I'll write a song that has some southern, you know, words of wisdom in it, and people will say, hey, man, that's not exactly right.
And I'm like, you're almost there. You're almost you're understanding the song.
You know.
I cannot wait for you to perform. I'm very excited. Everyone here is very excited. Weather Van is available now and Killars of the Flower Moon are streaming globally on Apple TV plus. That's our show for tonight. Now here, it is your moment of Then.
I wear heels or not for a fashion statement. They're for ammunition, and the stronger the threat, the higher the heel.
I wear heels. It's not for a fashion statement.
It's because if I see something wrong, we're going to kick them every single time.
Those are pretty hot when your kick's.
Got to hurt.
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