The Daily Show: Ears EditionGet up close with four presidents of the United States discussing some of their most personal causes.
Former President Jimmy Carter sits down with Jon Stewart to explain his efforts to eradicate the harmful Guinea Worm. Former President Bill Clinton talks about his foundation's campaign to combat ebola. President Barack Obama joins Trevor Noah to unpack how to be authentic amidst the demands of the presidency. Then Senator Joe Biden talks to Jon about how he would approach the presidency, and what it means to him.
You're listening to Comedy Central. What a back I got tonight. He was the thirty ninth president of these United States.
He's here to discuss how his non profit organization, the Carter Center, is nearly eradicated the guinea worm disease. Please welcome back to the program, President Jimmy Carter.
Nice to see it. There them die, So here you are. Here's what I didn't realize.
Okay, So you have this thing that you start in nineteen eighty six, Carter Center goes and they say this, this guinea worm is a problem. Explain very quickly what it is because I can't do it justice.
Guinea worm if you drink board out of a filthy water hole fills up in the radio season and then stays dry, it doesn't have any fresh for water. Then you drink the guinea worm eggs, and in a year's time it goes to a worm about thirty inches long, and then it's things inside of your skin epidermis, and then it creates a soul, a big sword, and it emerges. It takes it thirty days to come out, and it destroys muscle tissue and leaves you.
A cripple and terrible pain, horrible.
Pain, almost indescribable pain.
Yeah, so this is I have.
A lot of times when a movie is coming out, they'll send me a little something like a nerf ball with the name of the movie on it.
Your people sent me a dead guinea world. I'm bed it's dead. Can we get that over here? This is what it looks like. It looks like.
That is the thing that comes out of people's oftentimes their feet, yes, their feet are their toes.
Feet toes. The first time I saw it, one was coming out of a nipple of a woman's breast.
Unbelievable and just terribly terrible paint.
Now in nineteen eighty six, when you begin this program, how many cases of guinea worm are occurring throughout Where's it?
Where? Did they mostly have? Asia? Africa?
Three three countries in Asia and seventeen countries in Africa Sub Sahara, Africa. We found guinea worm in twenty three thousand, six hundred villages and we had three and a half million cases.
Three and a half million cases. That's what we found this year. Now we are nineteen eighty six to now is.
That's not going to do the last year we had five one hundred and forty two cases.
Five hundred and forty two from three and a half million.
Right, and five hundred and twenty one of those cases were in South Sudan. This year so far we've just had seven cases all of them.
And here's the country. But here's the thing.
So we always think about, well, these types of scourges that that hit these areas, and we have to develop the right medicine and the drug.
We have to create some sort of prayer. How was this solved?
No medicine will prevent it, no medicine will cure it. Right, for ten thousands of years, they wrapped the guinea worm and when it came out around the stick and put some tension on it so it would come out in twenty days instead of thirty days. So you had to suffer three weeks instead of four weeks. And so we found that if you pour the water through a filter cloth, the kind of won't rode in the tropics, and we provided that then it screens out the guinea worm megs and then you can drink your filthy water without the guinea worm meigs and you don't have a guinea worm. So that's what we have.
Education.
You went there and they showed, now were they resistant to that type of thing, changing thousands of years of how.
They were because the medicine men were making a lot of money treating it by putting on the stick in Twition war. And also they thought that the pond was sacred. If it hadn't been for the pond, the ancestors wouldn't live, their village wouldn't be there. So we were insinuating that the disease came out of our sacred pond. So then if you if you hold up the glass and put and have a magnifying glass, you could see the little things swimming around in there. So we convinced them that these were Alian people Adian things in the pond. So they let us provide the filter cloths. But we had to go to every single village on earth that had the disease. So we feel that we've have prevented about eighty million cases of guinea worm since we first started.
Unbelievable. It's just with just with the gaugees. Now did they h.
Do they?
Now?
Do they do?
They now create the gauds themselfs Like how does that? You got to keep going through there?
Upon gave us a special filter that wouldn't brought in.
The tropics, and that's the thing that you have to get.
So we it had to be wolven by people that make parachutes. Wow, we're it's wolven together.
You've ironic kid. I mean, do you now you got? You got? You know Bill Gates is out there with malaria. Do you ever see him?
You rib him a little bit, you'd be like, hey man, how's it going with malaria?
Well, we work on Mlario of tennison.
I'm not kicking guinea worms, but for about twenty five.
Years now, well we don't, right it because we get a lot of money from the Bill Gates Foundations.
Oh that's what I meant. I met the very good people and that's what I'm doing.
I really I hadn't want to Bill Gate's greatest ad briers.
When you you go in there and you've earned their trust in what are there other things that you want to accomplish?
These villages or some.
Of the same people. We go out into the jungle and in the desert areas where nobody else wants to go. They call these neglected diseases because nobody they really oftentimes.
Diseases of sanitation diseases of simple twenty first century twenty cents.
One of the worst cases. It comes from from filthy eyes where flies gather around your eyes. It's called for coma. So the number one cause a preventable blindness cataracts called more but this so coma is worse. And when you go into a Masaia village or a Dinco village and you see little children in the distance, you think they're wearing eyeglasses, and then you get closed. It's a regal flies that stay on their eyes all the time. So the eye gets infected and the upper allead turns inward and every time you blink your eyes and then they slices the cornea flies. You have to get rid of the flies, and so we teach the kids how to wash their faces first of all, which they've never tried before, so we have to teach them. And we also have found out that in certain parts of Africa, a woman is absolutely prevented by taboos from relieving herself in the daytime, so they have to hide and urinate or defecate. So we decided to try an experiment in Ethiopia, so we taught them how to build a latrine and outdoor a toilet. It only cost about a dollar if they do their work themselves. So we thought we might have one hundred of thousand. We've just finished two million, three hundred thousand latrines in Africa.
God wow. So that's incredible.
So I've become famous as the number one latrine builder in the world. I'm not famous for peace between Israel and Egypt.
But maybe they'll change the name from John to the Jimmy. You never know what what like the forty second President of the United States.
Is annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting now and it's tenth year kicks off this Sunday. When I first welcome back to the program, President Bill Clinton.
All right, I said, thank you. I tell you something.
I'll tell you this and I'm gonna say this, and it's it's nice you were here to witness it. I live this every day, just the the ovations.
You're good too, But thank you.
I do this.
When I see you at home, I'm all alone, Planks, look at you just can't help ours.
Exactly ten years a Clinton Globe Initiative.
So you have this thing all planned out.
You've got these tremendous speakers, all your things in order something like this Ebola epidemic jumps up. It probably represents the confluence of all the various things that you can do at Clinton Globe Initiative. How agile can you be when something like that arises?
Can you address it? Even at this year? So yeah, we are.
We're going to have all the people from the World Health Organization and the UN and the Doctorates without Borders, partners and health all these people are going to come together and talk about it. The United States has note a lot. President Obama's gotten some money through Congress, and the Pentagon's committed a good bill of a bit of money and resources. Look, this is an emergency because nobody knows how to cure this. Right, we know that almost five thousand people have been infected. We know that more than two twenty six hundred have died. Almost certainly more than that have been infected. The problem is as compared with previous outbreaks of Abolo, which were in remote rural areas, this is hit in some urban areas and when it got into Nigeria and the Congo, there are a lot of people there and there are just so many bodies brushing up against one another every day it increases the risk you have to isolate and care for a lot of these people can survive if they get proper care quickly, and we can stop the epidemic and let it burn itself out if we can isolate everybody that's infected, but we's going to take a herculean effort.
Is the idea too, Since you have people on the ground, you know, if organizations that are not as familiar with the local and provincial authorities down there, you know, one of the big issues is trust that the local communities are very frightened by this, justifiably, so they may not necessarily trust outsiders that come in the United States coming in.
How is it that the can your organization.
Build through those more local authorities and build the.
Trail going to need We can in Liberia, where we're very active and where we've been there, you know, from the beginning of President Johnson's totally tenure. But in other countries they will have to work with the local health ministry. So I'll have to work with the local people, which is why it's encouraging to me that we may have an African coordinator who will have I think a lot of credibility working with the overall UN Coordinator and the World Health Organization and everybody else. I think buying large doctors without borders deserves an enormous amount of credit because they have put their lives at risk and put everything into it. So many people have gone there to serve. And now that Partners in Health is going into partners in Health is my partner in Africa, and they've done a lot of work in Africa. They have a very good name. We're gonna, I think, see a big ramp up, and I think in Librarria, I saw a news story which said just interviewed people on the street who were really thrilled at the American government and the military were going to invest in doing this. We've been working in Africa with the military since I was president, and there's an Africa Command now and they're very well organized.
I expect this to get Africa. That's how old is that? In twenty years? Is that? Well?
We first of all organized the training program in West Africa, and then after I left office, they turned it into a separate command, so they've been working about seventeen years.
Think right, unbelievable.
Well, it's nice to see that the infrastructure paying off in the future. When we come back, we're going to figure out how to fix the other parts of the world that are broken.
Let's do it.
Welcome back to our conversation with soon to be formerttenant of the White House. I've got one more question for you. There's a personal question. It's a little bit selfish. I look up to you because we share a lot in common. We both have parents who are black and white, both half African, South Side of Chicago, South Side of Africa. In and around race. When you are a person who has a platform, when you are in a space where you are engaging with people, it is often difficult to navigate and skirt that line between speaking your mind and sharing your true opinions on a race, whilst at the same time not being seen to alienate some of the people you.
Are talking to.
You know, because if you are a white person who's speaking about race, then you are just a person who is interested in race. If you are a person of color we're speaking about it is like, oh the black things started again. So the question, and I've always wanted to know, is how did you navigate that? Because we watched you do it, but I always wanted to know how you navigated that three or two terms.
You know.
My general theory is that if I was clear in my own mind about who I was comfortable in my own skin, and had clarity about the way in which race continues to be this powerful factor in so many elements of our lives, but that it is not the only factor in so many aspects of our lives. That we have by no means overcome the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow and colonialism and racism, but that the progress we've made has been real and extraordinary. If I'm communicating my genuine belief that those who are not subject to racism can sometimes have blind spots or lack appreciation of what it feels to be on the receiving end of that, but that doesn't mean that they're not open to learning and caring about equality injustice, and that I can win them over because there's goodness in the majority of people. I always felt that if I really knew that, and I just communicated it as clearly as I could, that I'd be okay. Another way of saying this is there's not been a time in my public life or my residency where I feel as if I have had to bite my tongue. There have been times in my public life where I've said, how do I say this.
Diplomatically?
How do I say this as you've indicated in a way that it's received. Yes, right, So there have been very few instances where I've said, well, that was racist. You are racist. There have been times where I've said, you know, you might not have taken into account the ongoing legacy of racism in why we have so many black men incarcerated. And since I know that you believe in the Constitution and believe in justice and believe in liberty, how about if we tried this now. Some might say, well, you're not speaking and fully truth to power because of that diplomacy. But you know, I don't think that trying to appeal the better angels of our nature, as Lincoln put it, is somehow compromise. There may be times where you just have to call things out and name names. But the challenge we face today when it comes to race is rarely the overt klansman style racism, and typically has more to do with the fact that people got other stuff they want to talk about, and it's sort of uncomfortable, and it's somebody not getting called back for an interview, although it's never explicit or it's you know, who gets the TV acting job, the actress who doesn't quite look the part, and what does that mean? And in that environment where you're not talking necessarily about cut and dride racist behavior, but rather about the complex ways in which society is working these issues through, you know, trying to reach folks in ways that they can hear I think is important. And I would add everybody's got a different role to play. You know, if Chris Rock's doing stand up, then there's a benefit to him doing something that is different from the President of the United States doing something. For one thing, you know, he doesn't have to edit his language quite as carefully because I am still subject to, you know, some restraints on those seven words George Carlin talked about and say, I can't use those as a general proposition because a lot of children are watching. I try to I try to comport myself in a way that my mother would approve of.
Well, I just want to say thank you so much for being on the show, thank you for being an inspiration, and most importantly, thank you for giving me an opportunity to see what I would look like after eight years of the toughest job in the world.
You know, I will say that I resent how young and good looking you are because I used to think of myself in those terms and it's been downhill for quite some time. H. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much, appreciate it.
We're talking with Senator Joe Biden, maybe Senator Joe Biden, perhaps President Biden.
Are are you Well, I'm going out to see whether or not anybody but me thinks they should be president. So I've been going out around the country, Uh, going to a lot of those red states as a as a Democrat and see if I can gain some support, raise some money and uh. And that's what I'm doing.
I've always said, and I've always heard, as Delaware goes, so goes the nation.
Well, actually, actually, in terms of presidential elections, we have never had a president. But in terms of presidential elections, with one exception, that's been the case.
Is that true.
That's absolutely true, because it's voted the way the nation is voted, almost the same percentage of the last.
You know, what I would do for Delaware as a reward for that, by the entire state indoor carpeting, because here's the.
Thing, somebody's already done.
It.
Is that true? I can literally? So that's what that is?
That soft cushy feeling when you're deciding to do something like that, Do you have to go out and immediately.
Hire the whole coterie of consultants? Is that the thing?
And do they immediately tell you the essence of you that has made you a popular politician?
Lose?
That?
Is that the advice that they give is to Doesn't it strike you the Hillary Clinton is now they're saying to her, let me suck you dry of any rough edges so that you can be palatable like cottage cheese.
Well, let me.
I've not hired any of the so called big feet out there. I went through that twenty years ago. And what I've decided to do. Look, I've noticed one thing. Those folks have made it good, bad, and different. Have had a group of people, half a dozen people with them for twenty years or more, loyal to them, that took them to the dance, They stayed with you.
Who would do any of them destroy people?
If they destroyed people, who would make phone calls to.
Exactly know what they have to do?
Does it give you pause that for being in the Senate. It seems so frustrating because the Democrats right now are reduced to I'm gonna hold my breath until you stop bringing up these names.
Do you know what I mean?
Does that make you give you pause in terms of getting into the national arena.
Well, that's the reason to get in. I mean, part of my frustration is I've been doing this a long time and I've convinced that you cannot change the direction of the country in the next two elections. In the Senate. You can't get it done. And that's the honest to God reason why I'm out looking to see if I can get the nomination. And besides, as one staff member told me, so, there's great benefits. Look at the vacation time a get.
Nicely done. Sir.
You may end up going against a Senate colleague, perhaps McCain.
Perhaps First well, John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain because think the country better off, be well off, no matter who what I mean, did I hear with you know John McCain, and I think.
Don't become cottage. Cheez my friends, say it.
The answer is yes, I hope John. I wanted John to run with John Kerrey last time out, and I asked him to do that.
Boy.
I would love to see politics be shaken up in a way that just completely blew out the ramparts of parties and shad would be a wonderful situation. Was so we like to say, whether it be any den of Republican, I like the parent, thank you for coming by.
I know you're on recess, on recess just like grade school.
I'm excited by yourself and napping a little sippy cup and beyond your wife.
Senator Joe Biden, thank you so much for combob bit shall.
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