My interview with John Stuart of The Daily Show today, elicited a trenchant critique from him about the 24-hour cable news world. It also let me get some stuff off my chest. You think of it differently, but I think a lot of people who watch your show and who watch cable news think of what we do is not being that different, which sucks for me, because I used to be the sort of mildly amusing person talking, like using humor to tell the story of the wasteful F-35 second engine on that fighter jet. And now I'm the person trying to be John Stuart in sucking. I love that F-35. Yeah, that wasteful engine bit, that killed him. You know, it used to be my bit. That's ahead, please stay with us. I always feel like I don't care where it comes from. If it's right, it's right. But that's an earned authority that I think is difficult to have when the environment is so polarizing. So then how do you deal with stuff that people believe that just isn't true? You cannot control crazy. But so here on Iraq, right? The Bush accepted the Delpha report and everything saying that there were no weapons of mass destruction. And he admitted it and he changes rationales for the war and response to that, finding and everything. Well, again, like, did he change it or did he just... Started, say, talking about other reasons. They went out with four rationales for the war. I agree with you. The main one was fear. The main one was Colin Powell was... He was waving anthrax. Yeah. When he was down at the UN, he wasn't waving freedom juice. He was waving anthrax. And I get that. But there were four rationales. And they probably did that to provide themselves a certain amount of cover. There's no question that they ranked one of them this. But even in the Delpha report, when he said, for instance, you guys did it on the show, well, Saddam Hussein was actually trying to get around sanctions. And again, I don't know if you remember this. The UN oil for food, not the oil for food. Gaming the system. Gaming the system, right. But if you follow that sound bite for another 15 seconds, he does say to reconstitute his weapons program. So that he could get money, so that he could use that money to reconstitute his weapons program. So he was... Right. Now, again, I see it in your eyes. You're like, but that's horse, but whatever. But all I'm saying is... It is there. It's not as black and white. You know, I think... But when I look at the left, the left always says, we're not black and white. I didn't like Bush because he was so black and white. And there's not nuance. Do you think that the left ever suffers from that same myopia? I think bad arguments exist everywhere. Yeah. So why not just do bad arguments? Why be... You are who you are. And I think you're a person that doesn't like bad arguments. I'm trying to pursue bad arguments wherever I find them. But can I... Let me... Yeah. This point about Bush and WMDs. Bush accepted that Saddam wasn't pursuing weapons of mass destruction. He changed the way that he talked about the war, I think. Yeah, I don't know if it accepted. Well, I think he... I think he was like... He did just spew the report when it came out. Yeah, but I think they were like, yeah, how really sad we didn't find anything. Yes, that's definitely... I got this sense that he was like, yeah, I'm too bad that report didn't find the weapons that I knew were there. But now he's back in his book to saying Saddam was pursuing weapons of mass destruction. And he says he declares that as if it is fact. And it's just not true. And it's not even... It's true, depending on where you start to pursue. In other words, is my son pursuing his car? Yes, my son very much wants a car. Now he's sick. So he doesn't have a job yet. But he is pursuing a car. He's got to wait a while. Yeah. And a lot of things are going to have to happen. Do you get what I'm saying? Like, I get that that's a manipulation. Yeah. It is also, in some ways, a subtle narrative manipulation to just dismiss that. But it is... He's been... As a news person, not as a news person. He's doing it on purpose to make people think that the war in Iraq was justified because of weapons of mass destruction. You wouldn't say Saddam was pursuing WMD. And the world is safer because he's not... You think he really believes the world is safer without Saddam who's saying, even if he wasn't pursuing weapons of mass destruction, do you think he's... I believe he thinks the world is safer, but I can't... I don't think he believes the world is safer because Saddam was pursuing weapons of mass destruction, because he wasn't. And so... Right. But that's, again, like... That's a belief. That's what you believe. But I don't know that... You know, I don't know the guy. I... I... in the same way about his arguments. I do think he believes Saddam who's saying was dangerous and a madman and had weapons of mass destruction. And the fact that we couldn't find him just means that he had taken, you know, and asthma recess. And was just waiting till he could do it again because we were watching him. I just... So... I disagree with the idea that it is... Because one is truly dishonest and borderline evil. And I guess that's where I get the point. Like, I'm trying to wrap around my head about the idea that someone who would say you could waterboard is an evil. And that's where I have to go back to like, okay, Frank O'Donnell Roosevelt in turn to 120,000 Japanese Americans. Was he evil? I, you know, I think you have to examine your own orthodoxy before, you know, you can feel comfortable. But let's really try and fight on the most precise and proportional terms we can. Okay. If possible. And on waterboarding. Yeah. Is that what's next? He didn't say it. That's what happens now. Oh my God, what happens to me now? He didn't just say... He says in his book, he didn't just say yes, waterboard him. He, in his writing, was like, damn right. Damn right. Waterboard the guy. I know. I don't, I don't, I mean, it's hard for me to believe that he did that. He says that's what he did. But what that means is that the people who are arguing that waterboarding, trash torture is a bad thing, lost the argument and it's now a political asset to brag about having waterboard it. I kind of think they were always like, I never got the sense that there was a sense of shame. I always thought there was a sense of legal maneuvering. Yeah. I never thought they felt like they were covering it up because they thought it was a bad idea or it would paint them as evil. This didn't want to get nailed to art. I, I think that was it or they wanted to figure out a way to do it. Now, this comes to the next part though. What is their intention? Is his intention truly to save American lives? Does that justify everything? Well, maybe it doesn't. Where do you draw the line then? Why don't they just waterboard everybody? A lot of people get shot in gang violence in the city. Why not waterboard gang members? Then you get into all these other arguments. But if the place that you start from is he's an evil man who did that to lie to us so that he could take gratuitous pleasure in his own masculinity like or whatever it is. Like that does. That's what I mean, nobody's, I'm not saying that. Nobody's spright. But that's an example of, again, pushing it too far. But people, that's what people do. They take things and they go into the next realm. But I don't, I just don't think that, I don't think that I do that. I mean, I can't speak for everybody here. But I don't think that, and I am definitely part of the conflictinator. I'm definitely part of this whole machine. Primetime and the whole bit. But I don't, I don't, I think that the criticism George Bush on waterboarding is a precise criticism. I don't think it's this guy as an evil monster. I think it is, that was wrong for the country and he shouldn't be defending it. Yeah, I don't get the sense that that's, I don't get the sense that the argument is as passive as that. But okay, that's a fair point. Yeah. I think that it's somewhere in between. I think that the argument generally has not been, this is wrong for the country and it has overstepped a certain line and the thing. I think it was a little more, uh, what's impassioned? Certainly. I mean, is this wrong for the country? I'm happy with screaming if that makes it, if that makes it less of a strong thing. I would suggest that it wasn't necessarily just, this is wrong for the country, but that you're a bad man. I don't think that, I don't, I think that you are, I think that you are glassing over the gray areas in a way that isn't fair. Maybe. That could very well be, he says. Or, yeah, there's more. Stay with us, more of my interview with John Stewart ahead.