July 2004
COMEDY CENTRAL's
"THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART"
INTERVIEW WITH:
JOHN KERRY
HOST: JON
STEWART
SIDE A
(OPENING THEME AND CROWD NOISE)
JON
STEWART:
Hi, everybody, welcome to the program.
My guest tonight, a junior Democratic senator from Massachusetts.
He is also the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.
Please welcome Senator John Kerry. (APPLAUSE) Senator--
(MUSIC PLAYING)
JON
STEWART:
Senator Kerry (UNINTEL). (APPLAUSE) Hello.
JOHN
KERRY:
How are you?
JON
STEWART:
Thank you so much for coming to the program.
JOHN
KERRY:
I'm glad to be here.
JON
STEWART:
Ser-- seriously?
JOHN
KERRY:
Terrific. (LAUGHTER)
JON
STEWART:
Mom, you'd better be recording this. (LAUGHTER) It--
I didn't--
JOHN
KERRY:
I didn't understand it. Turf, trees and boxes.
JON
STEWART:
He's not having any of it. (LAUGHTER) He's redoing
the CIA.
JOHN
KERRY:
That's why I'm running for President.
We're stamping them out. Turf,
trees and boxes.
JON
STEWART:
All gonna get done.
JOHN
KERRY:
And agencies I--
JON
STEWART:
Now how-- how are you holding up?
This has been a-- it's been a rough couple weeks.
I've been following-- I watch a lot of the cable news shows.
So I understand that apparently you were never in Vietnam. (LAUGHTER)
JOHN
KERRY:
(LAUGHTER) That's what I understand, too.
But I-- I'm trying to find out what happened.
JON
STEWART:
Now is it--
JOHN
KERRY:
That part of my life. I don't know.
JON
STEWART:
Exactly. It's
nice, though. I know-- 35 years ago
I have friends that have come forward and say-- you did have cooties.
You know, that sort of thing. (LAUGHTER) Is it-- do you-- do you-- is it
hard not to take it personally?
(OVERTALK)
JOHN
KERRY:
--too. It's
about--
JON
STEWART:
Oh, with you, as well?
JOHN
KERRY:
Yeah.
JON
STEWART:
Is it a difficult thing not to take personally when--
when they come out and-- and your word, it's-- it's in the public files.
So--
JOHN
KERRY:
You know what it is, Jon? It-- it-- it's disappointing because I think most Americans
would like to have a much more intelligent conversation about where the
country's going. And-- (APPLAUSE)
yeah, I think that-- you know, and-- and, yeah, it's a little bit disappointing.
But believe it or not, I've been through worse. (LAUGHTER)
JON
STEWART:
Right. I--
I can imagine. When-- when-- these
guys-- were you surprised at all that--
JOHN
KERRY:
No.
JON
STEWART:
--they-- that they-- that they--
(OVERTALK)
JOHN
KERRY:
Sure I'm surprised.
But surprised in a sense. But
now that I begin to see the web and the network, I'm not surprised.
I think-- you know, it's politics. And
for whatever reasons, the-- the-- and I think Americans will discover it as we
go forward in the next four or five weeks, George Bush doesn't wanna talk about
the real issues. I mean, what's he
gonna do? Come out and say we lost
1.8 million jobs?
Four million Americans lost their healthcare.
We're going backwards on the environment.
We-- angered everybody in the world.
JON
STEWART:
Sir, I'm sorry.
Were you or were you not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve? (LAUGHTER) They
said-- you said five miles. They
said three. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE) No, I-- (UNINTEL PHRASE).
I think that's a very interesting--
JOHN
KERRY:
(UNINTEL) look at that profile.
JON
STEWART:
No, believe me, I know. I'm all Jew. You
may be 1/4. I got everything.
(LAUGHTER) The-- you know, again,
it-- it-- it's the type of thing--
JOHN
KERRY:
Yeah.
JON
STEWART:
--in-- in the 2000 election it was an election I
think the country didn't realize how important it was going to be.
And yet it was a relatively substantive discussion.
I can recall in the-- in the debates there was a lot of talk about
funding Social Security and-- education and all these things.
This election is clearly the most important one of our lifetime.
JOHN
KERRY:
Yeah.
JON
STEWART:
And yet it's very difficult to have that discussion.
JOHN
KERRY:
Well, I don't think it will be.
I think-- I-- I'm gonna stay laser beam focused.
Today I gave a speech here in New York talking about the real choices.
You know, if you talk to-- I mean, John Edwards and I have been all over
the country. Incidentally, I
watched-- his announcement on your show. And--
JON
STEWART:
I know. I
think that's why he lost. (LAUGHTER)
JOHN
KERRY:
Can we be-- no, he won. He's about to win big time. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE)
JON
STEWART:
He-- he's about to take it to the next step.
JOHN
KERRY:
And-- you know, maybe we can do the inauguration
here, too.
JON
STEWART:
I have no problem with that. (APPLAUSE)
(OFF-MIKE CONVERSATION)
JON
STEWART:
That's all right.
You-- you people won't be here. (LAUGHTER) All right, so I gotta-- I
gotta run through this list--
(OVERTALK)
JON
STEWART:
--because-- you know, I am-- as any good fake
journalist should do, I watch only the 24-hour cable news.
This is what I learned about you--
JOHN
KERRY:
All right.
JON
STEWART:
--through the cable news. Please refute if you will.
Are you the number one most liberal senator in the Senate?
JOHN
KERRY:
No.
JON
STEWART:
Okay.
JOHN
KERRY:
You happy with that? (LAUGHTER)
JON
STEWART:
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that. 'Cause that-- I--
I'm gonna say-- there-- there's-- I'm just gonna go on the talking points that
I've been given.
JOHN
KERRY:
Yeah, yeah. Go
ahead.
JON
STEWART:
You're the number one most liberal senator.
More liberal than Karl Marx apparently. (LAUGHTER) Are you or have you
ever flip-flopped?
JOHN
KERRY:
I've flip-flopped, flop-flipped.
JON
STEWART:
Done a little of that. Where-- where does that-- you know, when-- when they come up
with these sorts of-- of talking points and-- and that's what gets--
JOHN
KERRY:
Well--
JON
STEWART:
--sort of carpet bombed on-- on the networks, how--
how does that-- how do you counter that?
JOHN
KERRY:
By talking about things that really matter that
people really wanna talk about. I
mean, is it a flip-flop-- I don't know what compassionate conservative means.
Does it mean cutting kids out of after-school programs?
Does it mean drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge?
Does it mean sending kids to Iraq without body armor that's state of the
art? Does it mean-- turning your--
I mean, you can run through a list. Is
that compassionate conserve--
JON
STEWART:
Now this is-- when I watch the--
(OVERTALK)
JOHN
KERRY:
Labels don't mean anything.
JON
STEWART:
I'll watch the TV and they'll say-- and this is in
advertisements. John Kerry wants
our troops to go to war wearing only gabardine. (LAUGHTER) You know?
They'll say that you voted against the body armor.
And-- and yet they won't talk about what the vote was about and what the
battle was.
JOHN
KERRY:
Hey, wearing gabardine beats going to war the way
this President sent our troops to war. (APPLAUSE)
JON
STEWART:
And that's the--
(OFF-MIKE CONVERSATION)
JOHN
KERRY:
I think this was an abuse of-- of authority that the
President was given this kind of trust. The
President promised that he would build this international coalition.
He clearly hasn't got a real coalition.
Ninety percent of the casualties, 90 percent of the costs are our people. Our-- our money, our troops.
He didn't exhaust the process of the UN inspections.
Made an end run around it. And
finally, he didn't give meaning to the words that mean a lot to a lot of us:
going to war as a last resort. I
think the United States of America should never go to war the way this President
took us to war. You don't go to war
because you want to. You go to war
because you have to. (APPLAUSE) And that's not what this President did.
JON
STEWART:
You shouldn't flip-flop like that, sir. (LAUGHTER) It
is-- it is-- it's an-- it's an amazing thing--
(OVERTALK)
JON
STEWART:
--to watch when-- when-- this President will come out
sometimes and say-- you know, "I've been a strong leader," only
because he's been decisive. And I
guess what you're saying is anybody can make a decision. It's the right-- it's making the right decision.
JOHN
KERRY:
Yeah. I
mean, it doesn't help you to be stubborn in the wrong decision.
I think the President's stubborn. He
stubbornly has made the wrong economic decisions.
And the result is you got four million people who have lost their
healthcare. The middle class is actually paying a higher tax burden today
than they were when George Bush began. And
the wealthiest Americans are paying less.
Now he's stubbornly moving America in a direction
where we're outsourcing jobs. The
jobs we're creating pay $9,000 less on average than the jobs we're losing.
He stubbornly sticks to his policy in Iraq even though everybody can see
that we need other troops on the ground. We
need to take the American stamp of occupation off of this effort, bring the
world to our side. I mean, there's
so many choices the President has sort of stubbornly gone down that I think is
the wrong path.
JON
STEWART:
Do you think you'll-- when-- when you get into the
debates with him is this going to be-- will you be able to do that?
Or-- or will he-- I've seen he's very shrewd in debates of saying,
"Look, this is a choice. It's a-- it's a very easy choice between-- a man who loves--
Fidel Castro and-- (LAUGHTER) and someone who-- loves America."
You know? How-- how do you--
do you think you will ever be able to have an honest discussion?
JOHN
KERRY:
Well, that's the test of debates.
I mean, look, the President has won every debate he's ever had.
People need to understand that. He
beat Ann Richards. He beat Al Gore.
So he's a good debater. And
debates are sort of formulaic. But
I believe that-- the truth is what people are looking for.
I have a better plan. I have a plan to put America back to work.
I have a plan to provide healthcare to all Americans rather than see
Americans lose it and pay more for it. We
can go down a different road. You
like--
(OVERTALK)
JON
STEWART:
I was gonna say this. Can-- can you get me on a network? (LAUGHTER) We're gonna be
right back with more of Senator Kerry just after this. (APPLAUSE)
(THEME PLAYING)
JON
STEWART:
(UNINTEL) the program. We're talking with Senator John Kerry. Let's talk energy. Oil.
Is-- is oil gonna turn out to be America's kryptonite?
What-- (LAUGHTER) you know, we-- we have this substance. It's clearly finite. It's
clearly in someone else's country. What--
what are we gonna-- (LAUGHTER) are we gonna have to take over the whole damn
region?
JOHN
KERRY:
I wish-- I wish all the oil executives were like the
stand-in that you had there. She
was superb. (LAUGHTER)
JON
STEWART:
Right. Nicely
done.
JOHN
KERRY:
The-- it's the most extraordinary thing in the world.
United States has three percent of the world's oil reserves.
We import 61 percent of our oil. There
is no possible way for us to drill our way out this crisis. We have to invent our way out of it.
We have to invent our way out of it by moving to
alternatives, to renewables, to fuel efficient vehicles.
To biomass, bio--
(OVERTALK)
JON
STEWART:
I'm gonna throw something out for you.
JOHN
KERRY:
Sure.
JON
STEWART:
And you can use this. What if cars ran on--
JOHN
KERRY:
I can-- safely?
JON
STEWART:
--what America has--
JOHN
KERRY:
Can I use this safely?
JON
STEWART:
Absolutely. What--
what we have almost a monopoly on: Twinkies, fast food, that sort of thing. (LAUGHTER) We are
the fattest people in the world. We
could do this.
JOHN
KERRY:
We can transform-- I think transforming fast food
into fuel--
JON
STEWART:
Liposuction right into the car. (LAUGHTER) Zip, zoom.
Done!
JOHN
KERRY:
That would probably be very efficient.
JON
STEWART:
It would be very efficient.
When you campaign, you know, the other day your campaign crossed paths
with George Bush's campaign.
JOHN
KERRY:
I know.
JON
STEWART:
Was there--
JOHN
KERRY:
That's the second time-- twice we've done it.
JON
STEWART:
Was there nod and a wink? Or was there-- how-- how do-- how do they keep that--
JOHN
KERRY:
We never saw each other.
JON
STEWART:
At all?
JOHN
KERRY:
No, no. The
Secret Service aren't just guarding us from the other people.
JON
STEWART:
Keeping you away from each other. (LAUGHTER)
JOHN
KERRY:
They--
JON
STEWART:
Very smart. Now
if-- if someone wants to come to your rally, what kind of loyalty oath do they
have to sign?
JOHN
KERRY:
(LAUGHTER) I saw you-- I actually saw you talking
about this. None.
JON
STEWART:
You know what? I--
JOHN
KERRY:
Zero.
JON
STEWART:
--I have to say this.
JOHN
KERRY:
Zip.
JON
STEWART:
As you run for President--
JOHN
KERRY:
But you do have to get into their thing.
JON
STEWART:
That's what I was gonna suggest is that they try
and--
JOHN
KERRY:
They-- they-- they have you sign something.
And they vet everybody who comes in.
JON
STEWART:
Right.
JOHN
KERRY:
We're open to the public. We wanna talk to America.
We wanna know. (APPLAUSE) Not--
JON
STEWART:
I-- I was gonna say--
(OVERTALK)
JON
STEWART:
I have talked to some of America.
No, you don't wanna (UNINTEL).
JOHN
KERRY:
(LAUGHTER) Well, you should hear some of-- I'm
telling you. The-- the-- no, I-- I
shouldn't go into that out here. But
I've been in some-- some-- you'd be amazed the number of people who wanna
introduce themselves to you in the men's room. (LAUGHTER)
JON
STEWART:
Really?
JOHN
KERRY:
God. It--
it's the most bizarre part of this entire campaign.
JON
STEWART:
I'm gonna make a suggestion, too. (LAUGHTER) Secret
Service--
(OVERTALK)
JON
STEWART:
--right at the door. (LAUGHTER) Not getting in.
One final question 'cause I really do wanna know this.
And, again, you-- you don't have to answer it if-- if you don't want to,
if it's too personal. Is it true
that every time I use ketchup your wife gets a nickel? (LAUGHTER) Tell me the
truth! I want the truth!
JOHN
KERRY:
Would that it were.
Would that it were. But use
the ketchup a lot anyway.
JON
STEWART:
I'll do what I can, sir. (LAUGHTER) I wanna thank you
so much for taking time out-- to come to the program and to-- and to have just a
normal conversation with us. We
really do appreciate it.
JOHN
KERRY:
You do a great job.
JON
STEWART:
Thank you very much. (APPLAUSE)
(OFF-MIKE CONVERSATION)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
* * *END OF AUDIO* * *
* * *END OF TRANSCRIPT* * *
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This transcript was not made by me. It was made by someone at comedy central and
sent out to subscribers of the comedy central press newsletter (press.comedycentral.com)