Daily Show: America’s Awesome Despite History of Slavery, Inequality and Torture

‘Look at the Declaration of Independence, we wrote “All men are created equal,” while we had slaves — that was pretty awesome’

MINHAJ: "Jon, it is not fair to hold to us an impossible standard like never torture. Sometimes you just gotta torture."
STEWART: "We set that standard. We're the ones who set that standard. The U.N. Convention on torture specifically says no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or other public emergency may be invoked to justify torture. Signed in 1988, by no shrinking violet, President Ronald Reagan. We signed that."
MINHAJ: "Jon, we sign tons of (bleep)."
STEWART: "All right, that's-- "
MINHAJ: "Come on. Look at the Declaration of Independence. We wrote "All men are created equal," while we had slaves. That was pretty awesome."
STEWART: "No, it's not awesome. So we're just awesome no matter what we do. We're awesome because we're awesome."
MINHAJ: "No, no, no. Not just because. Remember those slaves from before?
STEWART: "Sure."
MINHAJ: "Who freed them?"
STEWART: "We-- we did from us."
MINHAJ: "Yeah, yeah. And remember women?"
STEWART: "I don't-- "
MINHAJ: "Who fought for their right to vote."
STEWART: "We-- we did against us!"
MINHAJ: "And who stopped the C.I.A. Torture program?"
STEWART: "We did, but only because we were the ones doing it! This is-- this is why we have to talk about these issues, even if talking about these issues makes us uncomfortable."
MINHAJ: "Okay, I get it, Stewart, all right. You're that guy."
STEWART: "What guy?"
MINHAJ: "Mr. Truth."
STEWART: "Oh, no."
MINHAJ: " Yeah, the guy who ruins Thanksgiving by bringing up the topics no one wants to talk about."
STEWART: "I believe in honest conversation."
MINHAJ: "No, no! Everyone's at the dinner table trying to have a nice, quiet turkey but you have to stand up and yell, "That's not Tina's roommate, grandma. It's her lesbian lover."
STEWART: "Don't you think grandma deserves the truth?"
MINHAJ: "Jon, she's 88 and thinks Dick Clark is still on TV. Let her go to her grave without learning what scissoring is."
STEWART: "What-- what is-- what is scissoring?"
MINHAJ: "Look it up, Jon. It's pretty awesome."
STEWART: "All right, thank you."

Video files
Full
Compact
Audio files
Full
Compact