Jake Tapper form CNN introduced Trevor Noah and the cast of the Daily Show to talk about their approach to the 24 hour news cycle. In essentially what is considered the new normal with our current administration and news always breaking you just never know what craziness is going to be going down. Tapper asked Noah how they handle that on their show. Noah, “Well we have this thing called the 5:30 curse. Pretty much every day before we go to tape at 5:30 something has just broke. Someone new is getting indicted, a new ridiculous tweet has gone out from Trump and we have to throw the show out and come up with new jokes and it’s like that every single day.” Tapper, “Well we love that in the news world. It’s gold for us.” Noah, “Yeah I know but we have to write jokes for all of this stuff.”
Jake Tapper brought up the beloved and viral “Behind the Scenes with Trevor Noah” and now it got started. Noah, ” Well honestly it was just an organic thing. We tape live and try to only do two takes and in between I just like talking to the audience. It’s something I have always done. One time we had an audience member that came to two tapings and after the taping he came up to me and asked where he could watch the between the scenes stuff. And I was like, well you can’t. And he was like why not? I said because we don’t film this stuff. But then we thought about it and we were like why don’t we film this? So we started to and just put it up on youtube but we never set out to make it this viral thing that it has become.”
The conversation with the panel fo Daily show correspondents varied from their most favorite pieces they had done, to what they find difficult or surprising with the work that they are doing. Michael Costa talked about his gun segment, “I went to Switzerland because of the gun control laws and their lack of gun violence. I watched 13 year olds go out with their AR-15s and shoot targets after school and they had complete respect for the weapon and what it could do. These targets were out in a field and there with cows around and I’m like, why aren’t we shooting the cows.(Laughs) But that thought never crossed their minds. They just don’t think in a violent way. But then I get back and we run the story and some Americans just freak out about the segment and say it’s not like that and I’m like no, I was literally there and saw it for myself. It’s like they feel so threatened they just can’t bare to think that something like that could exist. And the only point I wanted to make was that we could still own guns respectively.”
Desi Lydic simply made a statement that she started on the Daily Show when she was 6 months pregnant and everyone in eluding Trevor was like, ” Ok great, we may use it on the show we may not. We don’t care it’s fine.” She said, “After that I was like, yeah I am never leaving. It was just great to work somewhere as a women and get that kind of respect and support.” She went on to say, ” You know the stories that I am most interested right now are the inequalities facing women in this country. Recently the United States ranked 49 in the world in women’s issues. And I get so tired of people saying, ” If you don’t like it just leave and go somewhere where they treat women worse.” And I’m like, no. How about she look at what the other countries that are better than us are doing and steal what they are doing because honestly that is the American way anyway.”
Jake Tapper asked Noah and the team what their plans were for 2020 and what they hoped to see. “We really want to tell this new story of America. Trump has a way of sucking the life out of the news cycle,” said Noah. He went on to say, ” I think leading up to 2020 we are going to be focussing on this new narrative and new discussion of the democratic party. Will they destroy each other or will they come together and put up a viable candidate to go up against Trump.””What I do know is that we want to be very present during the election and campaign. We want to accurately provide our viewers with facts that inform people about what is really going on. We want to focus on policy and things that will eventually effect people not just talk about them once they are effecting everyone. Like Brexit for instance, that was a precursor to Trump but I don’t think a lot of people realized that.”
It’s clear that the Daily show team isn’t going anywhere and they will be covering everything they can. Noah finished by saying, “Everyone on the show gives their ideas. These are issues that effect us and really most all Americans. But we are going to be on the campaign trail and we will have a voice and we will be telling the story while having fun.
