Welcome back to "late night." We're here with Jordan Klepper.
You went to Hungary, and Hungary has been
turning up in the discourse here a bit more,
certainly amongst conservatives.
What is the draw of Hungary?
Why do we see Tucker Carlson go there and speak from Hungary?
-That was the question we were trying to answer
when we went there. I think, quite honestly,
they have a leader, Viktor Orban,
who has been called a "more competent" Trump.
Steve Bannon called him "Trump before Trump."
And he's sort of created
this conservative wonderland over there.
He's been in power for 12 years,
something I think Trump would love to do.
-Mm-hmm.
-He's used wedge issues to get people on board.
Right now the LGBTQ issues are something
he's codified in the constitution,
taking away rights from that community.
He's starting to equate homosexuality to pedophilia.
He's creating sort of a scare over there
that's getting people out to the polls.
And what you start to see is, like,
nationalism is starting to reign in Hungary,
and I think conservatives in America look over there
and they see somebody who has the power they want,
is perhaps a smarter version of the man they had in charge,
and is able to put people in power in that country
so that it's much harder for them to get out of power.
So it sort of looks like what I think conservatives
might think America could look like in a few years.
-And are there similarities between what you see there --
It certainly seemed, maybe a little bit more in the clip,
a little bit more polite, a little bit more controlled?
But are there similarities with a MAGA rally?
-Some, yes. I mean, I went to the merch table.
And sort of, like, if you don't have a Second Amendment,
what do you put on your T-shirts?
-Yeah, yeah.
-Calvin can't piss on CNN over here, so what --
what is the political discourse, guys?
-Yeah. -There's definite similarities.
You know, the rhetoric --
Quite honestly, they go to Soros as a bad guy,
who is from Hungary.
And, in fact, some of these tactics were stolen by America
to make the boogeyman that Hungary already had.
I was shocked at how many people referenced Joe Biden
and specifically talked about
Hunter Biden's laptop in Budapest.
Like, I'm going over there
talking about the war in Ukraine,
which is literally next to Hungary.
Which -- I know geography.
I've known where Hungary is for literally months now.
That's where it is. -Yeah.
-So they have a war next door,
but still this obfuscation of reality
and the focus on things like Hunter Biden's laptop,
that's out there in the streets of Budapest,
and people are ready to engage with me about it.
-So, you're doing a podcast right now with John Kasich.
John Kasich, former governor of Ohio.
-It's what the people asked for.
-That's what they asked for.
And he's been on this show, and I always thought,
"You know who you'd love? Klepper."
-"You guys got to do a thing together!"
-So, how did this happen?
Because this does not seem like a natural pairing.
-You know, it's a governor meet cute that I think --
Things got weird during the pandemic.
-Sure. -You know, we were all looking
for connection in strange ways.
We all dabbled with our own governors.
We know. We went through this. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-It's not weird. It's natural, you know?
So you find a governor in a midsize state,
and you start to meet over Zoom.
And some folks actually said, like,
"Hey, Governor Kasich is looking to do a podcast
and talk to somebody with a different point of view.
I think you guys would hit it off."
And I wasn't super into doing a political podcast.
And as soon as we got on a Zoom together, I was shocked
because we talked about Rage Against the Machine
for most of the time.
-Yeah. -He's a huge music fan.
And literally we talked music, we talked sports,
we talked everything away from politics.
So by the time we actually did get to some political issues,
we actually liked each other
and we could kind of meet closer to empathy,
as opposed to just, like, fisticuffs over the economy.
And we kind of thought, like,
maybe this is sort of a unique way to approach
these "bipartisan" conversations.
Like, start with culture, start with things you love,
and then get to politics in kind of an organic way.
-So, I mean, I think that's great.
And I'm always so excited when people from, you know,
differing political views talk.
But, of course, Governor Kasich is an anti-Trump Republican.
Is there any -- Do you -- Does he feel like
there's any future of the party
for the lane that he currently lives in?
-I mean, Governor Kasich often talks about
feeling that the Republican Party left him,
he didn't leave the Republican Party.
And he's much more of an optimist than I am
when we talk about the future.
I don't feel super great about it.
I don't want to put words in his mouth,
but I do think he is optimistic
that there are a lot of moderates in this country
who are looking for people
to voice the concerns that they have.
Actually I don't disagree with him there.
But when I go to places like CPAC,
what I'm seeing is --
I don't see those voices being elevated.
I went to CPAC, and I watched people
like Marjorie Taylor Greene walk through there like Beyoncé.
And so she's got 10 people behind her
with cameras taking pictures.
And there's a lot of young conservatives
who are looking for attention,
and they see Boebert and they see MTG,
and they're like, "That's how you get attention nowadays."
And so, for me, I see the future of the Republican Party,
the only lane seems to be
on the farther right of Donald Trump.
I think Governor Kasich might think it's somewhere else,
but I don't see any evidence of it heading that way.
-You were at the insurrection, January 6th.
You went back. Are you surprised?
-As a member of "The Daily Show."
-Yeah. -It's not like I left something
inside the Capitol like, "My wallet was in here.
It was in this lectern when I flipped it over."
-You went back to try to put back a laptop
you'd stolen before you got caught?
-Yeah.
Legally, I can't get too into it,
but I did go back to D.C., yes.
-Watching it -- I was watching it on TV.
I can't imagine what it was like for you.
You thought like, "Oh, this changes everything,"
and I don't know if it has.
-I don't think it has. -Yeah.
-I think it did feel like a day that could change everything.
I think we keep having those days of,
"This is as far as we can go.
We all have to get on the same page.
There's a common enemy, and it's chaos.
If we could all rally around this flag on this day."
And it felt like that lasted
for an hour or so after the insurrection.
-Yeah. It was a nice hour. -It was a good hour.
-It was a good hour. -It was a real nice hour.
I don't know.
I don't want to say I'm shocked, because I'm not.
I think, like, the news cycle moves so quick,
we don't have to have a memory of those things.
And when I go and talk to people --
I wouldn't talk to people months after the insurrection.
And I was shocked how quick that narrative changed.
And when I went back a year later,
Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene,
they're out there talking about other narratives
that they want to push, and so, sadly, I don't think
we remember the important things from that day,
and that could bite us in the ass.
-Well, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for getting out. It's just fantastic.
Every time I see that you've gone somewhere new,
I get very excited to watch it.
I really appreciate you making time.
You guys, that's Jordan Klepper. -Thank you.
-You can subscribe to "Kasich & Klepper"
wherever you listen to podcasts.
And "Jordan Klepper Fingers the Globe:
Hungary for Democracy"
premieres April 21st on Comedy Central.