The Daily Show: Ears Edition
The Precap | Michael Kosta on Trump's Nobel Snub, and Proper Protest Attire
20 Oct 2025
This week's host Michael Kosta joins Daily Show writer Zach DiLanzo to break down all the news they missed, and preview the week to come. They dig into Trump's Nobel Peace Prize campaign fail, Time Magazine's unflattering flattery, the short deployment of overweight Texas National Guard troops, what to wear to a protest, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What news did Michael Kosta and Zach DiLanzo recap this week?
You're listening to Comedy Central.
All right. Hello and welcome to the pre-cap where we sit down with this week's Daily Show host to preview what's coming up and recap some of the news we might have missed. I'm Zach Delanzo, a writer here at the show, and I'm joined by Michael Kosta. I forgot your name for a second. Michael Kosta, this week's Daily Show host.
It's exciting, and I'm here with my co-host. Co-host for the week. Walter.
Walter, your dog Walter.
But he, the subway ride in stressed him out, so he's asleep.
Yeah, he's chilling. He's chilling. He's one of our beloved office dogs.
He is.
And he's at times a grump. Oh, 100%. But when he does show you affection, that sort of, it feels so special.
Yeah.
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Chapter 2: What happened with Trump's Nobel Peace Prize campaign?
And then I'll sometimes look at previous jokes and I'll be like, oh man, I understand why you didn't go with that one because it wasn't very good. Right now we're in a working dark week, which is like a rare thing we do occasionally a few times a year where we're coming into the office, but we're not doing shows. We're just prepping stuff.
But because of that, we're also missing a lot of fun news that we'd otherwise certainly cover on the show. That's true.
Is there anything... But sometimes these dark weeks, you're like, God, I wish the show was on. No, totally. You know, like when that... I think it was the strike when that submarine exploded. Oh, yeah. And I was like, this isn't funny that people are dead, but come on. There's comedy material. There's stuff here. Yeah, there's material. And this week... I'm kind of like, okay, it's a news week.
I'm not like itching that the show is on.
Right, there hasn't been the one very special thing that everybody's talking about that.
Or it's a very serious thing that you're like, hey, maybe it's better to let the serious people cover this now.
I will say there's been some, well, first of all, there's still a government shutdown, which is sort of like an ongoing story that you can kind of,
talk about but it's just people arguing um about whose fault it is and it's not really a sexy story it's not you know and the other thing i've noticed with this government shutdown even the newscasters are like we've done this before yeah you know and they put up a graphic of all the other times with clinton and obama and bush so it is kind of hard to mind this
Yeah, what do you say about like, well, it's day 16 now.
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Chapter 3: How did Time Magazine portray Trump recently?
I don't know. I guess we try to figure out like a, I guess we have a meeting where we try to figure out a comedic thing. Yeah, but I mean it's, there's always a way to shift it into something funny. Our research team will do a good job of finding like a juicy video of like, Because it's all about, right now it's just everybody making little videos. Democrats are making videos blaming Republicans.
So we have that. The story that I thought was pretty fun this week was, well, Trump, I guess he didn't win the Nobel Prize. Right. And he's very angry about that, which is a very funny thing to be pissed off about. I'm so fucking peaceful. I don't know.
He was kind of putting on a press blitz for that, right? He was sort of shamelessly trying to win. The way you try to win an Emmy.
Yeah, exactly. But I feel like it's one of those things that the more you... It's not like Mother Teresa campaigned to win a Nobel Peace Prize. It's sort of like prom king. If you're asking people to vote for you to be prom king, that's a bad sign.
As soon as you want the Nobel Peace Prize, you're not qualified for it. Yeah, exactly. The whole point of that.
And also part of it was that I guess the way that it works is that you have to be nominated, like, whatever nomination time closed January 31st of this past year. So he was only president for all the stuff that he did that he's claiming should qualify him. So it's like, at least give it another show. Anyway, he was very upset about that. And then, I guess, but also part of the...
I can't even foster an argument for him to have the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, if we accept like his press releases that he's solved all these wars. I mean, I guess you can. I don't even know what wars he's talking about. Yeah, he's always I've solved. I've stopped eight wars. And I do think it is interesting to watch Trump. You know, this was a big paradigm shift for me that was helpful.
I always thought Trump wanted to be at war because the American people support presidents during war. And I was always going, is he gonna get us into war? Is he gonna get us into war? And then I realized, oh, he is a wartime president. It's just he's fighting a war here in the United States. His enemies are. His enemies are here.
So I was like, he is a wartime general, but like traditional American presidents, he's not fighting Russia. He's fighting the elite coastal cities or whoever we are.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the government shutdown?
Yeah, we don't want fat guys. Here's the picture. Have you seen this photo? Now, is this the real photo or did you guys enlarge this photo?
No, no, that's the real photo. And the internet had a bit of fun.
Oh, did they?
Yeah. And, you know, again, it's really sort of these guys are probably nice guys. Of course. By the way, you have any more bullets those guys can take than me? Yeah, they got the meat suit.
They got the meat suit. Yeah. I want this. I want to be fourth and one. Game is on the line, and you need one yard, and you give the ball to any of those people, and you run fast.
Oh, absolutely. This is, yeah, I-formation. And, well, yeah, but as part of that, so this photo came out, and then apparently they sent these guys home after people on the internet were being mean to them. We live in a very petty time, and I think you should be allowed to be fat. Absolutely. And also, they shouldn't be in Chicago in the first place. They should be...
Also, I don't care if the guy operating an unmanned drone is fat. You prefer it. I prefer it. Because you know those guys know how to really sit. They know how to really settle in. You know, another realization of this administration, it sucks, is that they live online. Yeah, it's all optics. It's all online. Online optics. The memes. So if this picture goes up and then the internet...
doesn't respond a different way, they would respond differently. It's one thing just to remember, they live online. Everything is online.
And online is sort of the worst place to live.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the Texas National Guard deployment?
okay running on empty thank you alan i'm amazed alan's still there um that is also like is a fun companion watch to one battle after another and an even funner companion piece to the hatch act which i also yes wait uh go back to the description of running on empty
They're living in the underground and this teenage boy is sort of like dealing with like wanting to actually have his own life and not like be running from the government.
Okay. In 1971, Arthur and Annie Pope blew up a napalm lab to protest the war. Ever since they've been on the run from the FBI, they choose their lives. Well, it's funny you say this because I... went to Vietnam, and I went to the American War Museum, which is what they call it, by the way.
You don't call it the Vietnam War.
And that blew me away that it wasn't called the Vietnam War. Yeah, no, I guess that makes sense. It makes sense, right? Of course it's called the American War. We were on their... Yeah.
Like, we showed up there.
And there is a really, really, really heart-wrenching, extremely sad napalm exhibit.
Oh, my God.
And it is wild. Yeah. And after you see the pictures and the medical consequences and you think you're done with it, I mean, you're crying. You're watching like you see. Or that our country did. Yeah, it's so terrible that we like through liquid fire on their crops, their homes, their kids. It's terrible. Then as you leave that exhibit, there's a bunch of napalm victims who are alive or
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