Comedy Central’s Jordan Klepper welcomed New York Times billionaires reporter Teddy Schleifer to Thursday’s episode of The Daily Show to, naturally, talk about billionaires. During their discussion, Schleifer suggested that Klepper take James Talarico’s victory in Texas as a cure for his “nihilistic” belief that billionaires control the system and there is no hope for the little guy.
Klepper wondered, “This might be a shock to you, but I am not a billionaire. As a non-billionaire, it feels – I become nihilistic and I feel like I have no true say. That we are still just pawns in the large money game. What do you say to a pessimist who hears these things, who reads the billionaire beat, and feels like it is still all a sham and rigged and we are playing by somebody else's rules?”
Schleifer began his response by claiming, “Yeah, I mean. I get it” before offering up Talarico as a counterexample, “I mean, ultimately, like, a lot of Democrats this cycle, like James Talarico, you mentioned, talked about up versus down as opposed to left versus right. There is a sense amongst the very, very wealthy, even if you are far-left or far-right, Elon Musk or whomever, you benefit from the status quo in a lot of ways, the status quo is the status quo because you made it the status quo, right?”
The former Obama speechwriting intern also claimed that:
The best advice I can offer, Jordan, is that change happens very slowly. I see my job and my role as the system as to expose what is and then people here can change it if they want to. But, like, these things happen very, very, very, very slowly. You're talking about Texas. I started my career covering Texas politics 11, 12 years ago now, and like, everyone was so excited about Texas turning blue and then suddenly, it never happened. It never happened again. Never happened again. Never happened again, and then it happened, right, so sometimes 12 years is what it takes to create change and it might take a couple centuries here but –
Klepper interrupted to lament, “A couple centuries?” Schlieffer further joked, “A couple millennia,” as Klepper added, “You think we got that much time, my friend?”
Timetables aside, democracy says that Democrats had a good night on Tuesday, but if the results had gone the other way, that also would have been democracy. The health of democracy is not correlated to whether Elon Musk’s or a New York Times reporter’s preferred Senate candidate in Texas wins.
Here is a transcript for the November 5 show:
Comedy Central The Daily Show
11/5/2026
11:27 PM ET
JORDAN KLEPPER: This might be a shock to you, but I am not a billionaire. As a non-billionaire, it feels – I become nihilistic and I feel like I have no true say. That we are still just pawns in the large money game. What do you say to a pessimist who hears these things, who reads the billionaire beat, and feels like it is still all a sham and rigged and we are playing by somebody else's rules?
TEDDY SCHLEIFER: Yeah, I mean. I get it. I mean, ultimately, like, a lot of Democrats this cycle, like James Talarico, you mentioned, talked about up versus down as opposed to left versus right. There is a sense amongst the very, very wealthy, even if you are far-left or far-right, Elon Musk or whomever, you benefit from the status quo in a lot of ways, the status quo is the status quo because you made it the status quo, right?
The best advice I can offer, Jordan, is that change happens very slowly. I see my job and my role as the system as to expose what is and then people here can change it if they want to. But, like, these things happen very, very, very, very slowly. You're talking about Texas. I started my career covering Texas politics 11, 12 years ago now, and like, everyone was so excited about Texas turning blue and then suddenly, it never happened. It never happened again. Never happened again. Never happened again, and then it happened, right, so sometimes 12 years is what it takes to create change and it might take a couple centuries here but –
KLEPPER: A couple centuries?
SCHLEIFER: A couple millennia.
KLEPPER: You think we got that much time, my friend?
