In the November 29, 2012 episode of the Daily Show, Stewart focuses on economic issues and the guest is Calvin Trillin.
John Stewart begins the episode mentioning that Mitt Romney and President Barak Obama had lunch at the White House. He does not spend much time on this. He just mentions how cruel it might be to make Romney come to the White House instead of going out to a restaurant. Stewart then discusses the fiscal cliff in a segment called “Cliffpocalypsemageddonacaust: Totally Solvable Budget Problem”. Stewart briefly describes the fiscal cliff as an asteroid the planet launched at itself in order to make sure it could defend itself from asteroids. It was how Congress tried to force itself to compromise on budget issues. They are, according to Stewart, failing spectacularly to work on the budget. Obama says that all that is necessary is to raise taxes and cut back a bit on entitlements. Stewart then shows clips of a Republican saying that they will not allow taxes to be raised and a Democrat saying they will not let entitlements be cut. Stewart then shows a lot of clips of people trying to rename the fiscal cliff and spending an inordinate amount of time on this “problem” instead of talking about actually fixing the real problem.
The second segment features John Hodgman as their resident deranged millionaire. He and Stewart discuss the millionaires’ reactions to Obama’s reelection. Hodgman lists the different things the millionaires will have to do to in order to continue operating. The two main things are to move workers overseas and keep workers at part-time to avoid paying for their healthcare. Stewart is shocked almost speechless, since this is exactly what companies have been doing for decades. Hodgman then throws down a copy of “Atlas Shrugged” and says that the millionaires like him have created a separate community. He then goes to leave, but keeps coming back because he wants Stewart to ask him to stay. Hodgman says that the settlement is horrible since it is full of only rich people it is a miserable place. They do not even have heat, since know one knows how to make it.
The guest for this episode was Calvin Trillin promoting his book, Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Election Campaign in Verse. They discuss a number of things, including the book itself and Stewart now being a member of AARP. The discussion of how Trillin went about writing the book is pretty interesting. So is their discussion of the different candidates that comedians kind of wished would win, purely for humorous effect. They compare themselves to the 20% of dentists who recommend sugary gum, theoretically in order to keep business up. Overall it was kind of a boring episode. I would not really recommend it unless these topics are specifically interesting to you.