Jon Stewart called out after suggesting Germany may revert to Nazism without US military influence
Former Mitt Romney advisor Oren Cass appeared on Stewart's show to discuss President Donald Trump's tariffs and his forthcoming book, "The New Conservatives."
While discussing the role the U.S. military should play in overseas conflicts, specifically in Europe and Russia, Stewart alluded to the last time Germany was in the position of being a "global military power": World War II. He seemed to suggest that Germany would revert to Nazism if the U.S. didn't financially support their war efforts.
Stewart asked Cass if expecting "Germany to be able to fend off Russia on their own" would place the U.S. in a "very tenuous place."
"Why?" Cass asked.
"I have a book at home about Germany and their position as a global military power, where we didn't have sway, and they did whatever they wanted, and it didn't work out," Stewart said, to the laughter of the audience.
"No, no, no, I want to pick up on this," Cass replied over the laughter of the audience. "Because this is the fun applause line that like, 'Oh, the Germans will just become Nazis again,' like that's a weird racist critique of Germans. I don't see any reason to believe that."
Stewart responded, "Well," while grinning, to which Cass replied, "Let's be honest, it is."
Cass then asked Stewart, "On what basis are you saying this is like something about Germany that we can't abide?"
"I think it's that there is an element within their society that they've deemed… this is not me saying Germans will do that, this is Germany. This is, I didn't say they'll become that, the leaders of Germany are fearful that they have this…" Stewart attempted to explain before being interrupted by Cass.
Cass fired back at Stewart, claiming that the leaders of Germany just "really enjoy spending virtually nothing on their military while the United States spends roughly 4% of GDP on ours."
Stewart then asked if Cass felt that Germany was "freeloading on our military."
"There's no question they're freeloading on our military," Cass replied.
"The Daily Show" host explained why he doesn't see the U.S. building up its allies' militaries as "freeloading."
"I guess I don't understand the idea that they're freeloading, and we want each nation state to build up their military to the point, because to me, that makes it more likely if you build something like that, it's more likely you'll use it. Now that seems to be backed by general history when people rearm they tend to do it and use it," Stewart explained.
In a discussion about Trump's tariffs on nations like Canada and his ambitions for America to take ownership of Greenland, Stewart claimed that it feels like the current administration is trying to establish a "new world order," rather than "rebalancing economic inequalities."
"It all seems so weirdly vindictive, and then you're like, and then we're going to take over Greenland. Like, it does feel a little less like rebalancing economic inequities, and we've decided on a new world order where big does what it wants, and nation states we go back to a little bit of that colonialist model or imperialist or whatever it was," Stewart suggested.
While Cass acknowledged that this was a "fair concern," he challenged Stewart's claims by offering his own take on the situation.
"I think there's some truth to it that's not all bad when you talk about this 'new world order' idea, which is that the United States has been sort of championing this liberal world order where we have essentially taken it upon ourselves to, frankly, absorb a lot of costs from other people, right? So in the trade world, it's not just China, it's also Germany and Japan and Korea. We are absorbing their production, they get the jobs," Cass explained before being interrupted by Stewart.
Stewart asked Cass if he thought the U.S. was doing this in an effort to "buy influence," and claimed that Trump's view on the situation is that these nations were "abusing us."
"I think the view I have is, America wants to tell them what to do and so, by leveraging our military might, we have sway," he said.
Cass responded, asking, "But do we? What have we successfully told Japan or Germany to do?"
Stewart jokingly responded, "Uh, in general?" to the laughter of the audience, adding, "Uh, stop wearing the lederhosen, I think they've cut down on it."
"No, no, no, no, this is a serious point. I appreciate the joke, but there's a reason you couldn't answer the question," Cass fired back.
Stewart then alluded to Vice President JD Vance's trip to Greenland, where Stewart claimed the vice president disrespected Denmark, and that Denmark lost just as many people per capita during the wars in the Middle East as the U.S. did.
He also claimed that the "stable world order" hasn't mistreated the United States, and that he doesn't see us "as victims of a con game that Europe has been running on us."
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