The Real Election Threat with Casey Newton and Renée DiResta

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

Comedy Central

Comedy, News Commentary, Politics, News

4.5 • 10.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the Senate debates the SAVE America Act amid unfounded claims of voter fraud, Jon is joined by Georgetown Research Professor Renée DiResta and Platformer editor Casey Newton to examine what actually threatens our elections. Together, they investigate how algorithms are engineered to push users toward platform owners' preferred ideologies, explore the incentives driving Silicon Valley's rightward shift, and discuss how Republicans have weaponized disinformation to undermine electoral trust and rewrite voting rules in their favor. This episode is brought to you by: GROUND NEWS - Go to https://groundnews.com/stewart to see how any news story is being framed by news outlets around the world and across the political spectrum. Use this link to get 40% off unlimited access with the Vantage Subscription. MAGIC SPOON - Get $5 off your next order at https://magicspoon.com/tws Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more: > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast > TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod > BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/theweeklyshowpodcast.com Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic Producer – Gillian Spear Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, we've got Simon on the line. Simon, young people, they're just all a bit, a bit lazy, aren't they?
0:09.0	What are you fucking lame?
0:10.0	Welcome to McDonald's.
0:11.0	Have you get the six minutes, please?
0:12.0	Some say young people are work shy, but at McDonald's, we hired 47,000 of them last year.
0:19.0	How's your night?
0:20.0	Like George here, who keeps things running during a Friday rush.
0:25.2	Resilience, making it happen at McDonald's.
0:38.8	Hello everybody.
0:40.4	Welcome to the weekly show podcast.
0:46.4	My name is John Stewart, and I will be your audio guide to this week's podcast.
0:47.3	It is Tuesday.
0:48.1	It is March 17th. It is St. Patrick's Day.
0:49.7	And I am...
0:52.0	Oh, that's...
0:52.7	It's all blue.
0:53.7	Blue and gray. I blue, blue and gray.
0:54.4	I'm in blue and gray.
0:55.3	Does that signify anything?
0:56.9	Today, it probably doesn't.
1:00.2	We are still, I guess, entering week three of our war with Iran.
1:04.4	But I want to talk about a different threat to the country.
	...

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