- Question here, sir.

- Your thoughts on the interview Monday on "Daily Show?"

- My thoughts on what?

- Monday's "Daily Show," the guest interview.

- Oh, what's your name?

- Dan.

- Dan.

Let me just suggest to you, I shared a room with that guy.

(audience laughs) - Can you tell everybody, for the benefit of people that didn't see?

- It's my brother, Ari, he was on "The Daily Show."

(audience laughs) And Ari and I shared a room and a bunk bed for 17 years.

(audience laughs) - Man.

- And we are separated.

Ari's born March 29th, I'm born November 29th.

Now I want to say, we are unbelievable neat nicks now, to a like ACD kind of spectrum kind of issue.

When we had our room, it was so messy.

My father used to say we would wake up in the morning and look for ourselves.

We couldn't find ourselves.

(audience laughs) Look, the Emanuel boys are very competitive, but very loyal to each other.

I don't think it's fully appreciated, my brother, obviously he's up front, frank about it.

He had significant, and still does, dyslexia.

And he chooses a profession that requires reading.

You could think of all things you want to do in life.

If you have dyslexia, learning to read scripts.

So Ari used to get up at four in the morning, because it took him harder and longer.

And you'll know Ari from kind of the caricature.

You don't know Ari the character and the character of that person.

The hours he works.

He's raised three wonderful young boys.

He's had his fourth, a daughter, who's fabulous.

He's a great father.

There's a joke in the family, when the kids had their bar mitzvah and Ari would speak, would it be 60 seconds before he cried or 45?

(audience laughs) So he's a beautiful soul who has done really tremendous things, beyond the wealth, the glamour, the Hollywood.

But he chose a career, or it chose him, that you would not have predicted for a young man with hyperactivity, and trust me, that's an understatement, and dyslexia.

And he's done unbelievable things in his life because he has one of the greatest EQs I've ever seen.

Within a minute he knows a person, and he knows their strengths, their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities and their hopes.

- Great, thank you.

- Hi Pam.

- Hey.

Hey.

Your very diverse background fascinates me, but one of the things that I would like you to comment about is what you learned from being ambassador to Japan.

My grandfather was ambassador to Japan decades ago.

And so it's an amazing culture and I would love to hear what you took away from that.

- Well, do I have to sit still for this part?

- You do whatever you want.

- Okay.

But don't say that, because that's dangerous.

(audience laughs) So like 20 things.

First of all, no, I mean, it's an incredible culture.

I say this as somebody that created safe passage routes so our kids in Chicago could walk to school and think of their studies, not their safety.

In Japan, five year olds walk to school alone.

They're this big, their backpack's this big, they have a little baseball cap, they have their school uniform on.

They get to a crosswalk, they know exactly where to go.

They raise their hand, all the cars come to a stop.

They just cross the street.

Mount Fuji ain't pretty.

That is sublime.

Beautiful.

They wear a mask to protect you, not to protect themselves.

We get there our first week, and we're out, and Amy, we're going to go get a cup of coffee, we're kind of like exploring neighborhoods, and I'll say, "I'll watch our stuff."

And I'm looking around at this restaurant, cafe, backpack, a purse, a telephone, a computer.

They save spaces by putting their most valuable products there, or possessions, rather.

So it's a whole different culture.

Now two, I learned a tremendous amount, Japan's longful of our Indo-Pacific policies.

But I want to be honest with you, the country I learned the most about was the United States of America.

I was 8,000 miles away, 12 hours ahead.

I used to joke with my kids, "I saw Thursday, don't get out of bed, it's not that great."

(audience laughs) But I saw a country I didn't recognize anymore.

We are built on an ethos that failure is not an option and we have come to accept failure as a default.

Nobody would ever accept 50% of our kids reading, falling behind grade level on reading, also that in math.

You guys, whether you like it or not, have a pretty impressive energy system.

None of this is on China.

We are making choices or not making choices.

We have given up the grit.

I don't mind competing against China, I'm just not into forfeiting the game.

And so I learned a tremendous amount about the United States.

Now, Japan as a society, a culture, it's a fascinating place.

Now, we're a young country.

I'll joke, one thing on the culinary scene, I said, "You're there and you go to a place and they will tell you, 'Well, this is the time the fish go by the bay, and this is why we have salmon this week.

Or this mushroom only grows during this.'"

I said, "I don't know if you know this, but in America, in the culinary, we think we've discovered farm to table.

You have been doing it for 900 years.

You may want to market this thing."

(audience laughs) So it's really, at every level, one of the most incredible cultures.

And Amy, and I'll say one, this is not on TV, what I'm doing, right?

- No, but people will see it.

(audience laughs) - Oh.

So I don't really care then.

(audience laughs) So when we were dating, I said, "I would never run for office."

So I'm kind of 0-6.

But I said, "At some point in our lives, we should live overseas."

And we were thinking like one month a little paraiso in Florence.

I gave her three years in Japan.

I though that was pretty good balance, I would say.

- Yeah.

(audience laughs) - But we had a tremendous life.

I learned something about a culture and a society I didn't know, not just in the United States, but Japan.

And it was also an understanding of China as a threat, a competitor in the Indo-Pacific.

- Well, you were a fabulous ambassador, thank you.

- Great answer.

- Pam?

I got a wife you can call.

- All right.

(audience laughs) (audience applauds) - Sir.

- Hi there, Ambassador, my name's Art Pronin from Houston, Texas, and I'm a Jewish community organizer there for a long time.

We have the highest turnout in the state of Texas.

Here's my question, being a Jewish American, Jewish American, it's been very difficult lately on the far left, far right in our spaces.

What kind of words of encouragement do you have for people like me who are facing this suddenly in the last couple of years, day in and day out, with this extremism?

So that's my question.

- Yeah, well, It's not a joke but there's an old saying, paranoid people have enemies too, you know?

Okay.

So look, Jewish communities in the country is 2% of the population and yet 75% of all religious hate crimes.

I don't know if you know that, but that math does not work.

But I want to tell you, so there is a real problem.

Now, antisemitism has always existed, always.

The question you should ask is what let it become, not quiet or ugly statements, but public, and then you act on it in a violent way.

I have a couple theories of that, but I also want to, before we get there, I want to give you examples of my life where I would say there's a goodness and a grace in America that you should never lose sight of.

So when I'm running for Congress in Chicago, I'm running in a seat that was known as the Polish seat.

No, I mean, we're an ethnic city.

We have 147 languages spoken in our public schools.

You have a community called Ukrainian Village, and I'm running, five people in the race.

One of them is a Polish state rep, woman.

If you had done it by the numbers, she was supposed to be the congresswoman.

When I'm running, it becomes very ugly, and said some very ugly comments.

I actually was forced, of the five candidates, to produce my birth certificate to prove that I was born.

I used to tease Obama that I was a birther before you were a birther.

(audience laughs) Now in the five-way race, I got nearly 50% of the vote, because I knew, having gone across the district, meeting people at their door, front stoops, grocery stores, and train stations, that they were going to judge me on my character.

They were good people, good values, raising their kids to know right from wrong.

And I put my confidence and faith in them.

I won.

Later, about a decade later, when I decided to leave President Obama's side and run for mayor, there were ugly things said then, five-way race, money changer in the temple, et cetera, very ugly things.

And I won in a five-way race above 50% of the vote.

And again, I believe, even though the Jewish community in the city of Chicago is only 2%, that there would be people from all, to win obviously I had a multiracial, multi-ethnic vote, that happened.

When Amy and I are overseas and I'm ambassador to Japan, somebody on our fence painted really ugly Nazi insignia.

And the next day, a neighbor who, to this day, as I stand here before you, cleans it all up.

I don't know who.

I keep saying it, hoping one day somebody will raise their hands, say that, "I was the one that washed it out."

So I have been a target and I have been also the beneficiary of the grace and goodness of the American people.

It is an ugly time.

I will tell you, anytime in the history of the Jewish people there's financial stress, antisemitism becomes ugly.

But I will tell you a bigger thing.

Our faith is not anybody's problem.

The fact that Americans have lost faith in America, that's our problem.

That's what we should be focused on.

And if our faith is your problem, you got a problem, I don't have a problem.

- That's true, that's true.

- Okay, my Judaism led me to make sure 10 million kids got healthcare that never had it.

It is my Judaism, talked about healing the world, that made sure that 40,000 kids who never had pre-K got pre-K.

We have a problem as a country, not just specifically our Jewish community, where bigotry, hatred, and the violence associated with it has been given a permission slip.

Now, if you walk away from this, I think all of us have a role to play in empathy, and we have, all of us, (button clatters) whoa, all of us have allowed our hearts to get hardened and to not listen anymore.

A president has a role to play in setting the tone and tenor, but that doesn't resolve any of us from our obligation as citizens to hear other people, listen to other people, and empathize.

It doesn't mean we agree.

I mean, look, our family dinner tables, we're "The Hunger Games."

(audience laughs) Listening was not a strong suit, but we all have to work on it.

And it's not, "You can disagree without being disagreeable."

It's true, but it's more than that.

And so, given your work, you have every right to ask individually about the Jewish faith in the community, but we have a larger challenge as a society.

And I don't mean to get to policy, but I do want to say one thing.

I have said this before, for a host of reasons, I believe the last six months of high school should be dedicated to universal national service.

Put every, look, I know what I was doing in the last six months of high school.

I could have done something a little more productive.

(audience laughs) Make every young man and woman in this country, I don't care if you're doing tutoring, I don't care if you're cleaning up a park, I don't care if you're cleaning up a beach, I don't care if you're rebuilding a playground.

I want you working with somebody you don't know next to you, painting a school, rebuilding a playground.

The threads of our citizenship have been frayed.

And if we want a sense of America, citizenship is not voluntary.

It comes with responsibilities, not just rights.

And we've lost that as a country.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

(audience applauds) Eric, do we have time for one more?

Ambassador, are you okay with one more?

- Yeah.

- Okay, sir, last one right here.

- Ambassador, I'm Walter Casey.

Thank you for the last answer, that was pretty wonderful.

Let me drag you back to politics, if I can, for a second.

- Brother, you didn't have to drag me.

(audience laughs) - He went willingly.

- That's right.

- I think a lot of the things you said about how we help clean that swamp out, I would encourage you to go from 75 to 70 personally, having just crossed that barrier.

We don't need people like me there.

(audience laughs) - Your family agrees with you.

- One of the things that I'd like to understand better is one, you didn't comment on perhaps term limits, which I think could perhaps clean that out a lot faster than the legislation that's there.

But how do you go to the Congress and tell people who are sitting there, and who have been career politicians that, one, you get eight years as the president, 12 years as a senator, eight years as a congressman, and you're out, or, with all due respect, you aged out, so to speak.

How do you get that actually done?

- Well, so two things.

One is, look, everybody's been talking about term limits.

It hasn't happened.

So at some point, doing more of the same and expecting a different result ain't going to work.

Number two, by making 75 universal across the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branch, it's everybody, it's inclusive, so nobody gets a break.

Number three, I actually do think 75 has a relationship to the armed forces to corporate.

And so if it works in other professions, it's going to work in public service.

And then fourth, or finally, it's part of a bigger package.

It's not a standalone.

As you notice, I said five things, not one thing.

- Right.

- So one, the longer you stay in that town, which is why, when I was done working for President Clinton, I was done in Congress, and I was done for President Obama, I did make a beeline for the airport and went home to Chicago.

As soon as my passes were in at the White House, I was out.

So 75 cleans, everybody knows it.

It's the age limit, get out.

But also, that doesn't do it all.

It's a barrier.

It's an artificial, not artificial, but it's mandated.

We have it for our armed forces.

You have it in corporate boards.

You have it at universities.

So it's part of society already.

So it's not like something you're trying to impose.

It's just making the government do what other parts of society do.

But banning stock trading, what I said about the prediction markets, mandatory blind trust.

I'll just give you one example from my career.

I get to Congress, I did Clinton for seven years, two years to take care of my family financially, to make sure they're healthy and everything, so I go back to politics or I get to Congress, I get on financial services.

So as soon as I get there, I said, "I'm going to do a blind trust."

Chairman Oxley, who was part of writing Sarbanes-Oxley, he's the chair of the finance committee.

He comes to my office.

I'm a pipsqueak freshman and a minority.

He says, "I really don't want you to do this."

I said, "Mr.

Chairman, I'm a hard player.

I'm going to vote on something in your committee one day, and the same day, or within 24 hours, the guy that I gave our family resources to is going to trade," I said, "And they're not going to be related?

You guys are going to hit me back."

I said, "Uh-uh."

- He didn't want you to do it because it made everybody else look bad?

- He did not want me, he said it'd be the first time on the committee, he did not want that standard.

And my view is no.

Now, in my public life, as mayor, as chief of staff, as congressman and ambassador, I had a blind trust.

Now, I happen to think, now this is artificial.

I say a million net value worth, you got to have some number, and you go, and it's mandatory.

It's not like, you don't get to have a question about it.

And I think all those together, but I also, and I want to include the foreign donations is a part.

We have governments, and individuals as representative of governments, like the UAE is an investor in the president's crypto business.

- Yep.

- I mean, you don't have to be a PhD student to figure this out.

And so to me, the 75 is part of that package.

And the reason you haven't, after 20 years, gotten term limits is because it's artificial.

Here you're adopting what's in society already in there.

Now, as somebody that has done government and done things, and passed massive legislation, called healthcare and financial reform and the assault weapon ban, I think that has a better chance of working and getting done than standalone term limits, which they will never impose.

And if you get the Executive brach part of it, and the Judicial part, you don't make the Legislative isolated.

- Good.

- Okay, thank you.

- All right.

(audience applauds) Rahm Emanuel, give him a big hand.

Thank him very much for being here.

(audience applauds) Thank you all for being here!

(audience applauds)