For his sixth The Daily Show special, Jordan Klepper is taking on the MAGA youth in The Daily Show Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers The Pulse: MAGA: The Next Generation, a half-hour segment airing after directly Monday’s (May 19) new edition of The Daily Show.

The special finds the clever correspondent conversing with Gen Z Donald Trump supporters at Texas A&M, a Miami UFC fight, and in Clearwater, Florida, for spring break. He also interviews a few rather notorious members of the MAGA faithful like former UFC fighter-turned-January 6 convict Scott Fairlamb and the leaders of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans who were criticized for inviting right-wing rabble rouser Andrew Tate to speak to them.

The responses he gets from his interview subjects are, as usual, often shocking and contradictory, and Klepper’s quick wit keeps the exchanges from veering into the morose. So why this particular topic, what were some of the challenges and surprises that came with the newest special, and how does the comedian keep from being frustrated by his interviews? TV Insider caught up with Jordan Klepper to talk about just that.

First of all, do you ever feel scared going into these assignments? 

Jordan Klepper: You know what? I’ve done this long enough that usually the goodwill of people wanting to talk to one another and my big lanky frame allow me to move safely through some of these environments. That being said, I have attended an insurrection and travel now with a cadre of security guards. So they provide a bubble of security for me in these types of situations. However, going into the world of these young MAGA supporters was a much more welcoming, fun environment. You’d be surprised… There’s less fear of getting punched outside a UFC event than there was at a Trump rally in the middle of Pennsylvania.

When did you first notice this through-line of the MAGA youth and decide that this was the subject for the sixth special? 

Well, during the election and post-election, this conversation came up that the Democrats really failed to connect with sort of the youth of America, and stats were showing that young people were shifting farther to the right than they had in the past — especially young men were shifting to the right. And so this was already something that we were aware of when we would cover the election the months before the election, but it was pretty clear after the election that this was a group of people that found something about the MAGA movement that attracted them.

And traditionally, the left-wing hippie movement on campuses, being progressive and left-wing has always sort of been the assumption of what the youth find as interesting. So to suddenly see people drawn to characters like Charlie Kirk or all of the coolness of a Stephen Miller raises some questions as to what is it about this movement that the young people might find cool or appealing. So we knew we wanted to kind of dive in there.

When you were doing these interviews both before and after the election, did you notice any mood shift between how they were reacting to everything? 

Well, most of the interviews that we did for this special were after the election, and I will say, what we’ve noticed is people are open and willing to talk. I did some interviews on Trump’s inauguration day, which wasn’t focused specifically on the youth but was just focused on people who showed up in D.C. wanting to celebrate Donald Trump. And people were very eager to talk to us. They had won. They had felt in good spirits, were not defensive about their positions. In fact, they just wanted to share and promote them. And so, since this Trump election, people have been very open. They felt freedom to talk about things that seem, in their minds, more mainstream and more accepted by the status quo and therefore less defensive in the conversations that we have.

The special shows maybe this was a vibes election with Gen Z. What was your takeaway from all of that? 

Oh, those good old vibes. I think for the younger generation, they are less tied up into the politics. I think … if you’re reading The New York Times day in, day out and sort of a news junkie, you think that all of these numbers that shift left or right are based around policy points that are made with certain politicians. And when you go out into the real world, you realize [it’s about] vibes, culture, narrative attention, and clicks. They might resonate a lot more with people. And so yeah, when we were talking to people, we did have some policy conversations with some of the MAGA youth, but more often than not they felt a cultural connection to Donald Trump. They felt excited about, if not him, the attention that he got.

And I think that’s a big part. I always come back to what the attention of it all is. Donald Trump’s the biggest story on the planet. It has been for quite some time. And if you’re just plugging in and checking things out, and you have a social media app that’s feeding you the stories of the day, you’re seeing that as a compelling story of the day. Whether you see it as a villain or as a hero, it’s something that’s been in your face. And if you’re 18, it’s been in your face for the majority of your life. You’re almost just following a narrative that has been, has been pushed upon you for the entirety of your existence. So yes, it’s I think a little bit larger than just vibes, but also I think politics is downstream from culture, and in the last few years the MAGA culture has been everywhere.

How does your preparation for interviewing them change from what you were used to doing with generic MAGA folks? 

You know what? The preparation for this is I had to learn some early [social media]. I feel like an old fogey in that we were talking about TikTok, and I don’t have a TikTok feed, partially because I hit a point where I had all of the social media feeds on my phone that I needed to have, and everything else was just going to rip apart my soul from the inside out. And yet, as we were talking to people out in the field, you realized how much of a powerful tool, something like TikTok is in crafting somebody’s perspective and point of view… There was a recent study that showed that created a generic account for a 16-year-old male, and then within 20-some-odd minutes, they started being fed toxic masculinity, anti-feminist propaganda, and all this stuff. So in preparation for this special, we created a TikTok feed. We jumped on board with it, and we started to play around with it. And quite frankly, it melted my mind. Beyond just the content that was out there, the way in which it attacked my senses and the way in which it cut between loud noises and eccentric points of view, absurdism, extremist rhetoric, it made me age two decades in a matter of minutes. I put myself under the assault of social media, and I came out worse for wear.

When it came to choosing the locations, what went into these three specific points: Texas A&M, the Miami UFC fight, and the Clearwater spring break? 

Well, for us, it’s always where, where is something interesting happening, and is there comedy to be found and something revealing to be found? Going to the Gulf of America on spring break, that was a no-brainer. We’re like, “They’re gonna change the name, are people excited about that? Let’s see what the youth have to say.” The UFC world, that has been something that has been talked about in the MAGA-sphere for quite some time, and there was a UFC event in Miami that we went to, and lo and behold Donald Trump shows up at that event, and that becomes the main event. And then we also wanted to go to a college campus, and Turning Point USA is one of the biggest right-wing organizations that goes to college campuses and talks to students, and they were having an event. Kids were coming out, they were talking politics, so we went to campus that day to talk to kids about it. So for us, what is so special about what I get to do with Fingers the Pulse is that we go where action is happening. It’s not just us sitting in a studio talking about the things that we see on television. It’s like, “Let’s go to where people are congregating while they’re congregating.”

I think for this special, what is interesting is it was based mostly around these cultural moves and not just political rallies, but people are going to UFC fights. They’re there because they want to cheer on the fighters that are there, and we can get into a conversation about politics and how it affects their life if it does.

You also went to interview Scott Fairlamb. Was he aware of what you were actually doing in that interview?

So Scott Fairlamb, we met him at a coffee shop up in Jersey, I believe, and yeah, he was there on January 6th. He pled guilty for assaulting a police officer. He has written a book about that experience, and we reached out to him because he was also an MMA fighter, found himself on January 6th — he’s had sort of an arc of, I think how he might see it as an element of redemption, although he’s still resistant to accountability when it comes to what happened on January 6th. He still points the finger at places like Antifa. And so we wanted to talk to him because we’re open about this special that we’re looking at, which is about sort of the rise of youth culture in the MAGA movement and also the rise in popularity of UFC and MMA. We’re like, “You’re sort of at the center of what this can be. Will you talk to us about it?” It was a little bit of a tense conversation at times because he knew where we stood, and I was there on January 6th, he was there on January 6th. I wanted to talk about the experiences that happened there on January 6th. I was surprised to see that he had tattoos of the Capitol that he gave himself inside prison of January 6th, so it’s it’s those moments where you really grow as a human and understand the lived experiences that other people have.

Speaking of tense interviews, the conversation you had with the young Republicans of Tampa Bay was probably the most engaged that I’ve seen you as far as responding to them in real time. What made you decide to be so corrective with them in particular? 

I think that interview to me was so very telling. The Tampa Bay Young Republicans invited Andrew Tate to come speak to them when Andrew Tate was coming from Romania charged of human trafficking, and they extended this invitation, and they were rebuked by many on the left and some people on the right for this invitation. And to me what it sort of exemplified was the younger MAGA generation playing by the rules of MAGA and just how difficult it is to navigate that world if you have core principles, a moral compass, and a soul. And I think these young Republicans had all of those things. And in talking to them about it, I think they had conservative beliefs that they wanted to espouse. And they needed attention and clicks, so they did this thing — because in the world of MAGA, attention is good no matter how you get it. So court somebody like Andrew Tate and then live in those repercussions. And the fact that I could kind of check them in real-time, and you can see in those moments to me the very human moments where it’s like, “You’re playing his game. His game is cruel, it’s mean, it has no repercussions, it has no morality.” In fact, I think so much of this MAGA movement is amoral, it’s empty inside, it’s a husk, it’s a grift. And then you see young people who are looking for an identity. And they try on this suit, this MAGA suit, and [say,] “Let’s play by these MAGA rules.” And they find themselves alone adrift when you’re like, “I don’t think you want Andrew Tate to come and talk. I think you are disgusted by what he is accused of. I don’t think you want to be a part of this conversation at all, except you’ve chosen to play by the rules of MAGA and they’ve given you this playbook, and it is uncomfortable to play.” If you have a moral compass, and I think you see that in those moments, [they’re] struggling with that reality.

How do you avoid letting the sea of ignorance that you wade into get you down? 

Well, I mean, I like engaging… I find hope in those moments because when you sit down and talk to these people — I get along with a lot of the people I sit down and talk to. I might be frustrated with their opinions, but I think more often than not they come from good curious places, and I saw that out there. Here in the special [we see] people are looking for meaning, they’re looking for community, they’re looking for identity, and they’re reflective of sort of what it was like when I was their age as well. So I like that. I’m glad that it’s still there. I’m not so cynical as to not see that. And yet I think they are being preyed upon by these older generations who want to exploit their vulnerability and their curiosity for their own their own profit. And so that pisses me off. How I deal with that? Well, it’s tough. That’s a little bit of bourbon and stoicism, it tries to get me through it.  I watch a lot of the NBA when I get home just to try to put my mind in another place. So if the Knicks keep winning, I’m going to feel good about life for a little while longer. [Laughs.] But I do find those moments of connection and openness from this younger generation as inspiring, and it doesn’t mean that they’re not being preyed upon by so many outside forces that want to manipulate that openness, but I think it is still there in our humanity that like we are searching and open for the good ideas. I just hope people find them.

You had a lot of really good zingers… Were there any this in this special that you were particularly proud of? 

Oh, the top zingers. I mean, there’s so many moments. To me, my favorite moments come from the people we talk to… I laughed so hard when I talked to the students at Texas A&M, I just tried to figure out literally what they were interested in, and one student was interested in Jordan Belfort and The Wolf of Wall Street. And to me what was very humorous was that he just liked that it was a story of a dude who was successful and got rich as opposed to what I see as a satire of sort of those excesses, and it’s sort of, in a nutshell, Trump’s America.

And this has always happened also with these types of films. The movie Wall Street, I think, was a satire on greed and then sort of became a calling card for those in the Wall Street movement as well, and it’s like, oh yeah, the kids see the cool in something like Wolf of Wall Street, and they see it as a hero’s journey, whereas I think the older generations like, “Oh no, but that’s a satire of what not to do.” This is where we don’t connect. So I very much enjoyed that moment.

Have you started thinking about what you want to do for your seventh special?

I hope if democracy stays strong for another six months or so, we are going to find plenty of things to cover. This is what is great about getting to do these specials is you get to kind of dive into a topic and expand on it a little bit more. I think the Trump administration has been moving at quite the pace. And so the topics keep churning and changing over, but it’s sort of our job here at The Daily Show and with these specialists to keep an eye out for what is sort of in the culture and in the movement that we can jump aboard. So we’ll be looking at that soon after we get through this one.

The Daily Show Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse: MAGA: The Next Generation airs after The Daily Show on Monday, May 19, at 11:30 p.m. ET/PT and will be available on Paramount+ and The Daily Show‘s YouTube Channel and on-demand on May 20.