[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
[upbeat rock music]
*
[cheers and applause]
- Welcome, welcome, welcome to "Last Week Tonight."
I'm John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Just time for a quick recap of the week,
and we begin with nuclear weapons:
the most terrifying thing you can stockpile,
right after baby dolls.
[laughter]
[shudders]
This week-- this week saw
the biennial Nuclear Security Summit
in Washington.
All the major world leaders were there.
Well, almost all of them.
Todd: One leader who could make a huge difference
in securing nuclear material was a no-show.
Vladimir Putin has once again snubbed President Obama.
- And that is not ideal,
because a nuclear summit
is pretty much the only gathering
where you can legitimately say, "Man, this would be
so much better if Vladimir Putin were here."
[laughter]
It's pretty much that.
Russia had actually announced
Putin would be skipping the summit
a year and a half ago,
which is a pretty strong statement.
Normally, you only decline something that far in advance
if it's a wedding save the date from your ex-fiancée.
"Oh, nice try, Beth.
"As it happens, I am busy 17 months from now.
"Why?
"Fuck you, that's why.
You hurt me, Beth."
But even without Putin, there were plenty of issues
regarding nuclear weapons to talk about,
especially the fact that,
just two days before they gathered,
America's potential next president
mentioned that he would be perfectly comfortable
with other countries becoming nuclear powers,
including Japan and South Korea.
- At some point, we have to say,
"You know what?
"We're better off if Japan protects itself
"against this maniac in North Korea.
"We're better off, frankly, if South Korea
is going to start to protect itself."
Cooper: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons?
- Saudi Arabia, absolutely.
- Absolutely. Yep.
He says that with the confidence
of a man who could easily find Saudi Arabia on the map
if--if he was given three tries,
and the map only included countries ending with "Arabia."
And--and that's not all, because this week,
Trump also refused to rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe,
for reasons including, and I quote,
"Europe is a big place,"
and "It's a big place," is not a good excuse
for using nuclear weapons.
It's barely a good excuse for peeing in the ocean.
[laughter]
It was--it was clearly extremely important
that the president try and reassure
the rest of the planet
by providing some context for Trump's remarks.
- The person who made the statements
doesn't know much about foreign policy,
or nuclear policy, or the Korean Peninsula,
or the world generally.
- Yeah, President Obama is basically implying there
that you could fill a book
with the things Donald Trump doesn't know,
that book being the encyclopedia.
[laughter]
But--but let's turn now to happier news:
the baseball season started today.
[cheers and applause]
Yeah, exactly.
It's a romantic time,
because anything is still possible.
The Cubs could win it all,
Ichiro could join the elite 3,000 Hit Club,
and the Philly Phanatic could get waxed
and finally reveal the tight, slammin' bod
he's been hiding under all that green fur.
Good for him.
He looks good. Good for him.
There is only one thing, however,
that we can all be absolutely sure of this season,
and that is that the New York Yankees
will continue finding ways
to look like the biggest elitist assholes
in all of sports.
This is--this is, after all,
a team that does things like blow $275 million on A-Rod,
a man who poses for photos like this one.
Ahoy there!
Ahoy there, asshole!
[laughter]
It's like that scene from "Titanic,"
except this time,
you're actively rooting for the sea.
[laughter]
The Yankees even have what they call
a "Legends Club" for elite members,
and their sales pitch for it
is just as obnoxious as you'd expect.
- Legends is an amazing, amazing private club.
It's the first five rows of our stadium.
We have first-class accommodations,
five-star dining, in-seat service.
We have an amazing concierge team
that assists with any needs that you do have
with a concierge.
We do have our private suite entrance,
which is for our Legends clients,
where they access the lobby
and access before any of the rest of our guests.
- "That's right, we provide priority lobby access.
"And for our Diamond Elite members,
"we'll even drive you to a restaurant
"nowhere near the stadium so you don't have to fraternize
with these baseball-loving peasants."
[laughter]
And this is where the Yankees have, amazingly,
found a way to even antagonize their own fans,
because this year, they got rid of the option
to print tickets at home,
and when fans complained that this would
make it harder for them to resell those tickets online,
the Yankees COO, Lonn Trost,
seen here posing in the exact way
you'd expect a Yankees executive to pose--
he went on the radio and denied those effects,
but in doing so, threw in a comment
that made it clear what he thinks
of some of Yankees' less affluent fans.
- Wow. Wow.
He's saying rich people couldn't bear
to sit next to people who aren't as rich,
which would be offensive if you were
talking about the opera, much less a sport
whose primary fashion statement is the goatee.
And--and that is why the Yankees make sure
no one gets into their most premium seating
who doesn't belong there.
And that explains why so many of their fanciest seats
are often empty during the season.
But for the first three games of this season at least,
there will be riffraff in those seats,
and I'll tell you why.
We bought two Legends seats
to the first three games this week,
and they are right in this area, behind home plate.
They're right behind home plate.
And we will sell them to you for just 25¢ apiece
on one condition:
you must dress like you have never sat
in a premium location before.
[laughter]
What that means can be up to you.
That's up to you.
Simply-- simply tweet us a photo
of what you and a guest would wear to the game,
with the hashtag:
Make sure to include a hashtag
for the game you'd want to attend,
so that's #Monday, #Wednesday, or #Thursday,
and we will pick the winners
based on the looks we like the best.
We are legally bound to give you these contest rules,
as well as mention that the Yankees
are not involved in this contest in any way,
although that should be pretty fucking obvious by now.
Enjoy the game,
and please give A-Rod our best.
[cheers and applause]
And now this:
- So I'm cross-training,
and I train with Frayne.
It's--he's the Marquis de Sade of personal trainers.
- You have broad shoulders. - I do.
- Yes. - They're getting broader.
- Yeah. - With my trainer, Eddie.
I have a trainer.
He's the Marquis de Sade of trainers.
I train with Frayne.
You don't train specifically with Eddie Frayne.
- Well, you know-- - He might be too tough for you.
If you want, I'll show you what I do.
Here with some workout tips is my trainer, Eddie Frayne.
This is for the lower back.
People do not do enough for the lower back.
I want to be Jack LaLanne, that's who I want to be.
- Yes. - He's gone now, but--
- But he was in great shape to the end.
- I want to be doing one-armed push-ups.
- Just like that, working his triceps.
- For the straight leg lift. - All right, walk it out.
- It's hard. It's an hour.
When you train with Frayne, it's hard.
I'm gonna see if it's possible, 'cause I have a trainer.
- Straight legs. Keep his legs straight.
- You did 30, and I did 40, and you were whining
and saying, "Let's go to break."
You're involved in this next one.
- No, I'm not.
I'm involved in making sure that I check--
- You can use the girly knee push-up if you want.
- No.
Anyway, let's get a check on the markets this morning.
[laughter]
- Moving on.
Our main story tonight concerns political fundraising,
and before you roll your eyes, this not going to be
about how money corrupts presidential candidates.
For that, you can read much more
on your most annoying friend's Facebook posts.
"Dan, that is a comment on a picture of a baby.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?
Take it down."
I would like to talk instead about congressional fundraising,
which is much less covered but no less astonishing.
In the 2014 election cycle,
candidates for the House and Senate
raised a combined $1.7 billion.
That's a lot of money.
That's more than it costs to buy
230 million tubes of hemorrhoidal cooling gel,
and it's somehow even more upsetting.
Now--now, interestingly, much of that money
has to be raised, one way or another,
by the politicians themselves,
which they have complained about for years
and say that it can be the worst part of their job.
- You know, I hated raising money.
Hated it.
- It's painful, frankly,
to continually ask people for money.
- If Don and I could tell you how many hours we spend
with our good colleagues on our side of the issues
talking about raising money, it would be an embarrassment.
Because it is an embarrassment.
- Wow, an embarrassment!
That is a strong statement,
although he may be overestimating
Congress's capacity for embarrassment,
'cause bear in mind, we are talking about a place
where these moments happened:
- "Do you like green eggs and ham?
"I do not like them, Sam I Am.
I do not like green eggs and ham."
- Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar.
All for the Gators, stand up and holler.
Go Gators!
- * Meet the Mets, meet the Mets *
* Step right up and greet the Mets *
- * Don't know much about chemistry *
* Don't know much toxicology
* Don't know what's ammonium nitrate *
* Except it's easy to detonate *
* But I do know that IST
* Was used to increase our security *
* What a much safer world this could be *
* Don't know much about gas chlorine *
- Oh, my God.
What is most shocking about that last clip
is that he read the room and decided,
"You know what?
"I think they want to hear another verse.
"I think I'm gonna do another verse here.
I'm reading this room, and I'm doing it."
But the sheer amount of time politicians spend fundraising
is not just embarrassing.
It's horrifying.
Some say that members can spend
anywhere from 25% to 50% of their time on it,
but former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle
once guessed that, in the two years
before an election,
senators can spend 2/3 of their time raising money,
and if 2/3 of the work you do is strictly about the money,
you're not a legislator.
You're Robert De Niro at that point.
So tonight-- tonight, let's look
at where that time actually goes,
and let's begin with the most obvious
form of fundraising: fundraisers.
These are usually shitty parties
in D.C. bars, restaurants, or townhouses,
and there are a lot of them.
The Sunlight Foundation estimates
that in the last election cycle,
members of Congress held over 2,800 fundraisers.
Washington is like Rod Stewart's haircut:
party in the front, party in the back.
Frankly, too much party
and no business anywhere to be found.
[laughter]
Fundraisers are so ubiquitous in D.C.,
you could conceivably construct a whole day around them,
which is exactly what former Iowa representative Bruce Braley
did on September 20, 2012, when at 8:30 a.m.,
he held a fundraising breakfast,
followed at noon by a fundraising lunch,
and ending with a fundraising evening reception.
By that time, he was less a member of Congress
than he was a sentient storage container for canapés.
In fact, fundraisers are such an integral part
of D.C.'s economy, some restaurants derive
a decent chunk of their income just from hosting them.
Look at Johnny's Half Shell,
It's a seafood restaurant just blocks from the Capitol.
In the past 10 years,
a whopping 948 congressional fundraisers
have been held there.
It is almost inevitable that your elected representative
will have spent at least some time
in a place that markets itself thusly.
- Here's to the champagne and oysters at Johnny's.
- Here's to Johnny's crab cakes.
- Here's to the sliders at happy hour.
- Here's to the hard shell crabs
at Johnny's Half Shell on the Terrace.
all: Here's to Johnny's!
- Here's to you and your time at Johnny's Half Shell.
[laughter]
- He is--he is a significant figure in D.C.
Influential decisions are being made
under the watchful eye of a man who looks like Jon Bon Jovi's
less talented step-cousin, Jim Ban Jarvi.
[laughter]
Some-- some politicians even
turn their own personal milestones
into fundraising opportunities,
like Republican Andy Barr,
who held a 41st birthday fundraiser,
which cost a minimum of $500 per person to attend.
Or there's Florida representative
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
who turned her 30th wedding anniversary
into a fundraiser,
an event that is almost breathtaking in its sadness,
'cause a 30th wedding anniversary
should not be about raising political capital.
It should be about eating a largely silent dinner,
killing two bottles of wine, forgetting to have sex,
and falling asleep to a "Friends" rerun.
Honor the anniversary and do it right.
[cheers and applause]
And in perhaps the most pathetic bid for hipness available,
many members of Congress
will even stage fundraisers at pop concerts.
- The power of Taylor Swift
not only changes the music business,
it makes money, and so much so
that some of Washington's elites
are capitalizing on the pop princess's "1989" tour,
which stops over in D.C. tonight.
- We have over ten Republicans, five Democrats, three PACs,
all raising money off this Taylor Swift concert,
tickets going into thousands upon thousands of dollars.
Some of these members we spoke to,
specifically Representative Beyer of Virginia,
who's having a fundraiser.
He goes, his daughter turned him on to Taylor Swift.
He likes her feminist lyrics,
and that is why they're moving forward.
- It's true.
Representative Don Beyer
held a fundraiser at a Taylor Swift concert.
And I don't know about you,
but this man is not feeling 22.
[laughter]
He is feeling and looking very much 65.
[laughter]
But amazingly, all of this is glamorous
compared to the hours and hours
that politicians spend fundraising over the phone.
A few years ago, a PowerPoint presentation
from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
to freshmen lawmakers leaked,
and it was showing their model schedule,
which suggested four hours a day of call time.
Four hours on the phone!
The only time that makes sense
is if you're trying to have phone sex with Sting.
[laughter]
"Have you come yet?
"It's been three hours.
"Have you come yet?
"I've got stuff to do, Gordon.
This can't be my day."
And look, horrendously,
lawmakers have even been pulled out of hearings
to go do that call time.
- The first week I was down here,
we were having a committee hearing on education,
and my chief of staff at that time
came in and said, "You have to leave."
You know, we went into the anteroom,
and I said, "Where do I have to go?"
And she goes, "You have to go make phone calls."
And I looked at her, and I'm going,
"This is my first hearing,
"and you're coming in and asking me to leave?
How am I gonna learn anything?"
- Exactly.
She was a rookie legislator.
She needed to learn how to do her job.
The Knicks don't pull rookie Kristaps Porzingis out of a game
so he can go make cold calls to season ticket holders,
'cause that would not be the best use
of Kristaps Porzingis's time.
[laughter]
And if you think that sounds
like a dehumanizing process,
rest assured.
It is.
- I felt used when I had to go raise money.
I was embarrassed.
I thought it was ugly.
I thought it was demeaning.
My staff kept saying, "You got to go do it."
I said, "I don't like it."
You get a Rolodex,
and you get to go outside the building
for a whole day and dial numbers
of jerks you've never heard of in your whole life
to get money out of them.
- He's absolutely right.
If you want to get money out of a bunch of jerks
you've never heard of before,
you shouldn't have to call them on the phone
when you can simply open a vape shop.
Boom, done.
[laughter]
Done.
And if you are wondering
why he said he had to go outside the building,
that's because according to federal law,
members of Congress can't solicit or receive donations
in their offices,
so each party's congressional committee
has set up call rooms in their party headquarters,
just a few blocks from the Capitol.
We couldn't find any footage from inside those rooms,
but they sound pretty grim.
- They've got cubicles, and they've got a headset,
and they often have a minder
who sort of sits at their shoulder
and makes sure that they don't take too long on each call.
They say that the building
can really start to stink after a while.
After a few hours,
it starts to smell like a locker room.
- Yeah, but-- but what do you expect?
Half the people in that room probably spent their morning
slurping down oysters
in an '80s hockey player's sweaty crab shack.
And just about all lawmakers have to do this,
even those, like Eleanor Holmes Norton,
in ludicrously safe seats.
She regularly gets reelected with over 80% of the vote,
but despite that, roughly six years ago,
she wound up leaving this voicemail for a lobbyist.
- That is so depressing to hear,
even before you think about her
calling from a room filled with the odor
of Steny Hoyer's shrimp burps.
[laughter]
And remember, her seat is safe.
It's so safe, she barely needs campaign funds for herself.
The problem is, members are still expected
to pay dues to their own party,
which can then be distributed to candidates in tougher races.
"Buzzfeed" actually got its hands
on a DCCC spreadsheet two years ago showing,
"the amount of money the Committee expects
each member to pay,"
with figures ranging from $125,000 at the low end,
all the way up to $800,000 at the top.
So is it any wonder that politicians
are hitting up their customer base
harder than a Girl Scout with gambling debts?
"Oh, two--two boxes of Samoas?
"Nah, nah, fuck that.
"Fuck that.
"Four boxes. Four boxes or I walk.
"Four boxes.
"You get four boxes.
I know where you live."
[laughter]
"Four for you."
And if you are desperately trying to rack up dollars,
that can affect the kind of people
that you are targeting on the phone,
as Senator Chris Murphy explains.
- For a Senate race, I'm not calling anybody
who doesn't have the chance of giving me
at least $1,000 dollars.
So you got to imagine that the people I'm calling,
you know, are folks that are,
you know, making $1/2 million to $1 million,
and you know, they have fundamentally different problems
than everybody-- everybody else.
- And that is a huge problem,
because it cannot help but affect
the way you see the world if you're only calling
donors rich enough that their main concerns
are estate taxes or which Belgian kimono
their cat will wear that day.
[laughter]
That's a good choice, though.
But--but to be fair-- now, to be fair,
direct fundraising by candidates is just one part of a system
that also includes super PACs and so-called dark money.
Although, to be even fairer, it is still the largest part.
And regulating campaign finance is going to be difficult.
For a start, there's the Supreme Court's
1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision,
which basically held that spending money
is a form of speech.
And sure, there are times when that's probably true.
For example, a 50-year-old man
spending money on a convertible is loudly saying,
"I would like to sexually disappoint a woman half my age."
He's--and we are hearing him loud and clear.
He's being heard.
But a bigger problem is that while both sides
agree they hate this,
neither wants to unilaterally back down first.
It's basically a cold war, but worse,
because at least in the real Cold War,
we got a trip to the Moon
and the third best "Rocky" villain out of it.
Which is not to say that there are not
some attempts to address parts of the problem.
Democrats have pushed the DISCLOSE Act,
which would force more transparency on dark money,
and one Republican congressman
has something called the Stop Act,
which would prohibit members of Congress
from personally asking for donations.
But those would be very small fixes.
Now, a larger idea is perhaps
the Government By the People Act,
which would give tax credits
and provide public funding for candidates
by matching small donations at a ratio of at least 6 to 1.
But before you get too excited about that idea,
two slight caveats:
first, we asked, and it would cost
an estimated $500 million a year,
which is a lot;
and second, govtrack.us,
which offers predictions
on whether bills are likely to pass,
gives it a 0% chance in our current Congress.
Just flat zero, which kind of makes you wonder
if they tried to find something more harsh than zero,
like "negative zero" or "aw, hell zero,"
or just a zero with a frowny face in it.
And that's a bit frustrating, because remember,
people in Congress are the ones constantly complaining
about the time that they are forced to waste on fundraising.
In fact, Steve Israel, a Democrat from Long Island,
announced his retirement at the beginning of this year,
saying, "I don't think I can spend another day
"in another call room making another call,
begging for money."
And since he's leaving anyway,
I figured he might be willing to shine a light
on some of the aspects of fundraising
that we don't usually see,
so I sat down with Steve Israel last week.
Take a look.
Congressman, thank you so much for agreeing to talk with me.
- Thank you.
- So let's start
with political fundraising.
In your prime, how many of those fundraisers
were you physically having to go to a year?
- So all told, over 16 years,
I've done, just for my own reelection,
1,600 fundraising events.
- Holy shit. - Actual events.
- That is one every three days,
more or less.
- Over 16 years, yeah.
Yeah, that' a lot.
- I'm gonna say three words to you, Congressman.
- Mm-hmm.
- Johnny's Half Shell.
- I know it well.
- Oh, yeah, no shit you do.
- Yeah.
- What is it like in there?
- It is like-- look, it's like
any restaurant in America.
- Which has lots of people in suits raising money.
- The difference is, you have candidates
and members of Congress and supporters
who are contributing $1,000
for the privilege of having some shellfish.
- It's just-- it's interesting to me
how every working Congressperson in this city
has a basic understanding of Johnny's Half Shell.
- Right, I don't think I ever had a fundraiser for myself...
- No, you have.
- At that restaurant, but I just don't remember.
- No, in 2011, you had a breakfast fundraiser
at the Half Shell that started at 8:30 a.m.
- Right.
- Congressman, no one goes to a seafood restaurant
at 8:30 in the morning
without expecting something in return.
No one is saying, "Well, I was gonna be there anyway
"to have my bucket of breakfast shrimp.
I'll swing by Steve's thing."
- And that is the problem with the system,
is that people believe that if they are in that room,
having supported a campaign, that they get access.
Oliver: And in case access to Steve Israel
wasn't enticing enough,
a review of his fundraiser invites
threw up a common theme.
Some congressmen have barbecue.
Some have fishing trips.
What was your thing?
- I did Long Island pizza night.
- Bit there was another theme to your fundraisers.
Wasn't there? - Yes.
What was it?
- Well, I think you know what it was.
- I am anxious to know.
- You had an annual Long Island wine trip,
Long Island wine tasting in D.C.,
Long Island wine and cigar tasting.
I hope those were not Long Island cigars.
And an event called "Chinese food and politics,"
where I'm gonna go ahead and say
that you washed down your General Tso's Chicken
with a glass of...
- No, no, no.
You cannot bring Long Island wine to Chinese food.
- Why, does Long Island Wine not pair well with Chinese food?
- Not Washington Chinese food.
- What does it pair well with, street violence?
- You're not gonna get me to say
one negative thing about Long Island wine.
I am very proud of it.
Oliver: But I hadn't come here
to talk about terrible wine.
I wanted to talk about the engine room
of congressional fundraising.
Talk to me about the congressional call center.
How important is that place?
- Well, you've got to have a place to make those calls.
- What does it look like?
Paint me a word picture.
Is there, you know, motivational posters
on the walls saying, "Hang in there,"
and, "Try not to think too much about what you're doing"?
- You have a bunch of cubicles set up
and those cheap fabric dividers,
and you sit at a little desk, and you have a phone,
and you have an assistant next to you,
and you have a call book.
And the call book has sheets of every donor,
past donors and their records.
And your assistant gets a supporter on the phone
and gives the phone to you,
and you engage in polite conversation,
and then you get to the point,
and then you hang up,
and then you flip the page to the next donor,
and then you make another call.
And you continue doing that
until you have the resources in order to get reelected.
- Oh, my God, that's depressing.
- Not what our founders had in mind.
- How do you train people to do it well?
Is there a script, like, with small talk
and how they could be part of the solution?
How does it work? - No.
Every member has their own approach.
My approach was to get right to the point
and then have a civilized conversation.
- Okay, I mean, I guess it makes sense.
It's just like someone giving you a massage
and starting with a hand job and then working the shoulders.
It's fine; it's just unexpected.
- Well, everybody has their own style
and their own preferences.
- How much time is there between hanging up that phone
and the next call?
- You got to keep moving.
You have to keep moving.
If you are in a very competitive district,
and you know you've got to raise $1.5 million,
that means that you have to raise
a certain amount of money every quarter.
You break it down to a certain amount of money every month,
you break it down to a certain amount of money every week,
and you break it down to a certain amount of money
in every hour of call time.
- This whole call center
sounds like a shitty telemarketing operation.
- It is, in my view, a form of torture,
and it is--the real victims of this torture
have become the American people,
because they believe that they don't
have a voice in this system.
- Now, most good telemarketing operations
have a boss who holds people's feet to the fire
and forces them to make calls and hit their quotas.
Who was that boss for you?
- Well, my boss was the prospect
of losing my election to a Republican
who would undo all the work I did
for the middle class-- that prospect.
- Yeah, but also, I'm getting to the point--
I'm getting to the point that you were the chairman.
- Oh, I'm sorry.
Yes, so I was the chairman
of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
- So you were that boss.
You were the one pushing people to hit quotas.
- I had a responsibility to tell them,
"You need to spend time raising money
to come to Washington to change the system."
Oliver: And he must have told them that a lot,
because in Steve Israel's time as chairman,
he managed to push members of the DCCC
to hit record fundraising levels.
- We outraised the NRCC by $16.2 million.
That's never happened before.
Oliver: And it can't have been easy for Steve Israel
to hate something he was so demonstrably good at.
It's like finding out this guy hates having bees on his face.
I mean, he's not wrong; it's absolutely repulsive.
It's just weird that he chose to do it in the first place.
And with his congressional career
coming to an end,
it was time to toast Steve Israel
in the most appropriate way possible.
Um... - Here we go.
- I brought some Long Island wine
in, I believe, the traditional bag.
- It's a very good vintage, actually.
Is that a 2016?
- Does it go back further than that?
- I wouldn't recommend drinking it out of the bag.
- Oh, oh, Congressman,
I would never do this to a glass.
[laughter]
[cheers and applause]
- Not bad for wine in a bag.
- Sure.
That's fair.
Yes, what better way to end a bittersweet career
than with the bittersweet taste of North Fork Chardonnay?
Savor every last drop, Steve.
You've earned it.
[cheers and applause]
That's our show.
Thanks so much for watching.
See you next week.
Good night!
[cheers and applause]
[bright tone]