*
[Cheering and applause]
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight."
I'm John Oliver.
Thank you for being with us.
Let's start this evening with a quick recap of the week,
beginning with Japan, Earth's pervert uncle, which this week
announced a major policy shift.
And in Japan, the government has changed its
pacifist military policy for the first time in more
than 70 years.
It will now be able to use military force to defend
other nations.
Wow. That is a major shift, but I think the bigger news
here is that apparently Japan has had a policy of pacifism
for nearly 70 years.
Certainly all the repressed anger in their cartoons makes
a lot more sense.
"Oh, OK. We still can't fight any wars?
"Fine. Here's another cartoon of a schoolgirl
covered in blood."
In fact, many Japanese citizens were extremely angry
about this policy shift, taking to the streets
in protest, waving signs depicting their
prime minister as Hitler.
And I'll tell you who I feel sorry for there--Tojo.
He must have been going, "Oh, come on!
"You needed a mustachioed World War II war criminal
"at a Japanese protest, and you go with Adolf?
"I attacked Pearl Harbor!
"What do I have to do to be a shorthand for evil?
It's not fair! I earned it!"
In this atmosphere, the Japanese military may struggle
to attract recruits, were it not for a secret weapon:
a recruitment video featuring one of the members
of the Japanese pop group AKB48.
And by the way, a fun fact about AKB48: they have over
100 members.
There is the cute one, the quiet one, the funny one,
the smart one, the 16 giggly ones, the 2 comatose ones,
the glass-eye one, the one no one likes, the 23 sassy ones,
and the 62-year-old man posing as a 19-year-old girl one.
He's my favorite. He's my favorite.
And before you make fun of this probably not being
effective, just wait until you see how catchy
their songs are.
*
[Speaking Japanese]
Catchy. That's a catchy song.
Whoo!
That is a catchy song.
In domestic news, there was big news from American history
this week, specifically about Warren G. Harding, America's
29th president, whose greatest achievement was dying
two years into his first term.
Let's be honest.
No one knows much about Warren G. Harding,
but this week, that may have permanently changed.
We're getting a first look at
some of the love letters that
President Warren G. Harding
wrote to his mistress
a century ago.
DIFFERENT NEWSMAN: Page after page of Harding's handwriting
describe in detail what he described as his
"eager, passion-wild, jealous reverent, wistful love"
for his neighbor's wife.
OK, OK, that's actually a little misleading
because believe me, these are not eager, jealous,
and wistful love letters.
This are smutty fucknotes so raunchy a 40-year-old mother
of two should be reading them on her Kindle because this is
an actual passage from his actual letters.
Ahem.
"I feel that there will never be any relief until I take
"a long, deep, wild draught on your lips and then bury my
face on your pillowing breasts."
"Wouldn't you like to get sopping wet out
"on Superior--not the lake--
"for the joy of fevered fondling
and melting kisses?"
I've got to say, "Damn, Warren, you nasty!"
No one--no one is gonna be able to look at you
in the same way, Harding.
Before, all I could see when I looked at you were your
eyebrows like mozzarella sticks covered in pubic hair
and jowls like sour cream funneled into a condom,
but now history will only remember you and your
lake-based erotic poetry.
Well, actually, they will remember one more thing.
NEWSMAN: We're also told that just as Anthony Weiner goes by
Carlos Danger, Warren Harding had a nickname for a certain
part of his anatomy.
He called it Jerry.
[Laughter and applause]
Yes.
Warren G. Harding, America's 29th president,
called his dick "Jerry,"
which is actually funny because Gerald Ford
called his dick Warren G. Harding,
but that's not the point.
I actually believe we have an artist's rendering of Jerry.
That's what he looked like back then.
It was a different time.
Harding actually writes about Jerry in his letters, saying,
and again, I quote, "You recall Jerry...
"He told me to say that you are the best and the darlingest
"in the world, and if he could have but one wish, it would be
"to be held in your darling embrace and be thrilled by
your pink lips..."
[Laughter and gasps]
[Grunts]
I will say this--I will say this for Warren Harding:
as a president, he was terrible, but as an R&B lyricist, he was
way ahead of his time.
He really puts the Warren G. into Warren G. Harding.
But finally this week, news of our current president, who
previously announced that this summer, he was gonna be going
on a bit of a tour.
President Obama's breaking out of the Washington bubble is
all part of what the White House is calling
A Day in the Life Tour, where the president will spend part
of the summer getting to, as I was saying, know regular
Americans across the country.
OK, getting to know us is overstating it.
He's not gonna sit down with us with a tub of ice cream
and two spoons going, "Well, I don't know, Deborah.
"Maybe you should go back to school, but remember, what you
do isn't who you are, Debs."
But OK, sure, sure.
He wants to meet us regular folks.
Fine. First stop in the Day of the Life Tour
this week was Denver.
NEWSWOMAN: He shook hands with dozens lining the sidewalk.
He even ran into someone who for some unknown reason was
wearing a horse head mask.
How did he get in?
I think my favorite thing in that photo is the face
of the Secret Service guy.
That is a man who knows he has got a tough conversation
with the president in 5 minutes.
"Hey, Tony, how do you think that meet-and-greet went?
"Because I'll tell you what I remember.
"That time the guy in the horse's head lunged out
at me, and you stood there admiring his fucking snout."
Look, let's be honest.
There is absolutely nothing natural about politicians
meeting people in these kind of circumstances.
Listen to a woman who met him in Texas the next day.
Security was everywhere, so we had to make sure our hands
were out of our pockets, and we had to be, like, very
sincere and, like, use our correct grammar and niceness.
Oh, nice work, Secret Service.
So you can't protect the president from a guy
in a horse's head, but you can protect him from any
split infinitives.
But that's the key problem with this whole
stupid exercise.
Nobody is having an average day when
the president is there.
They're too busy keeping their hands where people can see
them and using their correct grammar and niceness.
Mr. President, if you really want to know what a regular
day in the life of an average American is, stay
in the White House and watch this.
ANNOUNCER: Mr. President, America is thrilled you want
to know what our average days are like.
Here's the problem: you're never going to see
an average day because you're the president,
and when you turn up, things get weird.
So let me show you what we're up to when you're not around.
On our average days, Americans are sitting on our couches,
dipping cheese sticks into jars of marinara sauce,
even though we're not really hungry.
We're looking for our toenail clippers and, when we can't
find them, making do with what's on hand.
We're at work staring at a bug crawling across the window.
Where's he going?
What's his name?
Do bugs have names?
We're giving our children a toy they want, as soon as we
can get it out of the fucking box.
And we're masturbating.
So much masturbating.
And when we're not masturbating, we're thinking
about masturbating.
Mr. President, you have no idea how much
we're masturbating.
Seriously, you would be genuinely angry if you knew
how much we were masturbating.
And the problem is, we can't do any of this
when you show up.
So take a good look, Mr. President.
These are the faces of Americans when you're not around.
This is an average day in our lives.
This is America, and you don't want to know what we're
actually doing.
[Cheering and applause]
Moving on, moving on.
Our main story tonight is income inequality.
A good way to figure out which side of it you're on is
whether you're currently paying for HBO or stealing it.
Last December--some of you laughed a little too
hard at that.
Last December, the president made it clear that income
inequality was going to be a big priority.
The combined trends of increased inequality
and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to
the American dream, our way of life, and what we stand
for around the globe.
I believe this is the defining challenge of our time.
Yes--the defining challenge of our time.
Well, one of the two defining challenges of our time,
the other being Candy Crush level 97.
That is hard.
I've got a lollipop hammer, and I still can't.
The point is that the president said the word
"inequality" 26 times in that speech, which everyone took to
mean one thing...
Income inequality is going to be the thrust, one
of the major themes in 2016.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Members of the Senate Democratic leadership
team--that's Harry Reid on down--are clearly going
after this income inequality issue.
For Democrats, it's an all-out assault
on the issue of income inequality.
An all-out assault!
You better watch your ass, income inequality,
because you're about to get violently ameliorated.
Or you would have been if they hadn't almost
immediately backed down.
NEWSWOMAN: A new article says President Obama appears to be
shifting strategy on tackling income inequality.
The "Washington Post" reveals Democrats are split
on the issue, leaving President Obama to shift talk
away from the subject.
So basically income inequality has become just another topic
of conversation we prefer to avoid in America, like
Japanese internment camps or that time that we gave
Roberto Benigni an Academy Award.
You know, national tragedies, equally wrong.
There is a key reason why no politician wants to talk
about it, and that's because every time someone tries to,
this happens.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: Is President Obama
engaging class warfare?
Class warfare.
The politics of class warfare.
Trying to drive a class warfare argument.
Use that hashtag #classwarfare.
OK, OK, that all sounds silly,
but the phrase "class warfare" is
so toxic, the president actually had to stop talking
about the thing he describes as "a fundamental threat to
the American dream," and this was so predictable
that 3 years ago, he actually gathered a group of historians
and told them, "What you could do for me is to help find
"a way to discuss the issue of inequality in our society
without being accused of class warfare," to which they
presumably said, "Yeah, we can't really help you
"with that, although we can tell you what
"Warren G. Harding named his penis.
It's not what you're thinking!"
But just because politicians can't talk about
income inequality doesn't mean we shouldn't, and before we do,
let me just say no one is arguing for complete,
perfect equality.
We are not going to live in a world where we pretend that
all Baldwins are equally talented.
I mean, look.
There's Billy, and there's everyone else.
That's a fact.
Inequality is a bit like cinnamon.
You definitely want to have a little of it to spice life up
a bit, but too much of it can be very dangerous.
[Coughing]
And make no mistake--we are at cinnamon-dangerous levels
right now.
The wealth gap is getting worse.
A new analysis shows the richest Americans, the top 1%,
made nearly 20% of all the available income
in America last year.
That's the widest income gap since the Roaring Twenties.
Ho ho ho!
OK. Nothing ominous there, then.
The Roaring Twenties were famously the party that
never ended.
That's what made the thirties so great--just more twenties.
And the thing is, income inequality
affects everyone.
It can actually hinder overall growth.
And just to be clear, income inequality is by no means
just an American problem.
Globalization and technology means that the gap is rising
all over the developed world.
It's just rising faster here.
In fact, in the United States, the income ratio between our
richest and poorest 10% is now 16:1.
At this point, the rich are just running up the score.
If our economy was a Little League game,
someone would have called it by now.
But what sets America apart is that in this time, we have
actively introduced policies disproportionately benefiting
the wealthy, like cutting income tax and capital gains
tax rates for the richest in half, as well as that weird
tax rebate for orgies with fancy "Eyes Wide Shut" masks.
"The password is Fidelio."
You would think--you would think, in a democracy,
policies that benefit very few people at the expense of very
many would not be able to succeed, but they have, and I
think the reason for that may lie somewhere in America's
greatest quality: optimism.
It's basically in how susceptible
Americans are to this.
We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots.
We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves,
of people who have made it and people who will make it.
Yes! I mean no! No. Hold on.
That sounds great.
The problem is, it makes no sense economically,
mathematically, or even grammatically.
And yet we believe him.
We believe him.
And there's a poll that I think explains why.
A few months ago, Pew Research revealed that 65% of Americans
believe the wealth gap is increasing, and 60% believe
our system unfairly favors the wealthy, but--and here's
the key--60% also believe that most people who work hard
enough can make it, or in other words,
"Yeah, I can clearly see this game is rigged,
"which is what's gonna make it so sweet
"when I win this thing!
Whoo!"
Tha--and it's good.
That's a good thing.
That optimism is one of the things I love the most
about this country.
I love that you line up around the block for TV talent shows
for talents you objectively don't have,
and everyone feels bad when a person who is
inevitably and revealingly British does this to you.
It sounded like 2 3-year-olds
who have got flu trying to sing.
I didn't find it funny, and I like to laugh,
and that wasn't funny to me.
I don't know what that style was.
It started off like bad food poisoning.
Without any doubt the worst act I've probably ever seen.
You may want to be [bleep] smart
and start acting like an arrogant [bleep].
Your mashed potatoes are bland.
Wow. Wow. Hold on.
A British person just told you that your
mashed potatoes were bland.
That has got to hurt.
The reason a British person has to do that is that we're
raised in a rigid class system where we have all hope beaten
out of us, and your optimism is overwhelmingly positive,
except--except when it leads you to act against your own
best interests.
Look at the federal estate tax.
That's the tax that gets paid on inherited wealth.
It helps to limit the terrible possibility of a permanent
landed gentry--the idea that a house can be passed down
through the generations until some dipshit blows the fortune
on a Canadian railway company, you fucking moron!
How could you do that, Lord Grantham?
The family was counting on you!
How could you!
And yet the estate tax here is routinely on the verge
of being abolished.
Politicians call it the death tax and get applause
for saying things like this.
My own view is we ought to kill the death tax.
You paid for that farm once.
You shouldn't have to pay for it again.
Except it's almost impossible that a farmer would ever have
to do that.
The federal estate tax does not apply to 99.4%
of all farm estates.
It also doesn't apply to 99.86% of anyone's estates.
Basically if you're not comfortable calling your
accumulation of shit an "estate," the estate tax
probably doesn't fucking apply to you.
And yet the thing is, a man worth
a quarter of a billion dollars gets applause
for saying, "Let's get rid of it."
Under current federal law, heirs don't have to pay taxes
on the first 5.3 million that you leave them, meaning that
you and your wife can leave your kid more than $10 million
tax-free, and relax.
That is more than enough to turn Chauncey into the world's
biggest piece of shit.
Fuck you, Chauncey!
No 16-year-old has a destination birthday party.
The tax on estates over $5 million applies to almost
nobody, but one reason it's constantly threatened is that
people assume that it will one day apply to them.
I don't have a 5-million-dollar estate.
I would like to someday.
But if I work all my life and I pay my taxes
on my income and then I die
and I want to pass on what would be great if
it were a 5-million-dollar estate to my kids,
why should I pay the government again?
But you won't be paying it!
You'll be gone!
In fact, this is the practical embodiment
of everything you want.
This is the government literally taking your money
over your dead body.
And also--also...
let's be clear.
Let's be clear. The existence of an estate tax
has not prevented Americans
from passing on a fuckload of wealth.
Of the billionaires on the "Forbes" 400, 71 inherited
their fortune, and another 56 inherited at least
a portion of it.
That's nearly 1/3 of the list.
And our habit of handing money down from generation to
generation perpetuates another disparity, perhaps explaining
why, of the "Forbes" 400, only .25% are African American,
and to answer your question, yes, it's Oprah.
Oprah is the person.
You were right. Good guess. Good guess.
America now has a system where wealth is essentially
dispersed as a lottery of birth, and maybe the reason we
seem to accept that is that even though we know the odds
are stacked against us, we all think we're going
to win the lottery.
Experts even appear on TV advising us how to handle
our future winnings.
I think the first thing should be to create a plan.
DIFFERENT MAN: Set up a trust.
Probably hire a couple of security guards.
FIRST MAN: Do you take the lump-sum payment or
the 29-year annuity payment over time?
I would take the one-time cash chunk
because it allows you to do a whole bunch of things
that you might want to do in your life.
If you win that kind of money and you still have young
children, make sure you put it in a trust.
Oh, absolutely, because it is never too early to start
protecting your imaginary lottery winnings from
crippling estate taxes.
That's crazy.
You...
you might as well do an 8-minute segment on how to
handle being attacked by a shark while scoring
the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl
or things to say on your third date with Beyoncé.
And watch how-- it would be great.
That would be great.
There's a chance.
Technically, there's a chance.
And watch how depressed we get by useful, practical advice.
Would you tell people, maybe take your $5.00
you're gonna spend on the jackpot and put it elsewhere?
If you can invest that money,
20, 30 years down the road,
that is gonna be a much better--
there would be much better odds
of having a secure retirement
than hoping on the lottery.
It's not nearly as fantasy, though.
No, it's not.
So much more practical.
Please, please don't mess up this financial segment
with practical advice.
We're dream weavers here at News Team 12.
Take that shit over to News Team 5.
Look, look.
The whole point is, if American wealth is a lottery,
we are increasingly playing two different games.
In fact, I'll show you.
Who wants to play Americaball?
[Cheering and applause]
*
OK, as always, we have two drawings.
First up, the draw for people with inherited wealth.
You should all have a ticket at home with a number
between 1 and 3 on it, so let's pick 2 balls.
Let's pick 2 balls.
Fire it up. Here we go.
3!
The first number is 3.
Let's pick another ball.
1!
Congratulations to almost everyone at home!
OK, that was fun. That was fun.
OK, so now the lottery
for those who were born poor.
OK.
[Laughter]
Tank.
Uh, hello to all of you watching at home
or through a Best Buy window.
You should all have a card with a number
between 1 and 3.5 million on it,
and you've probably noticed that
a disproportionate percentage of these balls
are black and brown.
Ignore that. It's illustrative of nothing.
I can't stress that enough.
Isn't that right, Tank?
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Now, as you can see, for the third consecutive week,
this machine is still broken,
so I can't currently get a ball out
of there for you, but let's all agree that technically,
you did all have the hypothetical chance to win!
So this is depressing.
Hey, remember how much fun we were having over there?
Let's go back over.
There's still a ball in there.
Let's get that last ball out of there.
Just one more.
Oh, number 2!
You're all winners! All of you!
You can't lose! The system works!
And don't worry, poor people.
If you're getting sad, you're just thinking
of this the wrong way.
Remember, when it comes to the wealth lottery,
America is a nation of winners
and soon-to winners.
Yes! And now this.
ANNOUNCER: And now, "Last Week Tonight" presents
"Fuck that guy."
This week, Jerome Valcke, the Secretary General of FIFA.
As you may have seen earlier today, Germany won
the World Cup, capping off a thrilling tournament
filled with joy, tears, and the occasional
act of cannibalism.
There was only one thing that marred
the month-long tournament.
FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke says
he's amazed and surprised by the amount
of alcohol that's being consumed
at the World Cup.
ANNOUNCER: In an interview with Brazilian TV,
Valcke said, "I was amazed by the number of people who were
drunken and the level of alcohol."
And "When you drink too much, the level of violence
may increase."
Here's the thing-- Brazil knew that.
In 2003, the Brazilian government banned alcohol
from stadiums because of the enormously high
death rate amongst fans.
ANNOUNCER: As you may recall from our show a month ago,
the country was pressured to suspend the laws by one
Jerome Valcke, who presumably acted on behalf of one
of FIFA's key sponsors.
ANNOUNCER: And to be fair to Jerome Valcke,
how could he possibly have known that selling beer to people
might lead to them drinking it?
So when the man who helped remove safety-based controls
on beer sales has the balls to say,
"We will always take safety into account.
"If we believe beer sales should be controlled,
it will be controlled," it leads us to say,
FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke?
Fuck that guy.
[Cheering and applause]
And that's a good point. It's a good point.
And finally tonight, big news in the world
of international espionage.
The German government has ordered the CIA's station chief
in Germany to get out of the country--the kind of thing
we almost never see with a close ally, but Germany is
outraged by what it considers U.S. spy games.
Yeah. I'd say that this is just sour German grapes,
but I know that they use all of those
for their shitty Rieslings.
Yes! Yes!
That's why I came to HBO--
premium high-end wine jokes.
Yes.
The CIA has been caught spying on Germany again.
It's just the latest black eye for the CIA, who in recent
years have been accused of torture, abuse,
and illegal surveillance around the globe.
Perhaps that's why they've recently taken some steps
to change their public image.
This is the CIA, and they've just
officially joined Twitter.
The CIA also officially has
a sense of humor.
Check out the first tweet from the Agency:
"We can neither confirm nor deny
that this is our first tweet. "
Ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha! Oh, yeah.
Hey. I get it.
You're a dangerously secretive operation who work
in the shadows with little accountability or oversight.
Ha ha ha!
Look, I'm not gonna say that this is a completely unfunny
tweet, but the context is wrong.
It's like if a doctor interrupted Wolf Blitzer's
colonoscopy by shouting, "Oh, my God!
Wolf, I think I've just found the missing plane!"
I'm not saying that wouldn't be funny.
It's just it's neither the time nor the place
for a comment like that.
That's the point.
And since then, the CIA's questionable taste in jokes
has only gotten worse.
The CIA also tweeted out, "No, we don't know your password,
"so we can't send it to you.
#sorrynotsorry."
The CIA says, "No, we don't know where Tupac is."
What are you doing?
Tupac was famously murdered.
He didn't vanish.
The mystery isn't where he is; it's who killed him, which,
incidentally, you probably do know.
In fact, the more you poke around on the CIA's website,
the more you find things that make you question
their social media team.
This is a real video from the CIA K-9 unit.
GIRLISH VOICE: My name is Bradley.
I'm an explosive-detection K-9 officer at the CIA.
Have you ever wondered how an ordinary dog becomes a K-9?
Hi, Chessie.
How do you like being a K-9 so far?
MALE VOICE: It's great.
I'm learning a lot.
How would you like to tell these folks about what
it takes to become a CIA K-9?
I would love to.
Great.
What the--
what the hell did we just watch there?
And by the way, CIA, you have a secret budget with virtually
no oversight, and you can't even make
their fucking mouths move?
Even the dogs probably know that this video is weird.
In fact, if we could hear what the dogs were really thinking,
I'd bet you it would sound a lot more like this.
Hey, Chessie.
How do you like being in a video for the CIA?
Seems kind of weird.
I mean, who is this for?
Kids, I guess.
Sure, but why?
I don't know.
The CIA has an image problem?
Well, then maybe they should stop operating
secret prisons from Poland to Djibouti
and needlessly spying on our closest allies during peacetime.
Hey, that might work.
Yay! Hooray!
Woof!
That's good. See?
It's good. People liked it.
That could be viral.
Look.
Look, CIA.
I get that you want to be the fun one, but, "A," you
shouldn't be, and "B,"
you're not even very good at it.
Don't waste your time writing jokes when we can all help
you with that.
Here's one right now.
Hey, "Two and a Half Men" got renewed for a 12th season.
That show is harder to kill than Fidel Castro,
#murderfail.
Or perhaps you'd like your old-school jokes.
Here's one.
3 Arab guys walk into a bar.
Two of them are never heard from again.
#wheredidtheygo? #secretprison #Uzbekistan.
In fact--in fact, I would invite everyone at home to
help the CIA write jokes more suitable to their
actual history.
Simply use the hashtag #BETTERCIATWEETS.
Because you can't spell "colossal privacy violation"
without LOL.
That's our show for this evening.
Thank you so much for watching.
We will be back next Sunday.
Have a great week!
[Cheering and applause]
*