*
[Crowd cheering]
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight." I'm John Oliver.
Thanks for being with us.
Just time for a quick recap of the week--
spoiler alert--it's been fucking depressing again.
It's been a very difficult time for diplomacy.
In Gaza, the crisis continued.
Over a thousand people have now been killed.
There were multiple cease-fires all week,
none of which have held.
One cease-fire was so short, it was technically
only a cease-f...
because fighting resumed before they could even finish
the fucking word.
It has all been enough to make you wish
for some happier diplomatic news here at home.
And, luckily, I have some for you.
Because on Thursday, there was a House hearing
about U.S./India relations.
And freshman Republican Curt Clawson took a chance
to reach out to the House's guests,
Nisha Biswal and Arun Kumar.
I went to school in Nagarjuna.
I know Jagapathi.
And these are my friends.
I love Hyderabad. I love Chennai.
And I'm very familiar with your country.
Ooh, very nice. I mean...
borderline offensive of a pronunciation, but very nice.
Just one problem there.
The two people he's talking to are
not from the Indian government.
They are Americans from the State Department
and the Commerce Department.
[Laughter]
Clawson seems to have been led astray
by their misleadingly brown faces.
However, he does not know this yet.
So let's all sit back and enjoy
a slow moving car crash.
So just as your capital is welcome here to produce
good-paying jobs in the U.S.,
I'd like our capital to be welcome there
and there to be freedom of capital
so that both sides are on the same territory.
And I ask cooperation and commitment and priority
from your government in so doing.
Can I have that?
[Laughter]
I think your question is to the Indian government,
and we certainly share your sentiments,
and we certainly will advocate that
on behalf of the U.S. gov--
CLAWSON: Of course. OK, let's see some progress.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
You do not get to pretend that that did not just happen!
Because that was incredible.
And my favorite part of it--
other than absolutely everything--
is Mr. Kumar, who is absolutely loving the whole thing.
He's leaning back in his chair going,
"Oh, this guy is awesome!
"Please nobody tell him.
"I've got 10 bucks which says he's about to compliment me
for my role in "Slumdog Millionaire.""
[Laughter and applause]
"Ahh! Ooh."
Amazing. Ama-- We needed that.
In other news, there was potentially horrifying news
about the behavior of ISIS in northern Iraq.
The UN is attempting to verify claims that ISIS has ordered
all women in one Iraqi city to undergo genital mutilation.
That is truly horrific.
Or it would be, if it were definitely true.
Thankfully, other reports suggest it could be fake,
although I will say this to ISIS:
The fact that that seems like something you would do
still does not reflect particularly well on you
as an organization.
It's like if someone told you that Bravo created a spin-off
that's just dogs of housewives
or that Shia LaBeouf defecated on a homeless man.
Neither of those things happened,
but they sound like they could have done,
and that's still a problem for all concerned.
And before everyone gets too relieved that
female genital mutilation is not being practiced by ISIS in Iraq,
it is worth remembering it is still happening
in a shocking number of places,
including, as I learned for the first time this week, Egypt,
where it happens at a 91% rate among married women
aged 15 to 49.
That is appalling for Egypt
and absolutely amazing for whoever it is who does
the branding for Egypt.
Because in light of that statistic,
how are pyramids the first thing we fucking think of?
[Laughter]
Failing to mention genital mutilation first
when you talk about Egypt is like calling Rob Ford
"that Canadian guy
who famously fought Toronto's fair wage policy"...
[Laughter]
or referring to 9/11 as Harry Connick Jr.'s birthday.
And finally tonight, Thailand.
You may remember a few weeks ago we talked a little
about Thailand's buffoonish clown prince
and his miniature poodle called Fu-Fu,
two things that I would argue are objectively funny.
However, it turned out this week
that Thailand's aggressive military government
may not agree with me.
John Oliver is upsetting one government.
Officials in Thailand are worried
about Oliver's activities
and that he may be a threat to its monarchy.
Oh, shit!
[Cheering and applause]
OK...OK...OK...
Whew. I will say...
I will say this...
if I can bring down your monarchy,
you have at best a wobbly monarchy.
Amazingly, this story might actually be true.
A confidential Thai military document focused
on overseas activities that are
"undermining the royal institution" was leaked.
And you'll notice 3 English words
in the middle of that page.
And, unfortunately, those words are "John William Oliver."
Uh...
[Applause]
And, yeah, I think deep down, I always knew
that everyone would find out my middle name
thanks to an angry Thai military government.
Clearly there are some big lessons
to be taken away from this.
One--it seems my Thailand vacation is going to have to be
postponed very much indefinitely
and--two--this is all happening because Thailand has
a lese-majeste law,
which can jail people for insulting the monarchy,
which is stupid.
Other countries have this kind of law, too.
And they're stupid, as well.
And if I'm not going to Thailand anytime soon--
and apparently I'm not--let's burn some more bridges, so...
working from a list...
working from a list of countries that have
these laws: Hey, Netherlands, how's Queen Beatrix doing?
By the way, the Dowager Countess of Grantham would like
her face back.
Hey, Kuwait, what's up with your current emir?
He looks looks like a police sketch of an evil walnut.
[Laughter]
He looks like what you'd get
if Freddie Mercury fucked a sea turtle.
OK. And finally, Denmark...
Now, I would offer not to make fun of your Prince Henrik
were it not for the fact that there is a video
of him getting into a panda costume
and molesting people
while they're trying to eat their dinner.
You are the Crown Prince of Denmark.
You are already an endangered, meaningless mascot
who exists mainly for people to take photos with.
Putting on a panda costume is gilding the lily somewhat.
Your move, Denmark!
I await my Danish prison sentence.
Please take me to your impeccably furnished
birch wood cell.
I await my dinner of adorably tiny, little cheeses.
And now this...
WOMAN: I'm gonna file this next story
under "stories my producer is making me do
that I don't agree with," but OK.
I know we're tired of covering Miley Cyrus,
but we had to include
this final headline.
I didn't believe our producers when we
first started covering
the Rodman story.
I wish that he becomes irrelevant
as soon as possible.
NEWSCASTER: There is breaking news now on Fox News Channel--
It's not really that breaking.
I mean, everybody knew this was gonna happen.
Even I knew this was gonna happen.
Well, we saw the obligatory
chopper aerials of the Biebs.
He's pushing important news off the front page.
It shouldn't even be a story.
We shouldn't even be covering it,
but that's not the world we live in.
Why are we still talking about Monica Lewinsky?
Why are we talking about 2016?
What aspect of this is newsworthy?
MAN: Should we even give that
the credence of covering it?
HOST: I just read it, so I would say ye--
MAN: I know.
Moving on. Moving on.
Our main story tonight is
the threat of nuclear annihilation.
It's probably been a while since you've thought
about it, but there was a time when people lived
in almost constant fear.
Children used to be shown this in schools.
ANNOUNCER: Sundays, holidays, vacation time,
we must be ready every day, all the time,
to do the right thing if the atomic bomb explodes.
Duck and cover!
[Laughter]
I will say this for the 1950s--
they had the perfect blend of optimism and pessimism.
"The death blast is coming, but we'll survive it
if we all get under this picnic blanket."
Now, by the 1980s, attitudes had changed.
The TV movie "The Day After" had a slightly different tone.
See if you can spot it.
[Screaming]
Danny! Don't look at it!
Oh, my--
The worst thing is, Danny would have been fine
if he'd just had a picnic blanket with him.
What were you thinking, you little fool?
The strange thing is, all of that seems so dated.
Nowadays, we spend less time
worrying about nuclear annihilation
than we do worrying about whether we accidentally hit
"Reply all" on an office email.
"Oh, shit. Did I send that to Dave?
I said "his face looks like a ferret."
But maybe we should be worrying
about nuclear warheads a bit more,
and not the ones in North Korea, Iran, or Russia,
but the ones we have here at home.
America has around 4,800 nuclear warheads,
which is more than enough not just to destroy Earth,
but to provide 4th of July fireworks for Martians.
Some of our most powerful weapons are
intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs,
which is both an acronym
and what you would say if you saw one coming at you.
That's a little joke for all you gastroenterologists out there.
[Laughter]
They are currently in silos in Wyoming, Montana,
and North Dakota.
Let's start with Wyoming.
How well are we taking care of these things?
REPORTER: Take this enormous outer door
designed to protect the corridor leading to the capsule.
They can't close it because of a broken part,
so it's propped open with a crowbar
and marked with a "danger" tag.
OK...
to be honest, repairs like that are less appropriate
in a nuclear silo
than they are in a divorced dad's condo.
"Why does the fridge open with string, Daddy?"
[Laughter]
And for the record-- for the record,
it's not just their hardware that needs updating.
It's their software, too.
REPORTER: The equipment is ancient.
This, for example, is one of the computers that would receive
a launch order from the president.
It uses floppy disks,
the really old, big ones.
Holy shit!
Those things barely look powerful enough to run
Oregon Trail...
[Applause]
much less Earth-ending weaponry.
People who work there must watch "WarGames" and go,
"One day! One day we'll get to play with that stuff."
Look, fingers crossed,
things are a little better in North Dakota.
Seventeen Air Force officers are being relieved
of their duties controlling nuclear missiles.
REPORTER: An inspection in March tested the group's
missile launch proficiency.
They were rated as marginal,
the equivalent of earning
a D grade. Barely passing.
That's not great.
I do really think when it comes to safeguarding
the deadliest objects ever known to mankind, we should really
insist on something more in a solid B-plus/C-minus range.
OK, finally let's look at Montana.
The good news--their offices have not had D grades.
The bad news is why.
Thirty-four U.S. Air Force nuclear launch officers
have been stripped of their certification.
REPORTER: Four months ago, a launch officer
at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana allegedly texted
the answers to a monthly proficiency test
to other officers at the base.
They texted the answers!
Those answers should not be textable.
You should not be able to answer, "How do you prevent
the launch of a Minuteman III?,"
with emojis.
It has to be more complicated than that.
But, OK, OK, look, let's not overreact.
Now, not everyone is good at tests.
How are the people in North Dakota and Montana
working in the field?
REPORTER: Picture this-- 4 Air Force officers
who hold the launch keys to nuclear missiles
leaving open the blast door that's supposed to prevent
terrorists from entering the capsule.
This while another slept inside, which is allowed
only if the door is closed.
And who discovered this?
In one case, it was a maintenance team.
In another case, it was discovered
by someone delivering food.
[Laughter]
And once again, America is saved from destruction
by the heroes in Meal Team 6.
And in case you think it's just low-level, unmotivated officers
who are dropping the ball here, let's meet two of the top people
who've been in charge of our most powerful missiles.
First up, Major General Michael Carey.
He was relieved of command last October
for spectacular reasons.
REPORTER: According to an Air Force inspector general's
report, on a recent trip to Russia,
Air Force General Michael Carey was often intoxicated, rude,
and spent a lot of time with foreign women.
He often interrupted presentations.
He often interrupted translators with annoying comments
when he gave toasts...
That really irritated the Russians.
Just think about that.
The man overseeing our ICBMs was too drunk for the Russians.
For the Russians!
And CNN barely skimmed the surface of this story.
The inspector general's report
reads like "Ron Burgundy Goes to Russia."
Apparently, General Carey at one point tried to fist-bump
a confused Russian tour guide,
then dragged his staff to a restaurant called La Cantina
because he, and I quote,
"really wanted to see this Beatles cover band,"
prompting one staffer to observe,
"I wouldn't pick a Mexican place to go in Russia,
but all right, if that's where he wants to go, we'll go there."
And even once he was there, it wasn't over.
Because he again, and I quote, "was really intent on singing
with the band."
And he said, "Go ask them if I can play guitar,"
which led to the immortal sentence,
"I told the General that basically, um, you know,
that he can't, he can't play the guitars."
Take a moment to consider the run of poor decisions
that are required before you're being told you can't play guitar
with a Beatles cover band when you're drunk
at a Mexican restaurant in Russia.
[Laughter and applause]
Just add all that up together.
And then consider, this man had access
to our deadliest nuclear warheads.
And in case that doesn't scare you enough,
until recently one of the men overseeing
all the people we've met so far
was Vice Admiral Tim Giardina.
The president relieved him of his command last year
for an even weirder reason.
REPORTER: Admiral Timothy Giardina's undoing began
with a local criminal investigation in Iowa,
where he was spotted on surveillance cameras using
counterfeit poker chips
at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs.
OK, OK, I'm sorry, but a vice admiral has to have
the mental fortitude to fool an Iowa pit boss. You have to.
You have to.
And, also, this means-- let's recap--
that within the last 12 months, we were in a situation
where in the event of us launching a nuclear strike,
the president's command would theoretically have gone
through a man gambling with fake poker chips,
who would have then tried to call a drunk guy
wrestling with a Russian George Harrison,
who would have then needed to send someone
with a bag full of burritos to wake up an officer
and tell him to go grab an LP-sized floppy disc
and begin the solemn process of ending the world as we know it.
Just...
[Applause]
And if...
if you're thinking, "Well, it looks like we were lucky
nothing terrible has happened,"
we're actually even luckier than you think.
Over the years, America has had some pretty terrifying
almost-geddons.
The Goldsboro incident of 1961--
that's when a U.S. B-52 bomber jet broke in half
during a flight and lost its load--two nuclear bombs.
Where was it flying at the time? Over the city of Goldsboro,
North Carolina.
Both bombs plummeted to the ground.
One was nearly armed,
set to explode,
but miraculously, neither did.
Yeah, you dropped an armed nuclear bomb
on your own country.
And it is, frankly, amazing
that you don't talk about that more often.
There is genuinely a weirdly restrained sign marking
the event, calling it a "nuclear mishap,"
when it clearly should really say,
"Holy Fuck! You have no idea what nearly happened here!"
[Applause]
And--I know...
I know you're probably thinking,
"OK, all right. We nearly blew up one of the Carolinas,
but that's basically why we have two."
But--but in that case, how about that one time we risked
blowing up Arkansas?
Someone dropped a socket in the silo.
And the socket fell about 70 feet,
pierced the missile, caused a fuel leak.
And then there was a huge explosion.
Just think about the system we have designed.
In the rock/paper/scissors logic,
socket beats nuclear missile.
And if that feels too much like ancient history to you,
here is something from as recently as 2007.
REPORTER: Six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles
were loaded onto a B-52 by mistake,
flown across the country,
and left unguarded on the Tarmac.
No one noticed for 36 hours.
And that must have been a hell of a moment when they realized,
"Hey, guys, um, those things that have been out there
"for a day and a half, there is no way that those are nuclear--
Shit!"
It seems clear at this point, we have too many nuclear weapons
to take care of them properly.
So why aren't we reducing them?
Well, we were, to be fair.
Since 1988, we got rid of more than 18,000 warheads,
but recently, things have slowed down a lot.
President Obama has reduced our arsenal by just 309,
which is crazy.
At a time of budgetary cutbacks, we are spending $355 billion
over the next decade on something we don't need.
And don't take that from me.
Take it from someone who actually knows
something about this.
The one thing I convinced myself of
after all these years of exposure
to the use of nuclear weapons is
that they were useless.
Yeah. Nuclear weapons are basically like Americans'
"T. rex" arms.
They're essentially useless,
and you are plenty scary enough without them.
[Laughter]
When you have...
when you have 4,800 of something you don't need,
you are a fucking hoarder at that point.
It's like having 4,800 cats.
Sure, each one might have made sense when you got it,
but it all happened so gradually,
you didn't really notice that things had gotten out of hand.
And now you have too many
of these agents of chaos and destruction.
And one of these days, one of them might kill you.
The problem is there are two key things stopping us
from reducing our nuclear weapons.
The first is politics.
Because there are lawmakers from both parties who have
missile silos in their states.
And they will fight any attempt to close them,
no matter how much sense that makes.
And they'll fight it with ironclad logic like this...
We know that maintaining our current silos is the best
interest--and in the best interest of taxpayers
because rebuilding them would be very expensive.
[Laughter]
OK, let me get that straight.
You are spending money on something you don't need
in the hopes that you'll be saving money
on the off chance one day you eventually do need...
What exactly are you saying, then?
That's desperate.
That's like saying, "I have to hold on
"to my storage facility full of Aquaman action figures
on the off chance that my future wife really likes them."
She will not. She will not!
She will not want those things.
"You don't need them!"
The man there, that's Steve Daines.
And the House was discussing a bill that guaranteed
that silos would be kept open until at least 2021.
He was trying to attach an amendment
removing the end date altogether,
essentially meaning, no matter what the Pentagon wanted,
the silos would have to be kept open forever.
It was clearly a ridiculous amendment.
Let's now watch it pass.
MAN: On this vote, the yeas
are 222; the nays are 196.
The amendment is adopted.
That is some weapons grade bullshit.
Now, the Senate could still make big changes to that bill.
But for that to happen, people would need to care.
And that brings us to the main reason why so little is
being done to reduce our number of nuclear warheads.
Deep down, people just don't give enough of a shit anymore.
In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of people
pushed for disarmament in Central Park.
But in May of this year, this is what a House hearing
on nuclear security looks like.
We should point out probably one of the few hearings
in which, actually, the attendance
of the subcommittee compares very favorably
with the attendance in the audience.
Because the public has not tuned in to these issues
as they should.
That's right.
A hearing on the most dangerous things on Earth had
attendance rivaling that of a weekday open mike poetry slam.
And the problem is, no one honestly believes
that we're going to destroy ourselves
despite the fact that
that has nearly happened multiple times.
But shouldn't we, at the very least, be reducing our stockpile
down to a number where we can look after them properly
with enough qualified people,
none of whom are going to cheat on a test,
leave a door open, or vomit a half-eaten chimichanga
onto a Slavic Ringo?
All I'm saying is, if humanity is going to be destroyed
by a nuclear weapon,
let's make sure that it's at least intentional.
Let's have it be a U.S. president
riding a missile with a middle finger
held to the sky,
screaming humanity's last words: "Fuck you, world!
America is shutting this shit down."
[Applause]
Please...
let's just not have our last words be, "Oops. Oh, shit."
And now this...
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Who's got the camera?
Who let the dogs out? Who? Who?
MAN: I deserve to be paid more.
And I'm only a freshman, and I'm already complaining.
Show me the money.
As George Costanza would say when they're applauding,
"Stop right now," right?
[Man laughs]
That takes me back to another modern-day poet
by the name of Jay-Z.
In one of his songs, he wrote:
"It's funny what 7 days can change.
It was all good just a week ago."
MAN: I've been the original cosponsor
of this bill ever since I got here to Congress.
If I can quote L.L. Cool J, the rapper,
"Don't call it a comeback. I've been here for years."
DIFFERENT MAN: This may go back to "A Few Good Men," the movie
with Jack Nicholson.
"You can't handle the truth."
WOMAN: But struggling Nevada families are asking,
"Where's the beef?"
ROMNEY: I was thinking about Davy Crockett.
Remember the song?
"Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee.
Greenest state in the land of the free.
Raised in the woods so he knew every tree.
And he kills himself a bear when he was only 3.
Davy, Davy Crocket...
[Applause]
Finally...
That guy has his finger on the pulse.
Finally tonight, look, I know that in the last few weeks,
we've been covering a lot of depressing stories.
But I'm afraid I have one more terrible tale to tell you.
Russia has lost contact with a satellite
full of possibly mating geckos.
Russia launched the geckos into space about a week ago.
They were trying to observe their mating activities
in zero gravity.
But after just a few orbits, their pod stopped responding
to mission control.
Don't you dare laugh at that!
[Laughter]
Don't--don't you dare laugh
at the fact that Russia has lost a satellite
full of sexually-active space geckos.
There is nothing funny about that!
This is like "Apollo 13" all over again,
only in Cyrillic
and with a quintet of Russian fuck lizards
instead of Tom Hanks.
And, frankly, Russia has not been treating this story
with the urgency it deserves.
REPORTER: Russia's hoping to restore communications
before the geckos run out of food.
"Hoping"?
[Crowd groans]
That is not good enough, Russia.
You can't just watch videos of them fucking
and then toss them aside.
They're not Kardashians.
[Laughter and applause]
And, look, look...
they're geckos.
And, look, you might be saying,
"John, why are you making such a big deal out of this?
Aren't there more important things going on in the world?"
Well, yes, obviously.
Almost everything is more important than this.
Ukraine is sliding into anarchy;
the Gaza cease-fire is tenuous;
and we're mostly powerless to do anything
about any of them.
But maybe, just maybe, if we could come together
and accomplish one thing as a civilization,
we could then build on that progress.
And I think rescuing these space sex geckos
might just be that thing.
And that is why I'm issuing a challenge to humanity:
Go get those geckos.
Now, I know what you're thinking.
I know what you're thinking.
"John, how is a hashtag going to rescue those geckos?"
The hashtag is to raise awareness, you idiots!
[Laughter]
Be positive!
And, look, you can and should do more.
You could go on to the Kremlin's contact page,
which inexplicably has a form allowing you
to actually write Vladimir Putin a letter,
which you can do at this address.
And, look, look, take this seriously.
Don't be idiots about this.
The Kremlin insists-- this is true--
that your suggestions be, and I quote, "specific."
And I do not know of a more specific suggestion
than "Go get those geckos!"
[Applause]
How are we gonna do it? What's that?
How are we gonna get them? I don't know. I don't know.
I'm not a space pornographer.
Maybe a net of some sort or a magnet. I don't know.
Maybe you've got some better ideas.
And if you do, don't tell me.
Tell Vladimir Putin at this address.
We can do this, people.
And, sure, Russia's gonna push back, like they did yesterday,
saying they've reestablished contact with the satellite.
But they're clearly lying.
They're just buying Putin enough time to run to a pet store,
get 5 geckos, and parade them in front of us.
Well, we don't want those geckos!
We want the space geckos!
Come on, humanity.
Let us stand together as one,
and let us utter the most powerful words
in the English language,
"Mr. Putin, go get those geckos"!
That's our show. Thanks so much for watching.
We'll be back next week,
and, God willing, so will the geckos. Good night!
Go get those geckos!
Go get those geckos.
Go get those geckos!
Go get those geckos.
Go get those geckos!
We'll get those geckos.
We will get those geckos for you.
Get those geckos!
Get the geckos!
Go get the geckos!
Get the geckos!
Get the...
Get the geckos. Get the geckos.
Geckos!
Listen, we want those geckos.
Go get the geckos!
[Cheering and applause]
*