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- Welcome, welcome, welcome to "Last Week Tonight."
I'm John Oliver, thank you so much for joining us.
Let's dive straight in, and tonight, we're going to do
something a little bit different, because for one week
and one week only, the show "Last Week Tonight"
is actually going to talk at some length
about the last week, tonight, and the reason
we unfortunately have to do that is the last seven days
have been absolutely insane, so much so that
by Friday night, it may have broken Anderson Cooper.
Because--I'll tell you why-- because Jeffrey Lord,
CNN contributor and die-hard Trump supporter,
was in the middle of defending yet another indefensible
statement from Trump when Cooper finally snapped.
- He's the president of the United States.
If he wants to say that, Barack Obama wants to say whatever,
if George Bush says, "I looked in his eyes"--
- If he took a dump on his desk, you would defend it.
- [laughs] What?
- Yes, yes, that is a professional journalist
saying of the president, "If he took a dump
on his desk, you would defend it."
And more importantly, Jeffrey Lord
did not immediately answer "No."
And look: on a different night, I could probably devote time
to why CNN would put themselves in the position
of having a professional dump defender
constantly on their network,
but there is not going to be time, because
tonight we have to track the latest developments
in what we've been calling "Stupid Watergate,"
a scandal with all the potential ramifications of Watergate,
but where everyone involved is stupid and bad at everything.
And given the exhausting pace of this week's events, tonight,
we are simply gonna try and answer a few basic questions.
What the fuck is going on?
How big a deal is this?
Where do we go from here?
And is this real life?
So let's begin with question one,
what the fuck is going on?
And the answer to that is: quite a lot.
Can you even remember how this week began?
'Cause there was actually a big story on Monday
that you may have forgotten by now.
- Top secret bombshell: reports President Trump revealed
highly-classified intelligence
to the Russians in the Oval Office.
- Sources tell "The Washington Post" the president
was boasting to Russia's foreign minister
and ambassador when he divulged the intelligence
during an Oval Office meeting last week.
- That's right, President Trump may have inadvertently
revealed code word information, one of the highest
levels of classification, to Russian officials.
And that is the kind of information you shouldn't even
share with your closest friends, which, of course,
in Trump's case would be the golf caddy he calls Steve
even though his name is Doug,
a bucket of KFC chicken,
and the ghost of Roger Ailes.
And--and back then-- back then--
in the more innocent time of Monday,
it felt like there simply could not be
a bigger story than that.
- This is the most serious charge
ever made against a sitting president.
Let's not minimize it.
Comey is in the wastebaste-- basket of history.
Everything else is off the table.
This is the most serious charge ever made against
a sitting president of the United States.
- Yeah, turns out Alan Dershowitz
was extremely wrong about that, and
I would say it's hard to imagine
him being more wrong about anything,
but fortunately, we have photographic proof.
But the point is-- the point is,
that Russia news was buried the very next day by this.
- ABC News confirming that shortly after
an Oval Office visit in February,
former FBI Director James Comey wrote a memo
saying that during that meeting, President Trump
asked him to shut down his investigation
into national security adviser Michael Flynn.
- And that was a huge deal, because let me give you
a quick reminder about why the FBI
was investigating Flynn, a man whose overall demeanor
says, "I only fuck on top of the sheets
so I don't ruin the hospital corners."
Michael Flynn was fired after it emerged he'd discussed
US sanctions against Russia with Russian officials
during the transition, despite denying that to the press,
to the FBI, and to Vice President Mike Pence.
Flynn was so flawed, team Trump was repeatedly warned
about his baggage by both then-acting AG Sally Yates
and President Obama, and even, as reported this week,
General Flynn himself.
But Trump kept standing by him anyway, which kind of
makes sense, in a way, because literally every decision
in the Trump administration is the worst possible one.
Paper or plastic?
Whichever one kills the most birds.
Soup or salad?
I'm gonna go with the N-word.
Favorite Beatle?
It's got to be Yoko.
Anyway, let's get back to this week, because on Wednesday,
just four days ago, which is the equivalent
of 150 years in 2017 time,
Donald Trump gave the commencement address
at the Coast Guard Academy, and that should have been easy.
Simply lift the cadets' spirits
and point them towards the future, but Trump
inevitably used the speech to-- well, I'm fairly sure
momentarily forget the word "certainty"
and then also generally whine about
how mean people were being to him.
- No politician in history--
and I say this with great...surety--
has been treated worse or more unfairly.
- Wait, no politician has been treated worse?
Abraham Lincoln was shot by an actor.
William McKinley was shot by an anarchist.
JFK was of course murdered by Ted Cruz's father.
And James Garfield was shot, then to find the bullet--
and this is true-- Alexander Graham Bell
devised a kind of metal detector which didn't work,
so doctors tried to fish around in his guts
for the bullet with unwashed fingers,
which just made his infection worse,
so he died in horrible pain.
But yeah, Alec Baldwin sometimes does a mean impression
of you on TV, so yeah, it's basically the same, isn't it?
Then--then-- later that same day--
the same day, the Justice Department appointed
a special counsel, former FBI head Robert Mueller,
to conduct an independent investigation into
the Trump campaign's connections to Russia,
which is also a massive development
that was closely followed by Thursday's news
concerning James Comey, specifically his friend's
account of the lengths to which Comey went
at this post-inauguration meeting to try and
avoid a personal encounter with the president.
- He's wearing--if you watch the video of it,
he's wearing a blue blazer, and he stands
in the part of the room that is as far
from Trump as it is physically possible to be,
and also against blue drapes
that are the same color as his--
- He chose that spot? - He chose that spot because
it was, you know, like, almost like a chameleon.
Or, you know, camouflaged against the wall.
- Blend in.
- Come on, Comey!
If you're 6'8", you don't hide by blending into a curtain.
You wear a brown suit, you paste a few leaves to your
hand and head, and you hope to be mistaken for a tree.
What's what you do.
Now, luckily, we somehow escaped Thursday alive,
and on Friday, the president took off
for a nine-day overseas trip, but the wheels
of Air Force One had barely left the ground
when this happened.
- "The New York Times" now reporting
that according to a White House document,
President Trump in the Oval Office
told Russian officials ten days ago that
James Comey, the FBI director, was a "nut job."
- Now, yeah, that sounds rough, but in Trump's defense,
I can kind of see where he's coming from.
I mean, the guy keeps hiding in my drapes.
Who does that? He's huge. I can see him.
Dress like a tree. You've got to know that.
And--and here's the thing: that same document,
which the White House did not deny,
gave the even more concerning detail
that Trump had told his Russian guests...
And it's almost difficult
to believe your ears when you hear something
that sounds so audaciously corrupt.
It's like if Hillary Clinton had sent an email
with the subject line, "Sup, I did Benghazi."
But wait--wait, because the week still wasn't quite yet done.
'Cause almost at the exact same time that the "nut job"
news emerged, there was one last startling revelation.
- "The Washington Post" began reporting that the FBI
investigation into possible coordination between Russia
and the Trump campaign has identified
a current White House official
as a significant person of interest.
- And that is also potentially enormous.
Now, some have suggested that that could be Jared Kushner,
but it seems unlikely, because while he is technically
significant and legally a person,
he in no way qualifies as "of interest."
He is the least interesting human on Earth.
He is the person equivalent of an empty room painted eggshell.
He's like a white bread sandwich where the middle
is just a third slice of white bread.
Or as Mike Pence refers to that,
"The devil's hoagie."
So--so that is the shortest possible summation
of the events of this week,
which brings us to our second question:
how big a deal is this?
Because it feels like a pretty big deal.
Think about it: going into this week, there were already
multiple investigations into Russia's efforts
to swing the election and any possible ties
to the Trump campaign, but there are now
also strong allegations that Trump attempted, in some form,
to influence the investigations, and we now have
a special counsel looking into all of this.
You would almost have to be trying
really hard not to see this as a big deal,
and nobody tried harder
than some commentators on Fox News.
- This is insane--where is the evidence of a crime?
- People are now buying some of this lunacy.
- Hysteria every single day.
- We've reached a point of madness.
- They're unhinged. - This is a scandal
with no video, with no audio,
with no sex, with no money, with no dead bodies.
It's a boring scandal.
- That is just ridiculous.
"There may be Americans hidden in plain view
working on behalf of Russia" is not boring,
it's literally a fucking Emmy-nominated TV show.
But perhaps my favorite attempt
to pour water on this story came from Tucker Carlson,
the villain from a direct-to-video "Caddyshack"
sequel who somehow became a real boy.
Tucks tried to Jedi Mind Trick this scandal out of existence.
- The world is a very complicated place,
Washington especially.
What you think is happening often really isn't happening.
- Wow, what you think is happening isn't happening.
He's talking to his viewers like a parent
whose kids just walked in on them 69-ing.
This isn't what you think!
This isn't what you're looking at.
Your mother and I were just listening to see
if there's an echo when you scream into a butt.
Nothing is happening here.
You're not seeing anything here.
[laughter, cheers, applause]
Although fascinatingly, as the week went on,
even some on Fox were struggling to hold the line,
because remember Mr. "This is a boring scandal"?
This was him just two days later.
- I've been the first one to say, you know,
there's a lot of smoke, but I don't see any fire,
but now I'm getting a little concerned.
Even I, myself, have gotten to the point where I'm like,
what is going on here with this situation?
I'm a little worried about it.
- That cannot be a good sign.
A Fox host not being able to hold his doubts at bay
for 48 hours is pretty much a canary in a coal mine,
but then, at this point, Donald Trump
is basically waist-deep in dead canaries.
And you can tell how serious this is becoming
by the fact that when the news started breaking this week,
members of Trump's own party were suddenly hard to find.
- We reached out to 20 Republican senators
and representatives to appear on this broadcast.
We also reported and requested that someone
from the White House join us at any point
during our two-hour broadcast to respond to the latest news.
All declined our invitation.
- Now, just try and think about how crazy that is.
20 invites, 20 refusals.
That's worse attendance than a wrap party
for the cast of "The Jinx."
I don't know, Bob, where do you think everyone is,
you massive creep.
Now--now some Republicans did comment on Trump this week,
but not perhaps in the way that
the White House would have ideally wanted.
For example, John McCain had this to say.
- I think it's reaching the point where
it's of Watergate size and scale, and a couple
of other scandals that you and I have seen.
It's a centipede, and the shoe continues to drop.
- Yeah, it's like a centipede that keeps dropping shoes,
but it's real, and people wear shoes,
so the Trump administration is really more like
a human centipede in terms of the amount
of shit passing through it
and how nauseating watching it really is.
And while McCain was willing to cite Watergate,
other Republicans were willing to go even further.
- Michigan's Justin Amash today became the first
Republican to say the president's actions
might merit impeachment.
- And there we have it: a member of Trump's own party
has raised the specter of impeachment
just four months into the president's first term.
That is almost impressive, in a way,
and it gets worse, because when "Mother Jones"
ran an article citing Amash
as the first Republican to mention impeachment,
a spokeswoman for another Republican,
Representative Carlos Curbelo of Florida,
reached out to say he was actually
the first Republican to mention it.
Although to be fair-- to be completely fair here,
the very first person to think,
"Oh, God, he should not be president,"
is probably some unnamed nurse
in Queens in the year 1946.
You know, I've been doing this a long time,
but this baby is the worst one I've ever seen.
This is a terrible baby.
And the specter of impeachment is something
that some in the White House are reportedly taking seriously.
- And after days of incendiary headlines,
CNN has learned that White House lawyers
are researching what a possible
Trump impeachment might look like.
- That's actually a pretty good question.
What would a Trump impeachment look like?
I mean, ironically, I imagine at least part of it would involve
thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey.
So--so this-- this certainly has
all the appearances of a pretty big deal,
which brings us to question number three:
where do we go from here?
And if you are hoping for an impeachment
or a resignation, it is worth taking a quick peek
at the presidential line of succession,
because Trump going would be fantastic,
but remember that would give us President Mike Pence,
and let me remind you how our prospective
next president sees himself.
- I'm a Christian, a conservative,
and a Republican, in that order.
I'm a Christian, a conservative,
and a Republican, in that order.
I'm a Christian-- a conservative--
and a Republican-- in that order.
- Honestly, I would have loved it if he'd just
kept going after-- "After those three,
"I'm a Gemini, I'm a furry,
"and I'm gluten intolerant, in that order.
"That's what I am, those six things,
don't get it wrong."
Mike Pence is a hard-line conservative.
In Congress, he led efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
He opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the ending
of "Don't ask, don't tell," and championed
a Constitutional amendment defining marriage
as between a man and a woman,
and as governor of Indiana,
his most eye-catching accomplishment was
the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,
which could have made it easier for religious conservatives
to refuse service to gay couples.
And making matters worse, when he was asked multiple times
whether that's what it did,
he kept dodging the question, ending in this exchange.
- Do you think it should be legal
in the state of Indiana
to discriminate against gays or lesbians?
- George...[sighs] - It's a yes or no question.
- Hoosiers--come on, Hoosiers don't believe in discrimination.
- Yeah, well, I don't believe in Hoosiers.
What the fuck is a Hoosier?
Where does that term come from anyway?
It sounds like the sound Al Pacino makes when he sneezes.
Hoosier! Hoosier!
Whoo!
And by the way, if you're telling yourself,
"Well, maybe Trump's impeachment could take Pence down as well,"
well, think about what that would mean, because
then we'd have President Paul Ryan,
three words that I always knew I'd have to say,
but I didn't really expect
to have to say it quite so soon,
Sort of like, "Remember polar bears?"
Or "Female 'Entourage' reboot."
The boys are back, and this time, they're girls.
And you know, if you really want to spin this fantasy out,
let's say that Ryan is also somehow sitting
on his own impeachable clusterfuck.
Do you know who is next in line to the presidency?
You might not.
I'm not sure that you do, do you?
It's actually Mr. Kelsey Grammer.
And you're probably assuming correctly that that is wrong,
but what is the real right answer there?
I can actually tell you, because we would genuinely have
President Orrin Hatch at that point.
Yes, he would be-- he would be president.
A man whose every expression says,
"I take fiber supplements,
and frankly, they're not working."
And look, Hatch is his own separate kind of nightmare,
but before we get lost any further down this
paranoid wormhole, let's just all take a collective breath,
because in reality, even though some people
have been getting excited this week,
impeachment is a long shot for many reasons,
not the least of which is, it would require a majority
of the House to vote to impeach,
and that is currently controlled by Republicans,
and then it would then need two-thirds
of the Senate to vote to convict the president,
and it is also controlled by Republicans right now,
so the likelihood is that Trump will survive this
and continue as president,
which shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone.
Why would this be the end of the line for him?
Trump has seemed to reach the end of the line
on multiple occasions, only for nothing to happen.
Remember when he hesitated to disavow David Duke?
Wasn't that supposed to be the end of the line?
Or the time he bullied a Gold Star family?
That had to be the end of the line, right?
Or the "Access Hollywood" tape?
We all thought the next stop on that bus was,
you guessed it, the end of the fucking line,
But it seems like when it comes to President Trump,
he's always approaching the end of the line,
but it never seems to come, as if for him, and him alone,
the end of the line is drawn by M.C. fucking Escher.
And--and I know-- I know--
following Stupid Watergate's
every development can be all-consuming.
It feels like nothing else has happened
over the last couple of weeks, but that is
a dangerous thing to believe, because it has.
Things have happened.
This administration has made significant moves
that have escaped many people's attention.
Jeff Sessions moved to lengthen drug sentences,
undoing Obama-era criminal justice reforms.
Just tonight it came out that Trump is going to propose
slashing Medicaid and other safety-net benefits,
and tomorrow, in court, the administration may decide
to end key Obamacare subsidies, which, if that happens,
could immediately unravel the Obamacare insurance markets.
So that 1946 nurse was absolutely right.
He was the worst baby,
and you know, he's still the worst baby now.
And as if all of this wasn't bad enough,
which is comfortably is, we are getting some heartbreaking
glimpses into how this president operates.
For instance, just this week, again,
we learned that this is how his own national security team
feels they have to brief him on important global issues.
- He likes single-page memos and visual aids like maps,
charts, graphs, and photos.
National security officials have strategically included
Trump's name in "As many paragraphs as we can
because he keeps reading if he is mentioned."
- Wow, that is absolutely pathetic.
Our president can only understand the world
to the extent that it involves himself, meaning
it is entirely possible that his security briefing reads...
This can all seem like a terrible work of fiction,
which actually brings us to our final question:
is this real life?
To which the answer is, unfortunately, yes.
And if you are feeling miserable about the situation
that we're in right now, the only consolation I may be able
to offer you is, I'm not sure that Trump
is entirely happy either, because yes,
you've seen him enjoy the rallies, and the attention,
and the fact that he can say he's the president,
but I think the most telling
photo taken of him so far is this one.
That was taken on his inauguration day
at a luncheon thrown in his honor.
Look at his face!
He looks like he's at the funeral for every dog.
And if you think I'm projecting this onto him,
just listen to an interview that Trump himself gave
around the hundred-day mark of his presidency,
and tell me if this is a guy who sounds like
he's happy with his situation.
- Yes, of course being president
is harder than your old job. Of course it is.
Your old job was basically having a name,
letting other people pay you to use that name,
and firing Dee Snider.
It was fucking easy!
Although, I will say this:
I now actually have something in common with Donald Trump,
because I too preferred my previous life
before he became president.
And that is why-- that is why
this is truly Stupid Watergate,
because no matter what, we are in for
an agonizingly long period of leaks,
allegations, and recriminations,
all over a presidential campaign to put a man in power
who may not entirely want to be there.
Say what you want about Nixon,
at least he wanted the fucking job.
Look, I don't know about you,
but this week has drained me.
At the end of last year, we told you to write down,
"This is not normal," to guard yourself
against getting complacent.
I don't think there is much danger
of that happening in the foreseeable future,
but it is also worth remembering that sentiment
just to reassure yourself that you're not going crazy.
And if you are tempted to believe any of what people
are saying, that this is all politics,
and every president goes through a week
like the one that we just had early in their administration,
let me show you one of the things that people
were attacking the last president for
at roughly the same point in his first term.
- As you all know, President Obama
is a real man of the people.
Take a look at him ordering his burger
with a very special condiment.
- You got like a spicy mustard or something like that?
Or a Dijon mustard, something like that?
- I hope you enjoyed that fancy burger, Mr. President.
- They were really mad about that.
That was on actual television.
And I would honestly give anything to once again live
in a time where the scandal rocking the executive branch
was a Fox News host implying
that the president likes metrosexual mustard,
and maybe, fingers crossed, one day,
we can all get there again.
And now, this.
- Tonight on CBS 2 News at 11:00.
While you're sleeping, these kids are playing.
Why? Tonight at 11:00.
- Moving on tonight: now, before we go,
we have a bit of a problem. You may have noticed
that Trump has completely decimated this week,
and unfortunately, in doing that,
he's essentially destroyed our plans for this show,
because we wanted to give you one of our usual
deep dives into an extremely boring topic.
We'd chosen the TSA, and there is clearly
not enough time left for me to do it properly,
but I will not be defeated,
so I'm gonna give you a full "Last Week Tonight" story
that should take 20 minutes in just 3 minutes.
Are you ready for this? [cheering]
There's no time. There is no time for that.
Let's go: our main story tonight concerns the TSA,
the only people who worry more about what's stuck up
your butt than you do.
Long story short, there are problems, and there are
potential solutions, and it's more complicated
than you might think. This graph goes up.
This graph goes down.
In combination, that's clearly a real problem.
Then, I was gonna show you this woman, who believes
some TSA techniques are an invasion of her privacy.
- I think it's an invasion of my privacy.
- That's not how that word is pronounced.
Then I was gonna show you a couple of victims
of inappropriate TSA conduct, and then to lighten the mood,
I was gonna hit you with a clip involving Muppet penguins.
- ♪ One, two, three, four ♪
♪ Penguins appear by the door ♪
- Believe me, that actually made sense
in the context of our piece.
Broadly speaking, penguins are a flightless bird,
so in theory, if they wanted to go somewhere,
they might have to deal with the TSA.
You can imagine the kind of fun graphics we had planned.
Here's one of Trump with a penguin.
I was also going to try and break down TSA procedures
using this clip.
- Sensitive areas like the breasts,
groin, and buttocks.
- All three of those things are objectively funny,
but--but we would be placing them next to a story
where that clip would actually be sad.
So, how long we got? 90 seconds? Oh, shit.
Okay, we're gonna skip this clip, this clip, and this clip.
That woman there is the TSA chief.
No time to get into what she's saying there
and how it may affect you, but just enough time
to show you this graphic of Vladimir Putin
and Boris Yeltsin giving each other hand jobs.
It would have made some sense in context.
We also has this TSA cartoon for you.
- It looks kind of scary. - No time for a joke there.
Uh, uh, we were also going to spend a decent amount of time
with the TSA's official Instagram account.
Here is an actual picture where someone asked them,
"Are knife-nanas allowed?"
I mean, come on. Knife-nanas?
We're not supposed to make a joke about knife-nanas?
We also don't have time for this graph.
I don't have time for this graph.
And this graph is actually a bigger problem
than you might think, but we have to move past it,
and this is the part where I have to say, "To be fair,"
and read what the TSA has said about an incident
that I was going to mention earlier, and to be fair,
they say, "We conducted a thorough review"--
and you know what, I don't have time for this either.
Then I was going to say 48%, 41 out of 50 states,
$4.8 billion dollars and $9,000,
which I know doesn't sound like a lot, but it actually is,
and to show you how much, we were gonna use
the GDP of Moldova-- 20 seconds left--
okay, here's three pull quotes, all of which are important,
the second of which involves 20 tons of cocaine.
Here's an elephant snorting cocaine.
And here is where I was gonna reach my conclusion,
which we absolutely do not have time for,
and then, just to cheer everyone up at the end of a long
and sporadically depressing show, we were gonna give you
something joyful and fun to watch,
and it was the penguins! We had these penguins!
The penguins were gonna cheer us up.
And I guess they still can.
Look, penguins!
It's just nice. That's all it is.
Things are allowed to be nice.
The point is, write your congressman
about the issues you've seen discussed tonight.
Can you do that thing where you laugh with your mouths?
[penguins laughing] I love that!
That's one of my favorite things in the world.
Enjoy it. Enjoy it now and forever.
That's our show--we're off next week for Memorial Day.
We're back on June 4th. Thank you for watching.
Good night. Penguins!
We got penguins!
[penguins honking]
[cheers and applause]
[all honking]
Penguins. Penguins!
It's penguins!
It's just fun!
It's just some fun!
[cheers and applause]
[bright tone]