[TV static drones]
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[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 President Trump,
two words that give you a sense of impending doom,
like "sewage enema" or "United Airlines."
But this week saw a spectacular moment,
when White House spokesman Sean Spicer
attempted to explain our stance on Syria
by pointing to the fact Assad had used
chemical weapons on his own people.
Not that difficult a thing to explain.
Certainly very difficult to explain this badly.
- You look.
We didn't use chemical weapons in World War II.
You know, you had a--
you know, uh, someone as despicable as Hitler,
who didn't even sink to the--to the--
to using chemical weapons.
- Yes, Hitler didn't use chemical weapons.
That's not just wrong;
that's $200 question on "Jeopardy" wrong.
That is "Wheel of Fortune" First Round Toss-Up wrong.
Because everybody knows
mass chemical extermination was kind of Hitler's thing,
that and the mustache.
You take them away, and all you've got
is an ill-tempered Austrian with resting bitch face.
And--and Spicer's comments
led to this incredible follow-up question.
- Just want to give you the opportunity to clarify
something you said that seems to be gaining
some traction right now.
Uh, "Hitler didn't even sink to the level
of using chemical weapons."
What did you mean by that?
- I think when you come to sarin gas,
uh, there was no-- he was not using the gas
on his own people the same way that Assad is doing.
I mean, there was clearly--
uh, I--I understand your point. Thank you.
I--thank you. I appreciate that.
There was--not in the-- in the--
he brought 'em into the-- to, um--
to the Holocaust Center. I understand that.
- At no point during that
was he in control of his own mouth.
Most specifically, the moment he suddenly decided to
coin the term "Holocaust Center,"
which sounds like the home arena for an alt-right hockey team.
But wait, wait, 'cause he wasn't done.
Spicer then put out a printed statement,
reading, "In no way was I trying to lessen
the horrendous nature of the Holocaust,"
which is an amazing way to start any statement.
Continuing, "However,
"I was trying to draw a contrast of
"the tactic of using airplanes
to drop chemical weapons on innocent people."
The problem there is, that could imply
the victims of the Holocaust
were not innocent people,
hence Spicer's hastily released second statement,
changing "innocent people" to "population centers,"
then a third statement with an extra line saying,
"Any attack on innocent people
is reprehensible and inexcusable."
And then a final statement which read, in its entirety,
"Hello. I can't stop making statements.
"I don't want to make any more statements.
Can anybody hear me? Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. Sean."
Meanwhile--meanwhile,
the president himself was being interviewed about Syria,
where he described in surprising detail
the moment that he informed Chinese president Xi Jinping
that the strikes would be taking place.
- I was sitting at the table. We had finished dinner.
We're now having dessert.
And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake
that you've ever seen.
And President Xi was enjoying it.
And I was given the message from the generals
that the ships are locked and loaded.
What do you do?
And we made a determination to do.
- Only Donald Trump could use a conversation about
missile strikes in the Middle East
to advertise the cake at Mar-a-Lago,
which, by the way, you might
want to think twice about trying,
given that, just this week, it was reported
the club's kitchen was cited for 13 health code violations
for, among other things,
fish that had not undergone proper parasite destruction
and storing ham at 57 degrees,
because nothing says upscale dining
like lukewarm ham with a side of tapeworm.
And if you're thinking, "Well, hold on,
"perhaps the president brought up the cake
"because he wanted to be extra precise
about every single detail,"
well, let's rejoin that interview
just one minute later.
- So what happens is, I said,
"We've just launched 59 missiles,
heading to Iraq."
- Well, you--headed to Syria.
- Yes, heading toward Syria.
- I honestly wish she'd just kept naming places
to see if he kept agreeing with her.
"Headed to Egypt?" "Yes, headed to Egypt."
"Headed to Dollywood?" "Yes, headed to Dollywood."
"Headed straight for us?"
"Yes, headed straight for us right now."
Now, as we mentioned last week,
the bigger issue with Trump's sudden bombing of Syria is,
it runs directly counter to everything he'd said previously,
through tweets like,
"What I am saying is stay out of Syria."
But it turned out that was just a warm-up
for a week full of foreign policy flip-flops.
- President Trump making a number of stunning reversals,
as he faces multiple foreign policy crises.
After repeatedly calling NATO obsolete
on the campaign trail...
- NATO, in my opinion, is obsolete.
- Now Mr. Trump, changing his tone...
- I said it was obsolete.
It's no longer obsolete.
- It is incredibly annoying
how long it took Donald Trump to reach a conclusion
that everyone else had already reached.
It's like a flat-Earther finally admitting the Earth is round.
Yes, you are finally right, but I'm still mad at you
that you ever believed that shit in the first place.
And that's just the beginning.
He also U-turned on calling China a "currency manipulator,"
replacing Fed. Chair Janet Yellen,
and his criticisms of the Export-Import Bank.
And you may be happy with those reversals,
but if you are a Trump supporter,
you might be rightly pissed off.
This is not what you thought you bought.
It's like getting tickets for "The Vagina Monologues,"
but on the night you went, it starred Brian Dennehy,
who's great-- look, don't get me wrong--
but he's not really what you signed up for.
And sometimes Trump's 180s seem to happen in real-time.
For instance, his longstanding belief
that North Korea could easily be taken care of by China
apparently changed
moments after he brought it up to Xi Jinping.
- "Mr. Xi then explained
the history of China and Korea," Mr. Trump said.
"After listening for ten minutes," he said,
"I realize it's not so easy."
[laughter]
- Xi Jinping got him to completely change his mind
after just ten minutes.
And how did he even explain something that complicated
in so short a time?
I genuinely want to know that,
because if this show did a segment on grapes,
we'd need 20 minutes
and an appearance from a marching band.
The president seems to change his mind
based on any information that is new to him,
which seems to be almost any information,
and that is genuinely worrying.
We have a leader operating on a learner's permit,
and we were reminded just this week
of what a president has at his disposal.
- We learned a short time ago,
for the first time in combat,
the U.S. military dropped a 21,000-pound bomb
in eastern Afghanistan.
Inside the Air Force, inside the military,
it quite seriously is referred to
as "the mother of all bombs."
- Okay, now, there is obviously a lot to unpack there,
but let's just take a minute and appreciate the fact
that we finally reached a point
where mothers can be bombs too.
#MOMBOMBS, #FEMINISM.
But minutes after that historic bomb drop,
Trump took a victory lap that was tripped up slightly
by one very simple question.
- We are so proud of our military,
and it was another successful event.
- Uh, everybody knows exactly what happened, so...
And what I do is, I authorize my military.
We have the greatest military in the world,
and they've done a job, as usual,
so we have given them total authorization.
- What the fuck was that?
That was a yes-or-no question,
to which you vomited 38 words,
none of which were yes or no,
although to be fair,
none of them were "Holocaust Center" either,
so I guess we should be at least partially relieved.
And incidentally, later reports suggest
that the U.S. commander who ordered the bomb drop
didn't need and didn't request
President Trump's approval,
which means Trump has placed
a significant amount of authority
in the hands of his commanders.
And you may think that's good,
you may think that's bad,
but I would not expect Trump
to curb that power any time soon,
because, as we talked about last week,
this is a man who responds to praise,
and yet again, he's being praised for this.
Just watch Trump's favorite morning show,
"Fox & Friends," respond to the bombing.
- ♪ Uncle Sam put your name ♪
♪ At the top of his list ♪
♪ And the Statue of Liberty ♪
♪ Started shakin' her fist ♪
- That video's black-and-white. - Good morning.
- But that is what freedom looks like.
That's the red, white, and blue.
- Well, one of my favorite things
in the 16 years I've been here at Fox News
is watching bombs drop on bad guys.
- Oh, that's a coincidence,
because one of my favorite things
in four seasons on this show
is getting to look directly into the camera
and say, "Fuck you, Geraldo.
I hope your mustache gets caught in a box fan."
Oh! Oh! That felt amazing.
That felt absolutely amazing.
But Geraldo wasn't done.
He had strategic advice
for the man who was almost certainly watching.
- It's not gonna win the war,
but it certainly sends a message.
The message has to be, "We're coming for you."
You know, I--I had a bully in high school,
a guy named Richie.
You never knew what Richie was gonna do.
Richie had a--a--you know, a-- he'd have a temper.
Sometimes he'd wanna kill ya, and sometimes he'd let you go.
I like that they think that Donald Trump is like
Richie from my high school.
I want the bad guys to think
that he could do anything to them...
- Unpredictable. - At any--any moment,
and I think that that has a positive impact.
- Holy shit.
You see, this is why bullying never works.
If you have a bully in school, there is a good chance
he's turning some kid into the next Geraldo Rivera.
And if you have a bully in the White House,
he does violent, impulsive things
that seem to be inching us closer to, among other things,
potential nuclear war with North Korea.
And if that happens,
it's gonna take a fucking amazing piece of chocolate cake
to help us forget about it.
And now, this.
male announcer: And now...
- We've got an Easter egg hunt
that is said to be egg-cellent.
- So you'd better hop on over to the Lincoln Park Zoo.
- Well, hop-pening this weekend,
one event in the Northland
is sure to "egg-cellent" for the entire family.
- The egg-cellent details when I see you for
"Eyewitness News" at 7:00 on WYOU.
- Hope it's all that it's cracked up to be.
[laughter]
- They're out here with their parents
getting some of those, uh, egg-cellent goodies.
- You bet your bonnet
we have a plethora of egg-citing events.
- This Minnesota restaurant is gearing up for Easter
with this egg-cellent tradition, they say.
Notice the play on the word "egg."
- An egg-cellent wild card pick. See what I did there?
- I bet you're wondering what's hopping over here.
- Thanks, José, sounds like an egg-citing time.
- Kids will be able to trade that in
for an eggs-tra special treat.
both: Oh!
- That was good. - I saw what you did there.
- Great job there.
- That--it was written in the script that way.
- Moving on.
Our main story tonight concerns France,
home of Babar, the lovable elephant
who becomes less lovable
when you remember that in the books,
he married his cousin; that's right.
Your childhood elephant hero was a cousin fucker.
The point is, next Sunday,
France holds the first round of its presidential election,
and if you're thinking,
"Well, why should I care about that?"
The truth is, it is way more important
than you might realize.
- It's a very important election,
what's going to happen in France.
It's the future of Europe, basically.
- Overwhelmingly, France is the election that matters.
- Well, these French elections take place
at the crossroad of European history.
It's really defining Europe's fate.
- That's right.
The fate of Europe rests in the hands of a country
that looks at snails and says,
"I have got to get you in my mouth."
But it is not an exaggeration to say that, post-Brexit,
and with a wave of far-right populism sweeping Europe,
the fate of the EU may hang on this election.
Multiple candidates support a French Brexit,
and the consequences of that would be steep.
- And frankly, it's not bragging,
but if France is out of the EU, it's the end of the EU
and the end of the eurozone,
uh, so a lot of things will depend on
the result of the French elections.
- It's true.
This could be the most disastrous
French exit in history,
and that is acknowledging that a "French exit"
normally refers to drinking an entire bottle of red wine
and then leaving the party with the host's wife.
So--so this is a critical election,
or technically, two critical elections.
- The election takes place in two rounds,
one on April the 23rd, the next on May the 7th.
The first round will see
all the candidates compete for votes.
In the second, assuming nobody got more than
half the votes in the first round,
the top two contenders will face off.
- What a ridiculous system.
Where are the 51 individual contests
that allot points based on outdated demographic data
that can result in a decisive loser
in the popular vote count somehow winning?
That's just stupid!
Well, go easy on France.
They're still working out the kinks in their democracy.
And this--this election comes at a time of great volatility.
France has suffered a string of major terror attacks,
their unemployment rate is hovering around 10%,
and their current president, François Hollande,
isn't even running, for a pretty good reason.
- The latest opinion polls have come out.
Uh, François Hollande, he's at an all-time low.
I mean, he even got close to zero here, didn't he?
- Get ready for it-- according to this poll,
only 4% of French people are satisfied by
François Hollande's presidency. - Wow.
- 4%.
- 4%!
To put that in perspective, apparently the very lowest
album score in Metacritic's history
is 15% for Kevin Federline's "Playing with Fire,"
an album about which "Billboard" raved,
"In general, Federline enunciates well."
But even without Hollande running,
his Socialist Party is divided and struggling,
with one early contender to replace him, Manuel Valls,
so widely disliked that this happened.
- [speaking French] - It happened an hour ago
in this café behind me,
Café Broglie, well known to Strasbourg residents.
A man approached Manuel Valls and threw flour at him.
- [speaking French]
[clamoring in French]
- Look, anywhere else,
it might be a bad sign to have flour thrown at you,
but in a country where pastries have
greater constitutional rights than people,
it is technically possible that that was actually an honor.
So--so who is running for this important job?
Well--well, there are actually 11 candidates at the moment,
and we'll get to the main ones in a minute,
but first you're going to want to meet
some of the outsiders.
There is Jacques Cheminade, a conspiracy theorist
who once said that the Queen of England
was involved in international drug trafficking,
and whose platform includes a plan to colonize Mars,
which he explained magnificently.
- [speaking French]
- You're right.
He just said,
"Larry Skywalker and that weird bear,"
presumably meaning Chewbacca,
and I really think that should've been
those characters' names instead.
"Hi, I'm Han Solo, this is Larry,
"and this is our friend, that weird bear,
or whatever the fuck he is, I don't know."
Then--then there is Jean Lassalle,
who, as you can see, is almost offensively French.
He once went on a 39-day hunger strike
to protest a threat to jobs in his constituency.
And his campaign ads are mesmerizing.
He rides on a train in moody black-and-white,
works on his farm, dances around,
and then mows a hillside shirtless.
His entire life seems like an attempt to win
the game show called "So You Think You Can France."
But the thing is, there are currently
four main candidates
with a real shot at getting to the second round.
There is François Fillon,
the former French prime minister.
Now, he was once the leading candidate
but has since fallen back in the polls
thanks to Penelopegate,
which sounds like a scandal involving
selling weapons-grade uranium to Penélope Cruz.
But--but it actually involves
Fillon allegedly paying his wife, Penelope, and children
hundreds of thousands of euros of public money
for little or no work.
And the accusations don't stop there.
- There are reports he may have breached electoral rules
after receiving a donation of two suits
that together cost 13,000 euros.
- I am perfectly allowed to be given a suit by a friend.
It's not against the law.
- Oh, you're right.
That is a completely normal thing
for adult friends to do.
Happy birthday, friend.
I got you two suits that cost about $7,000 each,
because that is a non-suspicious amount
to spend on a gift for a friend.
How not weird is this?
Couldn't be not weirder, right?
So the French public turned on Fillon,
and you will never guess how they expressed their anger.
- Moments before he took the stage at a rally,
you'll see he was, uh, hit in the face with some flour.
We can see images of that happening right there.
Now, apparently he had a spare suit,
luckily for him.
- Oh!
It just doesn't look great to whip out a brand-new suit
when you've been essentially accused of
having been bribed in suits.
Maybe go for a T-shirt and shorts there.
Now next, there is far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon,
who is anti-EU and pro-high-tech campaign wizardry.
- Answering the eternal question
of how to be in two places at once,
presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon
has embraced holograms.
- [speaking French] - Where am I?
In León.
[crowd cheers]
And now in Paris.
[crowd cheers]
- Cool.
That--that was both very lame and very costly.
It's like finding out
your uncle's detachable thumb trick cost him $400,000.
And that brings us to the two current frontrunners,
and first, let's deal with Emmanuel Macron.
Polls suggest that he is the favorite
to win the presidency, which is actually impressive,
considering he's never held elected office before.
He's a former banker,
who served as an economic advisor to Hollande.
And if you are falling sleep
just listening to me describe him,
you're not alone.
- Mr. Macron, who is neither left not right,
and is generally inoffensive to the entire population,
is not super attractive to anyone.
- Ouch.
He is generally inoffensive
and not super attractive to anyone.
That makes him sound like he's the guy
who played the main character on "How I Met Your Mother."
This man, and this is true, has no name.
Macron has a Centrist policy
that is pro-business, pro-Europe,
and aimed at boosting France's economy,
but the most interesting thing about him might be this.
- Emmanuel Macron was once a small-town boy from Amiens,
who met his future wife here at school.
The only twist is that she was his teacher.
- It's true.
He married his French teacher,
who is 20 years older than him,
and as a result, Macron, a 39-year-old man,
now has seven step-grandchildren.
And I'm sorry, but a man in his 30s
suddenly ending up with seven step-grandchildren
sounds like the plot of a direct-to-DVD
Ashton Kutcher movie called
"Even On A Nine-Hour Flight, This Movie Is Unwatchable."
And by the way, if you're wondering,
"Did Macron get any baking ingredient
thrown at him during the campaign?"
Well, what do you think?
- [speaking French] - Ah!
[all speaking French]
- Emmanuel Macron
just got hit in the head with an egg.
- So to recap,
that is two cups of flour and now an egg.
Now, I don't know if the French people
are any closer to picking a president,
but they're about halfway to making a decent crepe.
And that--that leaves us with Marine Le Pen,
Macron's biggest challenger,
and honestly, she is the main reason
you should be invested in this election.
The Le Pen name carries a lot of baggage in France.
Her father was Jean-Marie Le Pen,
who co-founded her party, the National Front,
and he is a deeply unpleasant human being.
- Jean-Marie Le Pen famously dismissed the Nazi gas chambers
as a mere detail of history,
and courts have repeatedly found him guilty
of questioning the Holocaust.
- Oh, that's just a taster.
He also said of one Jewish critic,
"We'll put a batch in the oven next time,"
which is the kind of vile, horrific anti-Semitism
that gets most people
permanently banished from society,
as well as an Oscar nomination
for directing "Hacksaw Ridge."
Now--now Marine Le Pen
actually kicked her father out of the party
and has worked very hard to rehabilitate
the National Front's reputation and present a softer image.
And to listen to one French voter,
it seems to have worked.
- [speaking French]
- Why vote for Nacional? It's simple.
It's Marine Le Pen.
If it were her father in charge,
it would be no, because he's a crazy old man.
Back then, there were skinheads,
thugs, and fascists in the party.
With Marine, it's not like that at all.
There's an elegance, a bit of restraint.
- Yeah, but elegant presentation
does not negate poisonous content.
A Klansman is still a Klansman,
even if you slap a monocle and a top hat on him
and give him a cane.
Wait, wait, hang on, hang on, take off that sheet.
I fucking knew it! I fucking knew it!
You're a monster, Peanut! You're a monster!
No. [chuckles]
The point--the point is,
Le Pen is particularly popular among young people in France,
who have a high rate of unemployment
and have responded to her promises
to institute programs to give them jobs
and encourage a national preference in employment,
making it more expensive for businesses
to hire non-citizens.
But beneath her slick presentation,
Le Pen's message is vicious.
A few years back, she was asked about immigrants in France,
and while her answer started well,
it quickly deteriorated.
- [speaking French]
- Hold on, brutalizing your wife
and stealing your wallet I get.
That's just boilerplate racism.
But, "People are coming to take my wallpaper,"
is something a crazy person says.
No one wants your wallpaper,
you catastrophically weird person.
And while France is a proudly secular society,
some of Le Pen's proposals would take that to the extreme.
- Should Muslim people be allowed to wear head scarves?
- [speaking French]
- No, I'm opposed to wearing head scarves in public places.
That's not France.
- It's not just head scarves.
Le Pen says she would ban yarmulkes in public--
any conspicuous symbol of religious belief.
Would a Sikh person allowed to be--wear a turban?
- No, not in public.
We don't have a lot of Sikhs in France.
We've got some,
but we don't really hear much from them or about them,
which is good news.
- Is it? Is it?
That is such a reprehensible thing
to say about people you hope to govern,
that--and I never thought I'd say this to someone,
because it doesn't really make sense--
I hope someone steals your wallpaper.
I--I don't know why they would, Marine,
but I hope they do.
The truth here is, though,
whatever the result of this election,
Le Pen has already dangerously normalized the National Front,
winning seats at the local level
and even a few in the legislature.
And one of the frustrating things
about watching this unfold from America
is, this feels a little like déjà vu.
A potentially destabilizing populist
campaigning on anti-immigrant rhetoric
who rages against the elites,
despite having a powerful father and inherited wealth,
even as all the experts reassure us
that there is no way that this can possibly happen.
- The truth is, she's not going to win,
because in the second round,
everybody will unite against her.
- I would think that most people,
it doesn't matter which political color,
will vote for Macron just to block the way to Marine Le Pen.
- She will not win.
We will not have in France another Trump election.
She is not named Donald Le Pen.
She is just Marine Le Pen. She will not be elected.
- That is the kind of reckless overconfidence
you normally only see in a period piece movie
about a tragedy.
Why, the "Hindenburg" is the safest
form of travel there is.
I'd like to see static electricity
even try to set this ship on fire, I tells ya.
But I would not be so confident,
especially because
while turnout in French presidential elections
is normally around 80%,
this time, polls show that around 1/3 of French voters
might choose to abstain,
and if they do that in the second round,
Le Pen's very motivated voters could put her in office,
and that could be bad for a lot of people.
So please, France,
I would like to try and convince you
not to sit this election out, and to do that,
let me appeal to your innate French sense of superiority
over the U.S. and Britain,
which is, and it pains me to admit this,
not entirely misplaced.
Real French croissant
are buttery pillows of perfection,
whereas the American CROISSAN'WICH
is an ungodly abomination.
Your French wines are magnificent,
certainly superior to British wines,
which taste like Michael Caine urinated in some grape juice.
You in France love nothing more
than acting like you are better than Britain and America.
Well, now is your chance to prove that,
because we made populist, nativist choices
with Brexit and Trump, and to be honest,
it's not working out so great for us so far.
And now you have a populist, nativist choice of your own,
and just imagine how superior you can feel
if you don't make the same mistake that we did.
And I really want to convince you more,
but I know you don't like big, gaudy gestures,
so allow me to convince you
in the elegant, restrained manner that you prefer.
Please, please... please join me, France,
at a cozy bistro.
[cheers and applause]
Join me at this bistro,
and let us drink wine, listen to accordion music,
and smoke into each other's faces.
[accordion music plays]
♪ ♪
[speaking French]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
[accordion music plays]
♪ ♪
[bright tone]