[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
[upbeat rock music]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- Welcome, welcome, welcome to "Last Week Tonight."
I'm John Oliver, thank you so, so much for joining us.
We're back, and look, a lot has happened--
a lot has happened since we last saw you,
so--so we need to-- we need to address
the big elephant in the room straightaway.
How about "The Young Pope," huh?
Pretty crazy, right?
There's a kangaroo in the Vatican.
I can't think of anything more shocking
to have happened in the last few months.
Oh, do you know what?
I guess there was that one thing.
- And so now the United States has a new president,
the 45th president of the United States.
There he is, Donald J. Trump.
- That's right.
We now live under President Trump.
Two words that will never sound normal together,
no matter how many times you say them,
like "panda mustard"
or "Mom's orgasm."
Now, the last few weeks have been frantic.
Trump's nominated a Supreme Court justice
and issued 24 Executive orders and memoranda.
One of which, the notorious travel ban
has been smacked down repeatedly in court.
To which he tweeted nonsensically,
"SEE YOU IN COURT."
He also somehow failed to mention Jews
in a Holocaust remembrance statement,
used the National Prayer Breakfast
to make fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger's ratings
on "The Celebrity Apprentice,"
and Twitter-bullied the Mexican president
into cancelling his visit to the U.S.
And that is just the tip of the shitberg.
It has been so busy it's gotten to the point
where the most terrifying sound is your phone buzzing
with a news alert.
I hate to say this, but I actually found myself
at one point saying, "Oh, thank God.
"It's just that Mary Tyler Moore's dead.
Oh, that is a massive relief."
We've been living in a world
where if someone says, "Good morning" to you,
the only acceptable response is "No!
No, it isn't! What is wrong with you?"
And even if you try to avoid the news,
inevitably, someone will come up to you and say,
"Hey, did you hear?
"The new secretary of labor
is a giant jar of wasps."
Now, I'm kidding about that.
The actual nominee is Andrew Puzder,
who has opposed raising the minimum wage
and who currently heads Hardee's and Carl's Jr.,
the chains famous for tasteful ads like this.
[rock music]
- Introducing the classic Patty Melt,
with a spicy twist.
- ♪ Like it all night ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I like it hot ♪
- That is truly the perfect ad
to prepare you for the actual interior
of a Carl's Jr. restaurant, which is undeniably
so hot.
But before you can be horrified by Puzder,
you remember Trump's attorney general
is Jeff Sessions, recently named "Man of the Year"
by "Wrong Side of History" magazine.
In fact, all Trump's nominees
seemed to have been chosen sarcastically.
The secretary of education hates our public education system.
The nominee to head the EPA hates the EPA.
And the future secretary of energy is this guy.
[country music playing]
[mariachi music playing]
♪ ♪
[country musical flourish]
[cheers and applause]
Cool.
Now, Rick Perry once proposed
eliminating the department that he will soon head.
Although, to be fair, he later recanted, saying,
"After being briefed on so many of the vital functions
"of the Department of Energy,
I regret recommending its elimination."
I can only imagine he thought it protected
our reserves of Monster Energy drinks.
"Come on, y'all, you can't have monsters gettin' energy.
"Why we even giving 'em drinks?
"This department needs to be shut down!
Cha cha cha!"
With the pace of chaos reigning down upon us,
it is important to find something to center yourself.
Now, personally, I have been using
this framed photograph of Eddie,
the dog from the TV show "Frasier."
I-I look at this whenever I want to feel better.
And I'll tell you why.
Because Eddie is the perfect example
of something that has absolutely no idea
what's going on in the world right now.
He's a dog, he's fictional,
and he's almost certainly dead.
And at various times these past few weeks,
I have been genuinely jealous
of all three of those things.
This is going to be a long presidency,
and perhaps nothing encapsulated the way
many of us feel right now better than
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
On Friday, he met with our new president
for what was a comically-long
and marathon-like handshake.
But just watch his expression at the end.
[laughter]
I feel you. I feel you.
[laughter and cheers]
That is the prime minister
of a country known
for awkwardly-long formal displays of respect,
and he even he is going,
"Oh, fuck this shit."
And now this.
[trumpet fanfare]
- Thank you. Thank you very much.
[rimshot]
[maracas shaking]
[leather stretching] [bell dings]
[wrench clicking] [bell jingling]
[leather stretching] [discordant piano notes]
[maracas shaking] [leather stretching]
[regal music playing]
[leather stretching]
[sawing wood]
[wrench clicking]
[bell dinging]
[cowbell clangs]
[leather stretching]
[wooden percussion clinking]
[leather stretching]
[tambourine shaking]
[regal music concludes]
[tambourine continues]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- Moving on.
Now, our main story tonight
is going to be a little different.
Normally, we like to focus this part of the show
on complex, depressing policy issues,
something fun, like CO2 emissions from hearses
or space poverty or the proliferation
of special-purpose taxing districts,
a topic so boring you didn't even realize
we literally already did that exact story last year.
And we want to keep doing those kind of things,
but unfortunately we can't until we address
something even bigger: the concept of reality itself.
And that is because of this guy.
Now, since taking office, around 412 years ago,
Trump has made it clear that
reality is not important to him. Think about it.
Uh, he's exaggerated the size of his inauguration crowd.
He said the election was marred by mass voter fraud
with no real proof of that.
Uh, he also falsely claimed that--uh--
that compared to Muslims, it was "almost impossible"
for Christian refugees from Syria
to get into the U.S.
He even lied about the weather
during his inauguration.
- It was--almost raining.
The rain should have scared them away,
but God looked down and He said,
"We're not gonna let it rain on your speech."
- No, he didn't.
First, it did rain while you were speaking.
That's why your wife was holding up an umbrella
and people behind you were wearing ponchos.
And second, if God did look down
his only thought would have been,
"Wait. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir?
"Come on, I'm sick of them, and I'm God.
"Could you not book silence,
or was silence somehow boycotting this thing too?"
So--so that is where we are currently at.
We have a president capable of standing in the rain
and saying it was a sunny day.
And before we go any further, "Donald Trump lies"
is clearly not a fresh observation.
Liberals are probably thinking, "Wow.
"Hot take there, Johnny.
"Uh, next you're gonna tell me that Obama is aloof;
"Dick Cheney is evil; and Paul Ryan doesn't climax
"until he's checked his Fitbit to see how many calories
he's burned from fucking."
And--and you know what?
If you're on the other side,
if you're on the right, you're probably thinking,
"Oh, great, another blizzard of snowflakes
from 'Last Cuck Tonight with Johnny Trigger-Warning.'"
And--and, yes,
I know all other presidents have lied.
PolitiFact found that just over 1/4
of President Obama's statements that they evaluated
were some degree of false.
But with Trump, that number
is currently over 2/3.
Perhaps that is why one reporter who's been covering Trump
found himself saying this.
- This is what makes it-- covering Donald Trump
so very difficult.
What does he mean when he says words?
[laughter]
- Wow.
"What does he mean when he says words?"
We are talking about the president
like a Tinder match we've been on four dates with.
"Uh, I asked him if we could hang out this Friday,
"and he said, 'Prolly... I'm starving
"bicycle emoji, poop emoji.'
"What the fuck does that mean?
What does he mean when he says words?"
Trump's relationship with the truth
is going to be of profound importance going forward
because any policy discussion
has to begin with a shared sense of reality.
And Trump's reality can change within a single sentence.
- When you hear 4.9% and 5% unemployment,
the number's probably 28%, 29%, as high as 35%--
in fact, I even heard recently 42%.
- Well--well which one is it then?
Because a 4.9% rate might result in
a cautiously constrictive monetary policy,
whereas a 42% rate
might result in "The Purge."
So--so tonight, we thought it would be useful
to try and answer four basic questions.
How did we get a pathological liar in the White House?
Where are his lies coming from?
Why do so many people believe him?
And what can we possibly do about it?
And to that first question,
Trump's lying is obviously nothing new.
He has a well-documented 40-year history of bullshit.
Uh, he lied about being invited on this show,
uh, and about the ratings for "The Celebrity Apprentice."
He pretended to be his own publicist.
Even his building, Trump Tower,
is not as big as he says it is.
- He inflated the floor numbers.
His 58-story building became a 68-story building.
- It made a lot of sense in his mind because
if you're renting a room, you'd rather be on
the 14th floor than on the 6th floor.
- Just spare a thought
for confused firefighters turning up to that building.
"The smoke alarm's going off in penthouse B on the 68th floor,
"which is apparently an alcove studio on the 58th.
Quick, it's an emergency!"
But lies like that are almost charming.
What is less harmless is when he started
lying about the president's birth certificate
and then, as a presidential candidate,
started making troubling statements like these.
- The murder rate in the United States,
it's the worst, the highest it's been in 45 years.
Our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria.
Our gross domestic product,
a sign of strength, right?
But not for us.
It was below zero. Who ever heard of this?
- Okay, okay, just--just--
just real quick on those.
No, it isn't; no, he didn't;
and no one's ever heard of a GDP below zero
because that is fucking impossible!
Now, any one of those falsehoods
could have disqualified him for office.
But--but we were so accustomed to Trump's nonsense,
people could just shrug it off as "Donald being Donald."
Even his own advisers, like Peter Thiel,
argued that people shouldn't worry about his statements
because he didn't really mean them.
- I think a lot of the voters who vote for Trump,
um, take Trump seriously but not literally.
And so when they hear things like,
the Muslim comment or the wall comment
or things like that, it's not, uh,
the question's not, you know, "Are you gonna build a wall
like the Great Wall of China?"
Or, you know, "How--how exactly
are you gonna enforce these--these tests?"
What they hear is, uh, "We're gonna have--
we're gonna have a saner, more sensible immigration policy."
- Oh, yeah, that is definitely the sense I got
from watching those Trump rallies.
"Yes, while we're all furiously chanting 'Build that wall,'
"we all understand in this context
"'wall' is a clever use of metonymy,
"uh, or a figure of speech in which one word,
"'wall' in this example, is used as a stand-in
"for 'a saner, more sensible immigration policy.'
"Now, if you will,
let's unpack 'Trump the bitch.'"
And--and yet,
the travel ban literally happened.
And as for the wall...
- The wall is getting designed right now.
A lot of people say, "Oh, oh.
Trump was only kidding with the wall."
I wasn't kidd--I don't kid.
- Exactly.
When he says he's going to build a wall,
he means it.
Now, it might be 30-feet high
and labeled "156 stories,"
but assume that it's coming.
So it was worth taking him seriously.
Trump was telling the truth about his solutions
to the problems he was lying about.
And he is now making real policy
based on fake facts.
Which brings us to our second question,
where is his information coming from?
Now, Trump himself has admitted he gets a lot of it from TV.
Which may explain why he speaks so confidently about
cable news staples like crime and terrorism,
but when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts aspects
of government, like the nuclear triad, he struggles.
Now, he famously flubbed a question on the triad during
an early debate in an exchange that ended like this.
- Of the three legs of the triad, though,
do you have a priority?
'Cause I want to go to Senator Rubio after that and ask him--
- No, I--I think--I think to me, luc--nuclear's just
the--the power, the devastation is very important to me.
- Now that is terrifying.
The components of that triad are important.
It is unacceptable not to be able to name
every single one of them.
They are nuclear weapons, not your children.
What is her name, Donald?
What is her name?
I'll give you a hint,
it starts with T.
And it's not "The Other One."
And--and you would hope
that as president, he'd now be getting information
from prime resources and briefings.
But Trump still watches
a phenomenal amount of cable news.
His tweets frequently echo things
that just aired on TV.
Just two weeks ago, he tweeted "Ungrateful TRAITOR
"Chelsea Manning, who should never have been
"released from prison, is now calling President Obama
a weak leader. Terrible!"
Which is interesting because Chelsea Manning
never used the words "weak leader."
But that phrase was used on Fox News
just 15 minutes before he tweeted
in a segment which also called Manning
an "ungrateful traitor."
So the president seems to tweet
about whatever information he just saw on cable news.
If someone changed the channel to the Sprout network
he'd tweet, "Caillou's life is boring
even for a cancer kid. SAD!"
Now, to give you a sense
of just how much he watches cable news,
a few hours later he was on "Air Force One,"
and you could actually hear the commercials from Fox News
blaring in the background.
- ♪ 800-588-2300 ♪
- Doing good, thank you. - ♪ Empire ♪
- That's real.
That is the Empire Carpet jingle
playing at full blast.
Trump just made the interior of "Air Force One"
sound like the living room of an old person
who died three days ago and who nobody's found yet.
He watches so much cable TV,
he presumably also gets daily briefings from this guy.
- I'm a professional cowboy, and I use catheters.
Been cowboyin' for 25 years.
I've broken 14 bones, had two concussions,
and a punctured lung.
I know pain, and I don't want any more of it,
especially when I cath.
- Okay, stop.
I have so many questions.
Is "cath" a real verb?
If you've only been cowboyin' for 25 years,
what did you do before you were cowboyin'?
And why are you in a library,
and one that doesn't want to overdo it with the books?
You fascinate me.
But Trump doesn't just watch cable news.
He also takes information in
from frighteningly unreliable sources,
such as Breitbart, the organization
which gave us Steve Bannon... [crowd booing]
Steve Bannon, now Trump's chief strategist.
Breitbart has published such Pulitzer-eligible stories
as "Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy,"
"Racist, Pro-Nazi Roots of Planned Parenthood Revealed,"
and "Hoist It High and Proud:
The Confederate Flag Proclaims a Glorious Heritage."
You know, the kind of-- the kind of headlines
you see your old high school friend
share on Facebook and think, "Oh, that's a shame.
I guess Greg sucks now."
But--but Trump's trust in Breitbart
actually goes way back.
A few years ago, Trump was challenged by Bill O'Reilly,
who correctly pointed out that his claim
that thousands of Muslims were seen celebrating
in New Jersey on 9/11 was based on no evidence whatsoever.
And this is how Trump responded.
- Well, I don't know that I'm wrong, Bill.
You know, uh, this just came out from Breitbart.
I mean, literally, it just came out.
"Trump Vindicated-- 100% Vindicated."
- Believe me, if there were thousands,
that would have been reported.
Um, but--but what I'm trying to get at is this--
- Well, this article says they were swarming.
Bill, this article says they were
swarming all over the place. - All right.
- So I don't know what that means,
but it means a lot of people.
- Wait.
Holding up a Breitbart article
does not make you seem more credible.
You might as well have gone, "Oh, hold on a second, Bill.
"Hello? Okay, thanks.
"Sources are saying I'm right, Bill.
"My sources--talk to them.
Talk to my sources, William."
[cheers and applause]
And--and Trump's sources
get even worse, because he also cited
an article to support his "Muslims on 9/11" claim
from Infowars, a website run by this guy.
- Hillary and Obama want to make you poor and pathetic.
We have all their white papers. They hate you!
They hate prosperity! They hate God!
They hate children! And God damn them to Hell!
- That man-- that man is Alex Jones.
And that is actually him at his most presentable.
That is Alex Jones at a job interview.
That's Alex Jones meeting his girlfriend's parents
for the first time.
Now, in his more outspoken moments,
Jones has argued that the government has the ability
to control tornados;
that the Boston Marathon bombing was a false-flag attack;
and that tap water is a gay bomb;
and that they are putting chemicals in the water
that turn the friggin' frogs gay.
And then, there is the Sandy Hook school shooting.
- Yeah, so, Sandy Hook
is a synthetic, completely fake, with actors,
in my view, manufactured.
I couldn't believe it at first.
I knew they had actors there, clearly,
but I thought they killed some real kids.
And it just shows how bold they are,
that they clearly used actors.
- Now, that is not just offensive,
it's stupid.
If the government had actually hired child actors,
there is no way their stage parents
would have stopped talking about it.
"Well, he didn't get the Tide commercial,
"but he did book a leading role in a government-sponsored
"false-flag attack.
"It's the same director who did the moon landing.
We're very excited."
Trump is apparently such a fan
that Alex Jones himself has said,
"It is surreal to talk about issues here on air
and then word for word hear Trump say it two days later."
And I would be skeptical of that
if Trump hadn't gone on Jones's show
and said this.
- I just want to finish by saying
your reputation's amazing.
I will not let you down.
You will be very, very, uh, impressed, I hope.
And I think we'll be speaking a lot.
- You know what?
I-I guess it makes sense that Donald Trump
wants to impress Alex Jones.
Why would you want to drain the swamp
if not to eradicate all those gay frogs?
You stay there. You two stay where you are.
This is really dangerous, though.
Because there is a pattern here.
Trump sees something that jibes with his world view,
doesn't check it, half-remembers it,
and then passes it on.
At which point, it takes on a life of its own,
and appears to validate itself.
Let me try and show you that machine in action.
Trump's constant claim that
millions of people voted illegally
originated, as far as anyone can tell,
from some dude on Twitter who claimed in November,
while providing no evidence, "We have verified
more than three million votes cast by non-citizens."
The next day, Infowars picked that up,
and it spread like jet fuel among the right-wing sites.
Now, it was quickly debunked by multiple outlets,
but despite that, days later,
President-elect Trump started tweeting
about millions of illegal votes
and serious voter fraud in states like California.
And by early December, people were on TV,
expressing similar concerns.
- Voting is a privilege in this country.
And you need to be legal, not like California,
where 3 million illegals voted.
- Where are you getting your information?
- From the media.
- And that right there actually answers
our third question of why so many people believe Trump.
Because if you get your news from similar sources to him
as many, many, many people do,
he doesn't look like a crank.
He looks like the first president
ever to tell you the real truth.
But rumors can be really tenacious, and I'll prove it.
What rumor do you think of
when you hear the name Richard Gere?
Well, here's the thing.
There is no proof that he did that.
If you think about it, it's ridiculous.
Have you ever held one of those things?
There's no way it was possible.
But if the president went on TV
and told you it was true, you'd go, "I knew it.
"Thank you! I knew it.
Finally, someone said it."
But that loop gets much more dangerous
when you're not talking about
something as silly as gerbils.
Trump validated his supporters' beliefs about voter fraud,
and in turn, they validated his.
Because even when he was directly confronted
with the lack of evidence, this is how he responded.
- You know what's important?
Millions of people agree with me when I say that.
If you would have looked on one of the other networks
and all of the people that were calling in,
they're saying, "We agree with Mr. Trump.
We agree." They're very smart people.
- Right, but just because they believe you
and you believe them, doesn't make it true.
This isn't like "Peter Pan," where believing in fairies
will keep Tinker Bell alive.
This isn't a magic thing, Peter,
she has Lou Gehrig's disease.
And maybe instead of clapping, you should have done
the Ice Bucket Challenge, then she'd still be alive!
I'm sorry, Peter, but she's dying!
Tinker Bell's dying!
The point is, even if
you take the kindest approach here,
and assume Trump made an honest, innocent mistake
and passed along a news story without checking it,
when he was presented with a lack of evidence,
he disregarded that fact.
At which point, he is lying.
And it seems no one in the White House
has a problem with that.
'Cause when asked to justify the president's views,
this is what Sean Spicer did.
- I think the president has believed that for a while.
A long-standing belief that he's maintained.
It's a belief he maintains.
It's a belief that he's maintained for a while.
As I noted several times now,
he's believed this for a long time.
It was a comment that he made on a long-standing belief.
I've asked and answered this question twice.
He believes what he believes,
based on the information that he's provided.
- If he does believe that, what does that mean for democracy?
- It means that, yeah, I've answered your question.
- Have you?
- No, you haven't, Melissa. No, you haven't.
[laughter, cheers, and applause]
Because this isn't about belief.
It can't be.
The incidence of voter fraud is a verifiable fact.
And faith and fact
aren't like Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton.
When you confuse them, it actually matters.
Real people get hurt when you make policy
based on false information.
Billions will get spent on a war that won't work,
to prevent a crime wave that isn't happening,
while refugees sit in dangerous situations
to prevent "Bowling Green" style massacres
that never took place.
So what are we going to do?
Well, the press is going to be a key element
in helping us sort out fact from fiction.
And they are under attack.
This administration has seized on small corrections
in news coverage to paint critical outlets
as fake news, attempting to delegitimize all of them.
And this is only going to get worse.
Steve Bannon has already labeled the media
"the opposition party."
Although, there does seem to be one exception.
- News reports said the only seat
that was reserved for the media
at Trump's news conference Wednesday was in the front row,
and it was for Breitbart News.
- Oh, that is some blatant favoritism!
You are Snow White introducing the dwarfs, saying,
"Meet Grump, Sneezy, Sleepy,
"Fucking-Awesome-Big-Dick-Cool Dwarf,
and the three others."
And--and if you are thinking
that Breitbart went out of their way
to ask a challenging question, think again.
- Go ahead.
- And I actually have two follow-up questions.
Does this feel good?
And will you let me know when you're going to come?
Just--just--just tap my head.
Tap--tap my head.
Look, the end game here is obvious.
With a completely delegitimized press,
you're only going to have one source to get your news from,
as one congressman happily pointed out.
- Better to get your news directly from the president.
In fact, it might be the only way
to get the unvarnished truth.
- Getting your news directly from the leader
is basically the philosophy of North Korea.
And--and the notion that our leaders
should be able to pass on mistruths with impunity
should be alarming to absolutely everybody,
regardless of politics.
Republicans should badly want our sense of objective reality
to remain intact, just in case the Democrats
ever find their own appealing reality star
to win back the White House.
RuPaul, for instance.
Make America fierce again.
#MAKEAMERICAFIERCEAGAIN.
So--so we all need to commit
to defending the reality of facts.
But it's going to take work.
As we've already seen, protests,
calls to legislators, and lawsuits
are effective ways to try and drag
the administration back to reality,
but this needs to go down to a personal level as well.
We should make extra efforts on social media
to try and verify stories before passing them on,
especially if they confirm our preexisting biases.
Ask questions of yourself, like,
"Is this a source I know and recognize?"
"Has anyone fact-checked this?"
"Does it link to primary sources,
and do those sources match what the story says?"
And if you see an outlet repeatedly getting things wrong
and never correcting it, maybe stop trusting it,
whether that outlet is some idiot's blog
or the White House.
And--and because I know our president
will not follow any of those suggestions,
partly because, rightfully, he does not watch this show,
there is-- there is one small way
we wanted to try and sneak some useful facts
into his media diet.
As we now know,
he watches morning cable news for information.
So we've actually created a series of commercials
in an attempt to bring him up to speed
on some information he may lack. [cheers and applause]
We're going to run them on shows
that we know he watches every day.
Take a look.
- I'm a professional cowboy and I use catheters.
Been cowboyin' for 25 years and there's two things I know.
I don't like pain when I cath.
And the nuclear triad consists of land-based missiles,
submarine-launched missiles, and aerial bombers.
This increases our ability to strike back
in the event one of those is destroyed
and deters and attack on us or our allies.
So that's the nuclear triad, in case you're
the kind of person who might really need to know that.
[laughter]
- That ad will air tomorrow morning
between 8:30 and 9:00 on all these channels
in the DC area.
And until we're shut down,
we are prepared to educate Donald Trump
one by one on topics
we're pretty sure he doesn't know about.
Here's just a taste.
- It might seem like a show of strength
to kill the families of terrorists,
but according to the Geneva conventions,
it's actually a war crime.
Not all black people live in the inner cities.
And not all people in the inner cities are black.
Now, there's something you may not know.
Appetizer fork.
Entrée fork.
Now, I know it can sometimes feel
as if you are the only person in the world,
but, as you can see here,
there are actually many non-you people.
We call those "other people."
Just because sometimes it's cold,
that don't mean there's no global warming.
You're confusing climate with weather, partner.
Gabon is a country on the west coast of Africa.
Tiffany.
"Tif-fa-ny."
Tiffany.
The unemployment rate is a carefully-calculated measure
derived from a monthly survey
conducted by two federal agencies
and has been the agreed-upon standard
since 1948.
And that little fellow there
is what we call "the clitoris."
Just remember, Donald,
if you don't know, it's okay to ask.
See you tomorrow.
[cheers and applause]
That's our show. Thank you so much for watching.
We'll see you next week. Good night.
[upbeat rock music]
♪ ♪
[bright tone]