Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s12e01 Episode Script
Trump 2.0
1
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you
so much for joining us. We are back!
And we've clearly missed a lot
over the last three months,
from the collapse
of the Assad regime in Syria
to an attempted coup in South Korea
to the U.K.'s Labour Party
briefly advertising its agenda
with a video titled
"This Labour government's plan
to change Britain for the better,"
"parentheses, as animals."
And whatever you're expecting,
it's weirder.
You'll be seen sooner
by our NHS
Okay, so, a lot to love about that,
from the objective horniness
of some of their animal choices,
to AI that couldn't seem to decide
whether the bunny nurse
has human or rabbit arms.
But it is notable that,
even with the option to use
any animal in the history of animals,
they still couldn't make public
transportation sexy.
Every other animal is either cool,
hot, terrifying, or all three,
but the advocate for public rail
is a dumpy business badger
in a suit that doesn't fit who, and
I don't think I'm projecting here,
seems like
he's gonna miss his train.
They actually pulled that video
within hours, in part because
it turned out the song was an
explicit Brazilian club banger,
featuring lyrics referencing
smoking marijuana,
sexual acts and sexist slurs.
And I'm glad they took it down,
not because of that,
but because the question
"what do you get when you combine"
"Britain, accessible descriptions
of dense government policy,"
"and animal mascots?"
has already been answered,
and you are watching its season 12
premiere right now.
Get off my fucking corner!
But that is not all that we missed.
There were wildfires in L.A.,
the first Super Bowl halftime show
that was both a concert
and a public execution,
and Duolingo posted a death
announcement for their owl mascot,
following it up with a video of him
being hit by a Cybertruck,
exploding, and floating through
the sky, space and gates of hell.
I believe I speak for everyone
when I say: "Qué?"
While I'm gonna miss having
that little green freak
accompanying
my daily Spanish lessons,
it sounds like there's now an opening
for an education-focused owl
and, friends, I have
a humble yet horny suggestion.
Teach me a lesson, you stern,
feathery fire hydrant.
Haz que mi léxico crezca,
búho enorme.
And finally, last month saw
the German deer-calling championship.
And if you've never seen it in action,
you have been missing out.
Sir! Excuse me, sir.
I think the contest you're looking for
is around the corner.
This is a competition
to call deer,
not give them
the best night of their lives.
And while all of that is very fun,
unfortunately,
we have to dive straight in
to our main story tonight,
the fact that Donald Trump is, once
again, president of the United States.
Sorry if this is how you found out.
I'm not nuts about it either.
It has been less than a month
since Trump's inauguration,
but it already
feels like an eternity.
In just the past four weeks,
he's pardoned or commuted
the sentences of January 6th rioters,
withdrew the U.S. from both
the Paris Accords and the WHO,
announced plans to take over Gaza,
issued an executive order
trying to undo
birthright citizenship,
blamed the fatal D.C. plane crash
on DEI,
renamed the Gulf of Mexico
the Gulf of America,
responded to fires in L.A. County by
releasing billions of gallons of water
to California's Central Valley
150 miles away,
replaced a four-star general
with the host of "Fox & Friends"
as Secretary of Defense,
and announced 25% tariffs
on Canada and Mexico, a move
prompting Canadians to do this.
O say does that star-spangled
banner yet wave…
O'er the land of the free…
Excellent. I think the only thing
more quintessentially Canadian
than booing the U.S. national anthem
at a hockey game
is the fact they waited politely
for the right time to do it.
Part of Trump's rationale
for his tariff threat was that Canada
wasn't doing enough to stop
the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.,
even though the total amount
intercepted at the Canadian border,
last year, was just 43 pounds,
or roughly 0.2% of all U.S. border
fentanyl seizures.
Trump quickly paused those tariffs,
after claiming that he'd won
concessions from Canada, but
when a Republican congressman
tried to repeat that talking point
on CNN, he ran into a slight problem.
He called this off
saying that he'd won
concessions from both of them,
but is there a tangible
concession in your view?
Yeah, absolutely,
he won the concessions…
What's new?
It's a commitment from Trudeau
that wasn't there
to help with fentanyl,
with the black market
and to secure the border.
He announced that plan,
six weeks ago, back in December.
Well, at least he's reiterated it
and formalized it.
Yeah, Kaitlan!
What aren't you getting about this?
Trump got Canada to agree to what
they already agreed to,
and it didn't cost us anything
except for any goodwill
between our countries whatsoever.
He pissed off an entire country
of the most difficult to piss off
people in the world
and in exchange, we got them
to resend an email!
It's called leadership, Kaitlan!
One of the most striking,
if unsurprising,
things over the last month
has been the extent to which
Trump seems to have prioritized
active cruelty.
He issued multiple EOs aimed at trans
and gender nonconforming people,
including one "declaring the federal
government would only recognize"
"two sexes, male and female"
and another
"banning federal funding or support
for youth gender-affirming care".
And then there were
his multiple attacks
on government diversity, equity,
and inclusion programs,
which were pretty extreme.
The four-page memo
obtained by CBS News
instructs federal agency heads
to cancel any DEI-related trainings
and close all DEI offices.
The memo went out just one day
after President Trump signed
an executive order giving agencies
60 days to terminate all DEI positions.
Our country is going
to be based on merit again.
Can you believe it?
No. I actually can't.
And that is frankly
a wild thing to say
in front of a portrait of your dad,
who you inherited
a real estate empire from.
And the assault on DEI has been
sweeping and sometimes very petty.
An employee at one government
agency told reporters:
"Unidentified outside staffers
arrived to sweep the office"
"of anything they felt was related
to diversity, equity and inclusion",
which included a plaque,
confiscated from a supervisor's desk,
which read:
"Be kind to everyone."
And at that point, I'm just
surprised they didn't replace it
with a poster of Calvin pissing
on a copy of "White Fragility".
Then there were the ICE raids,
with Trump's "border czar",
Tom Homan, taking Dr. Phil,
for some reason,
on a ride-along around Chicago
in perhaps the single worst version
of "Carpool Karaoke" ever made.
It has all been total mayhem.
And to some extent,
that may be by design.
Because it's worth remembering,
during Trump's first term,
Steve Bannon openly laid out
what their thinking was back then.
So, what we've got to do
is just hit, hit, hit,
and keep it,
it's momentum.
The opposition party is the media.
And the media can only,
because they're dumb
and they're lazy,
they can only focus
on one thing at a time.
I said, all we have to do
is flood the zone.
Every day we hit 'em
with three things.
They'll bite on one, and we'll
get all of our stuff done.
These guys will never
be able to recover.
But we've got to start
with muzzle velocity.
So, it's got to start,
and it's got to hammer.
- What was the word?
- Muzzle velocity.
Set aside that "muzzle velocity"
sounds like a straight-to-streaming
vehicle starring Steven Seagal
and six to 10 dog extras
who definitely died on set.
That is a pretty accurate description
of what we're all witnessing.
Though,
as a member of the media,
I take issue with the claim we can
only focus on one thing at a time.
It's my ability to multitask
that allows me to focus
not just on how Bannon sounds
like he's trying
to Monday morning quarterback
the football team of a high school
he's not allowed within 500 feet of,
but also on how he somehow
always looks like he was
recently pulled out of a wet hole.
But it is true that, if you try
and focus on everything,
you'll focus on nothing.
So tonight, we thought
we'd try and pull back
and focus on one major theme
of the last month,
and that is
the Trump administration's attempt
to dismantle
the federal government from within.
And to do that, we're going to try
and answer a few basic questions:
what they're doing,
who it's hurting
and what can be done about it.
And let's start with exactly
what is happening right now.
You might remember,
last year we talked about Project 2025,
the playbook for Trump's
second term.
In that story, we mentioned one
of its main architects, Russell Vought,
was hellbent on decimating
the civil service.
Here is in 2023,
laying out exactly what he hoped
to do once Trump returned to power.
We want the bureaucrats
to be traumatically affected.
When they wake up in the morning,
we want them to not want to go to work,
because they are increasingly
viewed as the villains.
We want their funding
to be shut down
so that the EPA can't do all of
the rules against our energy industry
because they have no bandwidth
financially to do so.
We want to put them in trauma.
When I pictured the evil masterminds
who would be taking down
the American government
from within,
I pictured comic book villains,
standing over the city
as lightning struck.
Not Russ from budgets
in history's worst polo shirt,
clicking through his slide deck
and saying he wants
to give bureaucrats
clinical depression.
News flash, Russ,
they already have it!
That man is now Trump's director of
the Office of Management and Budget
and has begun carrying out
his plans
for a systemic purge
of government workers.
But he's had a lot of assistance
in that from the fact
that Trump's also brought in
this guy, Elon Musk,
seen here looking like a scrotum
dressed for a funeral.
He looks like a witch
from Dutch folklore.
Musk's self-invented Department
of Government Efficiency, or DOGE,
has been trying to eliminate
federal workers,
and sometimes
in alarmingly blunt ways.
One of the administration's
early moves was to send out
an email offering many
a "deferred resignation",
where they could quit their jobs
and get paid through September
or stay, and risk being laid off.
Which is already bizarre.
And setting aside whether
it's even a real or legal offer,
"take this money now
or risk being eliminated"
isn't how you run
the federal government,
it's how you run "Beast Games".
But for some workers, it's gone
well beyond just getting an email.
There have been mass firings,
and Musk has hired a team
of young aides to assist
in downsizing the government,
some of whom have stationed
themselves in government offices,
as this federal worker explains.
My colleagues are getting 15-minute
one-one- one check-ins
with 19, 20, 21-year-old
college graduates
asking to justify their existence.
One of Musk's top lieutenants
and his wife and young child
have shacked up on the sixth floor
of our agency and are living there.
Yeah, it is madness.
Imagine being a federal worker
and having to listen to a guy
who wasn't alive for 9/11,
Shrek 1, or Shrek 2,
say to you:
"You're being downsized,
please leave this office,"
"which is now my bedroom. Also,
can you please buy me a beer?"
And all this of is bad enough
before you get to the fact
that Musk's team includes members
with, shall we say,
checkered employment histories.
Another DOGE worker,
Edward Coristine,
who called himself "Big Balls"
on social media,
was fired from an internship
with a data security firm,
called Path Network, in 2022,
accused of leaking information
to a competitor.
A spokesperson telling CNN
his "contract was terminated"
"after the conclusion of an internal
investigation into the leaking"
"of proprietary company information
that coincided with his tenure."
What a fun time to be alive this is.
I'm so glad our country
is "based on merit" again,
otherwise, candidates like Big Balls
the fired intern
might've been overlooked.
And it gets worse, because
it's been reported that Big Balls
at one point started a website
allowing users to redirect
to content on the site
by creating shitposting URLs,
including names
like "child-porn-dot-store"
and "KKK-is-cool-dot-club".
And I never thought I'd say this,
but I expected
better of Big Balls,
or as he's now known,
senior advisor at the State Department
and Department
of Homeland Security.
And the thing is,
some of Musk's team
have had an extraordinary amount
of access to sensitive data.
Another DOGE staffer,
a 25-year-old named Marko Elez,
was given access to Treasury
Department payment data,
basically, "the checkbook for
the entire federal government".
Which was worrying
even before it emerged
that, within the past year,
he'd tweeted things like,
"Normalize Indian hate",
"You couldn't pay me to marry
outside of my ethnicity"
and "I just want a eugenic
immigration policy,"
"is that too much to ask?"
And those are some bad tweets.
And not even the fun kind.
Like when "Breaking Bad"'s
Dean Norris tweeted out:
"Sex GIFs",
or the Pabst Blue Ribbon
account tweeted out:
"Not drinking this January?
Try eating ass!"
Which, honestly,
isn't even a bad tweet.
That's just pretty good advice.
And there've been claims
and counterclaims
of whether Elez
had "read-only" access
or the ability to actually
change data, but either way,
it is alarming
he had access in any form,
especially given
what's inside that database.
I file my taxes electronically.
Does that put me inside
this database
of the Bureau of Fiscal Service?
And your bank
account information.
That's how you get
your refund electronically.
Not just who I am, where I live.
How much you made,
how much your refund is.
- All of that is in there?
- Absolutely.
The most private, sensitive data
about American citizens
sits in the Bureau of Fiscal Service
and the Treasury payments ecosystem.
That is definitely not information
I want in the hands of Elon's gang.
But, if I may,
a little correction there:
"the most private, sensitive data"
about an American
isn't their bank account information.
It is their Google search history.
Although having said that,
I am pretty sure
that most Americans' search history
over this last month
was a mix of
"What the fuck is happening?"
"What is a DOGE?"
"Why is everyone so sad about Luka?"
"What the fuck is happening?!"
all caps,
and "What to do when country go
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
It's frankly
no wonder an internal email
from the Treasury Department's
threat assessment unit said
allowing Elon's team access was
"the greatest insider threat risk"
"the Bureau of the Fiscal Service
has ever faced."
When pressed on the obvious
risks here, Kristi Noem,
Trump's director of Homeland Security,
had a weirdly blasé answer.
I remember a time
when Republicans were very careful
and worried about the government,
particularly unelected people…
We can't trust
the government anymore.
…having access
to personal data.
- Absolutely.
- You are the government.
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Is that the American people now
are saying that we have had
our personal information shared
and out there in the public.
Now Elon Musk has access to it.
Elon Musk
is part of the administration
that is helping us identify
where we can find savings.
His information that he has
is looking at programs,
not focusing on personal data
and information.
Not focusing on it,
but he has access to it.
We'll be continuing to talk to him
about what all he has access to.
Respectfully, what the fuck
are you talking about?
"We can't trust the government."
"But you are the government."
"Says who?"
"Says you."
"That's what I'm saying."
"What about data?"
"Don't know her."
"What about Elon?" "Yes, chef."
"What about Elon having access
to personal data?"
"We'll continue
talking to him about it."
Are we absolutely sure
that Kristi Noem shot her dog
or did she just talk to it
and its head exploded?
We are still in the early days
of DOGE's incursion into agencies.
They've reportedly just begun
to mess around
at the Department of Education
and the EPA.
But to see where things
could be heading,
it's worth looking at one place
they've already done a fuckload
of damage, and that is USAID.
An agency that provides humanitarian
and development assistance
in over 100 countries,
and it's been described
as "the world's single
largest humanitarian donor".
But as soon as USAID found itself
in Elon's crosshairs, it got butchered.
Sources tell us USAID, the relief
agency that brings food, water
and healthcare to victims
of natural disasters,
will soon have its global workforce
reduced from roughly 14.000 people
to fewer than 300 employees.
An internal email shared
with ABC News shows
just 12 employees to be assigned
to the entire continent of Africa.
12 employees. 12!
That is not even enough people
to fully staff a Chili's.
And to be clear, those cuts
will have real consequences.
People are going to get badly hurt
because of what we're doing now.
Which, honestly, is a pretty
good slogan for Chili's itself.
And look, you can think there's
waste in the USAID budget.
I'm sure that there is.
And you can think a review
is necessary, that is why most
presidents undertake one.
But this is different.
And while they've claimed that this
is merely a "90-day pause"
while spending is reassessed,
you might want to tell that to Elon,
who tweeted last Monday:
"We spent the weekend feeding
USAID into the woodchipper."
"Could gone to some great parties.
Did that instead."
Which, first, no you could not,
because any party you attend
is definitionally terrible.
And second, don't you have,
like, 100 kids?
Go hang out with them on
the weekends, you parasitic freak.
Already, USAID workers have been
recalled from postings overseas
and the agency's name
has been physically removed
from its headquarters in D.C.
They even went so far
as to tape a black garbage bag
over the logo on the glass.
I guess we're all just lucky that
it's not October right now,
they'd have already turned it into
a Spirit fucking Halloween.
And I know, in some ways,
USAID is an easy target
with some populist appeal.
Many Americans think we spend
too much on foreign aid.
Opinion polls have repeatedly shown
that the public estimates
that a quarter of the federal budget
goes to foreign assistance,
and they'd prefer it to be just 10%.
Although, all that really shows
is that Americans have no idea
how much we spend on foreign aid,
given that the actual share
is less than 1%
of the federal budget.
And never has a poll shown
such distance from reality,
since the one where one in eight men
genuinely thought
they could score a point
off Serena Williams in tennis.
And let me just say this,
as a man of above-average height
and some knowledge of sports:
if I played tennis against
Serena Williams, I would die.
To be clear, we get a lot in return
for that minor investment.
First, it's the right thing to do.
But on top of that,
it's also in our self-interest.
One of the things they're involved in
is disease prevention overseas.
And you may remember,
a few years ago,
it emerged that viruses
don't tend to respect borders.
Also, spending to gain goodwill
in other countries
tends to make diplomacy easier.
But if you listened
to Trump's press secretary,
you'd think that all we were doing
with USAID money
was complete nonsense.
If you look at the waste and abuse
that has run through USAID
over the past several years,
these are some of the insane priorities
that that organization has been
spending money on.
1.5 million to advance DEI
in Serbia's workplaces,
70.000 for a production
of a DEI musical in Ireland,
47.000 for a transgender opera
in Colombia,
32.000 for a transgender
comic book in Peru.
I don't know about you,
but as an American taxpayer,
I don't want my dollars going
towards this crap
and I know the American people
don't either.
If that sounds like mostly bullshit
and spin to you, it's because it is.
Though I will say,
a DEI musical in Ireland,
a transgender opera in Colombia,
and a transgender comic book in Peru
all sound like her best guesses
for what "Emilia Pérez" is.
But the thing is,
not only is she mischaracterizing
some of those projects,
the last three that she listed
weren't even funded by USAID
but by grants
from the State Department.
Again and again, the Trump
administration and Elon Musk
have boosted misinformation
about where USAID money has gone,
from Elon retweeting a fake E! News
segment claiming it had paid
to send celebrities to Ukraine,
which it didn't,
to Trump posting that Politico had
received 8 million from the agency,
which it hadn't,
to his press secretary saying
that the agency spent 50 million
on condoms in Gaza, which it did not.
That claim set off
an absurd game of telephone,
with Elon excitedly
retweeting her remarks,
Trump bumping it up to "100 million
on condoms to Hamas",
only for a Republican congressman
to go on TV to announce
that it was actually "15 million
for condoms for the Taliban."
But I guess Trump and Musk
being outraged
at any money being spent on condoms
shouldn't be that surprising.
These are two men who seem
like they've said:
"But it just doesn't feel the same!"
more often than they've said
their own fucking names.
But again, none of that was real.
And when a reporter confronted
Musk about all of this,
his answer was infuriating.
How can we make sure
that all the statements that you said
were correct
so we can trust what you say?
First of all, some of the things
that I say will be incorrect
and should be corrected.
So, nobody
is going to bat a thousand.
We will make mistakes, but we'll
act quickly to correct any mistakes.
Now, to answer your first
question: "Who is that child?"
that's the new undersecretary
of Housing and Urban Development.
Or it's one of Elon's kids.
Or possibly both.
But it is noticeable
that his answer to:
"How can we trust
what you're saying is true?"
is basically, "You can't!"
Also, for the record, Trump isn't
even pretending to care anymore!
He is so restless and bored,
he's making the exact same face
as a four-year-old
at the exact same time.
But the thing is, those mistakes
have had real consequences,
especially for an agency that provides
critical, lifesaving aid overseas.
The suspension has reportedly
halted national food programs
that serve millions of people
and "disrupted critical aid deliveries
of food and medicine."
The impacts are already being
felt on the ground,
as you can see
in this report from South Africa.
This is just one
of the sexual health clinics
that have been shut down
since the USAID funding freeze.
This one
in the heart of Johannesburg
has been catering for women
with sexually transmitted diseases
like HIV,
now completely closed.
We've seen people try and
enter and be turned away.
- Are you trying to go to the clinic?
- Yeah.
- It's closed.
- What happened?
The USAID funding has been frozen,
so they're closing down clinics.
Do you have alternatives?
I don't know.
I'm going to ask next door.
Hopefully, they'll assist me.
If they can't, I don't know.
I don't know what to do. Serious.
What will I do? There's nothing.
Yeah, it's awful. And it is somehow
made even worse
by the "we value you" message
on the shuttered window,
which they should probably
now change to
"we value you, but unfortunately,
we can't help you,"
"thanks to one of the worst white
guys South Africa has ever produced,"
"parentheses, which is
really saying something."
After blowback to all this,
the Trump administration announced
that they'd given limited waivers
for some lifesaving programs.
But unfortunately,
thanks to the sheer confusion
over who is even eligible,
the waivers "have not resulted in
the resumption of many vital programs."
That is what they don't seem to get
about shutting down work like this.
Even if the faucets get turned
back on completely,
which they almost certainly won't,
huge damage will still have been done.
For instance, USAID funds
things like anti-retroviral treatments
that prevent HIV being transmitted
to babies
before, during, and after birth.
As one agency employee put it,
just a few days into the pause,
"at a minimum, 300 babies
that wouldn't have had HIV, now do."
Which is terrible,
especially given,
"without treatment,
up to 30% of HIV-infected children"
"die by their first birthday."
Another worker characterized this as:
"the richest person in the world"
"taking away from the poorest
people in the world."
"People will die from this,"
"like thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands."
But don't worry everyone:
the person proudly feeding this agency
into the woodchipper has admitted
that he's not batting a thousand,
so it's fine.
He definitely gets it.
Even as Elon and the White House
run like a buzzsaw through agencies,
it is worth noting
that Musk has an active interest
in what does
and doesn't get cut.
His companies have 100 contracts
with 17 different federal agencies.
SpaceX alone holds about
22 billion in government contracts.
And his companies are regulated
by some of the very agencies
now under attack.
At least 11 agencies have more
than 32 continuing investigations,
pending complaints, or enforcement
actions into Musk's companies.
But don't panic, the White House
has reassured everybody
that there is nothing
to worry about here.
If Elon Musk comes across
a conflict of interest
with the contracts and the funding
that DOGE is overseeing,
then Elon will excuse
himself from those contracts.
Well that is great to hear!
Thank goodness for that.
Although I will say, as a public
policy professor pointed out:
"self-determination of a conflict of
interest is a conflict of interest."
Which is both true
and something you probably
shouldn't need a professor to tell you.
I could've told you that and I'm
not even a public policy professor.
I just look like this.
This all feels incredibly fast
and head-spinningly corrupt.
It is genuinely hard to summarize
how overwhelming all of this feels
and honestly, the best encapsulation
I've seen of this particular moment
didn't come from an academic or
a reporter, it came from this guy.
We're in the middle of a hostile
government takeover.
I wanna talk about it
but I'll be late for work.
And if you're saying:
"Wait a minute,
who we have to stop this?"
We had one, but you didn't want
that lady in office.
Now that we're a part
of a Nigerian prince scam, surprise,
surprise, it end up
being a white man.
I just wanna know, what the hell
do I do? Probably drink.
Excellent.
Absolutely excellent.
Put this man and his pink Fabletics
sweatshirt in every NBA arena
in a 500-mile radius,
because this should be
the new national anthem.
No Canadian in their right mind
would be able to boo that.
And I'm not alone
in loving that song.
There are already
multiple remixes of it online,
all of which are very good,
and one of which is my favorite.
We're in the middle of a hostile
government takeover,
I wanna talk about it
but I'll be late for work.
And if you're saying:
"Wait a minute,
who we have to stop this?"
We had one, but you
didn't want that lady in office!
I'm calling it now:
song of the summer.
But in that excellent song,
that guy actually addresses
our final question tonight.
Namely,
what the hell do we do?
Is anyone going to stop this?
And let's start with the people you
would naturally expect the least from,
and that is
congressional Republicans.
Technically,
what Trump is doing right now
is usurping Congress' power
of the purse.
But they don't seem
that upset about that.
Mike Johnson has punted, saying:
"If they're executive branch agencies,"
"the executive branch
is in charge of them."
And others,
like Senator John Kennedy,
have actively cheered
on Trump and Musk,
in the grossest possible way.
Let me try to put all this
in context for you.
I like omelets.
I mean, I really like omelets.
I could eat an omelet at every meal.
I like omelets better than sex.
Not really, but you get
the point. I like omelets.
You can't make an omelet
without breaking some eggs.
Okay, there's just so much
to unpack there.
First, we got that you liked omelets
when you said: "I like omelets."
We also got it when you said
"I really like omelets."
And were made even further aware
of it when you said:
"I could eat
an omelet at every meal."
All three perfectly effective ways
of conveying your weird affinity
for hard egg soup.
There was absolutely no reason,
though, for you to bring up sex at all
except for the fact
that you clearly wanted to.
And now I am very mad at you
because I haven't had to think about
you having sex since you famously
said this during a Senate hearing.
I can't wait to have
your cock in my mouth.
Really?
That's a lovely offer,
but as we've already established,
there's probably half a dozen eggs
in there, how is it going to fit?
But to be fair, it is hardly surprising
Republicans have been
so quick to fall in line.
Democrats, though, are supposed
to be the opposition.
Some, like AOC, have made it clear
how unacceptable all of this is.
And others have attempted
to match her energy,
even if that meant straying out
of their comfort zone.
We do have to…
I don't swear in public very well,
but we have to fuck Trump!
Excuse me, we most certainly
do not have to do that.
I believe that law doesn't take effect
until at least his third term.
And I've got to say,
there is something genuinely charming
about a non-curser deciding that
this is the moment to start.
It's a pretty moving distillation
of where we are right now
that a reserved 52-year-old
Oregonian is like:
"You know what?
It's fuck time!"
But unfortunately, when it comes
to congressional Democratic leaders,
they've sometimes shown far
too little stomach for the fight.
In the early days
of the Trump presidency,
when a reporter asked Dick Durbin
who'd be leading the charge against
Trump, he replied:
"I can't answer that. Give us
a little time. This is brand new."
But the thing is,
it is definitionally not new.
The presidency is not new.
This man is not new.
All of this was possible
to prepare for.
We've literally known there
was going to be a 2024 election
since 1789.
But maybe the clip that sums up
Democratic leadership the best is this.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries
citing New York Yankees
outfielder Aaron Judge
in arguing it's better to pick
and choose their fights
and focus on a clear message.
One of the reasons that
he's a great hitter
is he does not swing at every pitch.
He waits for the right one.
And then he swings. We're not
gonna swing at every pitch.
We're gonna swing at the ones
that matter for the American people.
Okay, first, and least importantly,
are you sure you want
that to be your example?
A guy who hit .184 in the postseason
as his team lost the World Series
in five games,
because he played bad defense?
Is that really the analogy
that you want to use here?
"Don't be mad at us.
We're just like a baseball player"
"on the most hated team in America"
"who shit the bed in the most
high-stakes situation imaginable."
But much more importantly,
"We're going to swing at the ones
that matter for the American people?"
Who is that exactly? Is it trans
people getting denied healthcare
and bullied out of public existence?
Is it immigrant families
being terrorized by ICE?
Or thousands of civil servants
being harassed out of their jobs?
Just let us know who
you think is worth swinging for,
because it looks to me like you
are striking out looking right now.
And look, if you have a representative
who's dragging their feet,
I do think calling to yell at them
has value.
At the very least, it shows them that
their inaction isn't going unnoticed.
If Democrats continue not to react,
we should be primarying
the shit out of them,
and groundwork for doing that
needs to be laid pretty soon.
But so far,
the best backstops for all this
have been outside
of the legislative branch.
In some cases,
Democratic state AGs
have banded together
to file lawsuits.
Courts have stopped or slowed some
of Trump's most damaging moves,
with even judges appointed by Trump
pushing back.
Just this week, the DOJ announced
plans to drop their case
against New York Mayor Eric Adams,
saying if charges were dismissed,
he'd be better able to help
with immigration enforcement.
They denied
it was a quid pro quo,
despite it doing a pretty good
impression of one,
but multiple federal prosecutors
refused to go along with it.
Several even quit in protest,
with one writing a letter saying:
"I expect you will
eventually find someone"
"who will be enough of a fool,
or enough of a coward,"
"to file your motion. But it was
never going to be me."
"Please consider this
my resignation."
While he didn't write the word
"bitch" at the end of that letter,
I would be amazed if Clippy
didn't pop up
to suggest to him that he do it.
And that's not the only moment
of courage that we have seen.
A doctor here in New York
told his patients:
"I'm willing to go to jail to continue
to provide your gender-affirming care."
And in many cities, groups like
these, fighting for immigrants,
have coordinated responses
to ICE raids.
Remember Trump's border czar,
Tom Homan, taking Dr. Phil
and a bunch of cameras
out on raids?
In Chicago, which he'd said
would be Ground Zero for
their mass deportation plans,
those raids were less successful
than he wanted them to be
and he was pretty open about why.
Sanctuary cities are making it
very difficult to arrest the criminals.
For instance, Chicago,
very well educated.
They've been educated
how to defy ICE,
how to hide from ICE.
And I've seen many pamphlets
from many of the NGOs,
"Here's how you escape ICE
from arresting you."
"Here's what you need to do."
They call it "know your rights".
I call it "how to escape arrest".
There's a warrant for your arrest
and they tell you how
to hide from ICE.
"No, don't open your door.
Don't answer questions."
Right. And that is good advice.
Also, if you're relying on people
not knowing their rights
in order to do your job,
it seems like you might be
part of the problem here.
And all else aside, I fully get
why people are not letting you
in particular into their home.
You're a thumb-headed weirdo
with terrible vibes.
You look and sound like J.K. Simmons
choking on a marble
and I am rooting
for the marble.
Look, the next four years are
going to feel incredibly shitty.
The potential for pain is devastating,
as is the sheer amount of it
that's already been doled out.
We're seeing wealthy, powerful men
use the levers of government
for their personal advantage as
well as their personal grievances.
And we're being governed by people
who think good public policy consists
of "cut off funding to anyone
who isn't me,"
"make it illegal to mention people
who are different from me,"
"and fuck it,
let's steal Canada while we're at it."
Meanwhile, many of those
that we've elected to fight back
seem to be resting on their heels
"waiting for their pitch".
This is all bonkers, terrifying,
and darkly absurd.
It is worse than we thought
and we thought about it a lot.
To put it mildly,
things aren't looking great right now,
but defeat
is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As much as we roll our eyes
at some of the "resistance"
in Trump's first term,
some of which was very annoying,
some of which I am annoyed by, too,
please, tell your aunt
to stop saying it,
but some of that energy
did make a real difference.
Remember those early protests
at the airports
over Trump's proposed travel ban?
A former prosecutor recently wrote
about how seeing those protests
helped others like him who were
fighting within the DOJ
to rescind or limit the order,
saying:
"Public outrage gave us courage
and the knowledge"
"that we were, in fact, working
in the public interest"
and "Advocacy on the outside made
advocacy on the inside possible."
So, for all those federal workers
going through it right now,
support and solidarity really matter.
The point is, now is not the time
to be looking away and saying:
"This is what you fuckers voted for"
and turning your backs.
Especially when there are many good
people doing important work out there
who you can both
join and support.
What's ahead is gonna be exhausting.
And to get through this,
we're going to have to find a balance
between acknowledging the hell
of what is going on
and finding the joy
that can sustain us, and sometimes,
if we are lucky,
finding both
in the exact same place,
in the form of the single
catchiest song ever written.
We're in the middle
of a hostile government takeover.
I mean, we are. He's just
straight-up right.
And now, this.
And Now: Once Again,
Better Names for the Dogs From
This Year's Westminster Dog Show.
Roadhouse.
Shrimps.
The Perv.
Steven.
Chilaquiles.
Berp.
The Dreamer Who Lives
Inside the Dream.
Sabrina Carpenter.
Violence.
After the Taliban
Took Power in 2021,
Afghan Opium Production
Declined by Over Ninety Percent.
Corncob.
Bong Connery.
Paul Rudd.
And Luigi Mangione.
That's our show, thanks for watching.
We'll see you next week, good night!
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you
so much for joining us. We are back!
And we've clearly missed a lot
over the last three months,
from the collapse
of the Assad regime in Syria
to an attempted coup in South Korea
to the U.K.'s Labour Party
briefly advertising its agenda
with a video titled
"This Labour government's plan
to change Britain for the better,"
"parentheses, as animals."
And whatever you're expecting,
it's weirder.
You'll be seen sooner
by our NHS
Okay, so, a lot to love about that,
from the objective horniness
of some of their animal choices,
to AI that couldn't seem to decide
whether the bunny nurse
has human or rabbit arms.
But it is notable that,
even with the option to use
any animal in the history of animals,
they still couldn't make public
transportation sexy.
Every other animal is either cool,
hot, terrifying, or all three,
but the advocate for public rail
is a dumpy business badger
in a suit that doesn't fit who, and
I don't think I'm projecting here,
seems like
he's gonna miss his train.
They actually pulled that video
within hours, in part because
it turned out the song was an
explicit Brazilian club banger,
featuring lyrics referencing
smoking marijuana,
sexual acts and sexist slurs.
And I'm glad they took it down,
not because of that,
but because the question
"what do you get when you combine"
"Britain, accessible descriptions
of dense government policy,"
"and animal mascots?"
has already been answered,
and you are watching its season 12
premiere right now.
Get off my fucking corner!
But that is not all that we missed.
There were wildfires in L.A.,
the first Super Bowl halftime show
that was both a concert
and a public execution,
and Duolingo posted a death
announcement for their owl mascot,
following it up with a video of him
being hit by a Cybertruck,
exploding, and floating through
the sky, space and gates of hell.
I believe I speak for everyone
when I say: "Qué?"
While I'm gonna miss having
that little green freak
accompanying
my daily Spanish lessons,
it sounds like there's now an opening
for an education-focused owl
and, friends, I have
a humble yet horny suggestion.
Teach me a lesson, you stern,
feathery fire hydrant.
Haz que mi léxico crezca,
búho enorme.
And finally, last month saw
the German deer-calling championship.
And if you've never seen it in action,
you have been missing out.
Sir! Excuse me, sir.
I think the contest you're looking for
is around the corner.
This is a competition
to call deer,
not give them
the best night of their lives.
And while all of that is very fun,
unfortunately,
we have to dive straight in
to our main story tonight,
the fact that Donald Trump is, once
again, president of the United States.
Sorry if this is how you found out.
I'm not nuts about it either.
It has been less than a month
since Trump's inauguration,
but it already
feels like an eternity.
In just the past four weeks,
he's pardoned or commuted
the sentences of January 6th rioters,
withdrew the U.S. from both
the Paris Accords and the WHO,
announced plans to take over Gaza,
issued an executive order
trying to undo
birthright citizenship,
blamed the fatal D.C. plane crash
on DEI,
renamed the Gulf of Mexico
the Gulf of America,
responded to fires in L.A. County by
releasing billions of gallons of water
to California's Central Valley
150 miles away,
replaced a four-star general
with the host of "Fox & Friends"
as Secretary of Defense,
and announced 25% tariffs
on Canada and Mexico, a move
prompting Canadians to do this.
O say does that star-spangled
banner yet wave…
O'er the land of the free…
Excellent. I think the only thing
more quintessentially Canadian
than booing the U.S. national anthem
at a hockey game
is the fact they waited politely
for the right time to do it.
Part of Trump's rationale
for his tariff threat was that Canada
wasn't doing enough to stop
the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.,
even though the total amount
intercepted at the Canadian border,
last year, was just 43 pounds,
or roughly 0.2% of all U.S. border
fentanyl seizures.
Trump quickly paused those tariffs,
after claiming that he'd won
concessions from Canada, but
when a Republican congressman
tried to repeat that talking point
on CNN, he ran into a slight problem.
He called this off
saying that he'd won
concessions from both of them,
but is there a tangible
concession in your view?
Yeah, absolutely,
he won the concessions…
What's new?
It's a commitment from Trudeau
that wasn't there
to help with fentanyl,
with the black market
and to secure the border.
He announced that plan,
six weeks ago, back in December.
Well, at least he's reiterated it
and formalized it.
Yeah, Kaitlan!
What aren't you getting about this?
Trump got Canada to agree to what
they already agreed to,
and it didn't cost us anything
except for any goodwill
between our countries whatsoever.
He pissed off an entire country
of the most difficult to piss off
people in the world
and in exchange, we got them
to resend an email!
It's called leadership, Kaitlan!
One of the most striking,
if unsurprising,
things over the last month
has been the extent to which
Trump seems to have prioritized
active cruelty.
He issued multiple EOs aimed at trans
and gender nonconforming people,
including one "declaring the federal
government would only recognize"
"two sexes, male and female"
and another
"banning federal funding or support
for youth gender-affirming care".
And then there were
his multiple attacks
on government diversity, equity,
and inclusion programs,
which were pretty extreme.
The four-page memo
obtained by CBS News
instructs federal agency heads
to cancel any DEI-related trainings
and close all DEI offices.
The memo went out just one day
after President Trump signed
an executive order giving agencies
60 days to terminate all DEI positions.
Our country is going
to be based on merit again.
Can you believe it?
No. I actually can't.
And that is frankly
a wild thing to say
in front of a portrait of your dad,
who you inherited
a real estate empire from.
And the assault on DEI has been
sweeping and sometimes very petty.
An employee at one government
agency told reporters:
"Unidentified outside staffers
arrived to sweep the office"
"of anything they felt was related
to diversity, equity and inclusion",
which included a plaque,
confiscated from a supervisor's desk,
which read:
"Be kind to everyone."
And at that point, I'm just
surprised they didn't replace it
with a poster of Calvin pissing
on a copy of "White Fragility".
Then there were the ICE raids,
with Trump's "border czar",
Tom Homan, taking Dr. Phil,
for some reason,
on a ride-along around Chicago
in perhaps the single worst version
of "Carpool Karaoke" ever made.
It has all been total mayhem.
And to some extent,
that may be by design.
Because it's worth remembering,
during Trump's first term,
Steve Bannon openly laid out
what their thinking was back then.
So, what we've got to do
is just hit, hit, hit,
and keep it,
it's momentum.
The opposition party is the media.
And the media can only,
because they're dumb
and they're lazy,
they can only focus
on one thing at a time.
I said, all we have to do
is flood the zone.
Every day we hit 'em
with three things.
They'll bite on one, and we'll
get all of our stuff done.
These guys will never
be able to recover.
But we've got to start
with muzzle velocity.
So, it's got to start,
and it's got to hammer.
- What was the word?
- Muzzle velocity.
Set aside that "muzzle velocity"
sounds like a straight-to-streaming
vehicle starring Steven Seagal
and six to 10 dog extras
who definitely died on set.
That is a pretty accurate description
of what we're all witnessing.
Though,
as a member of the media,
I take issue with the claim we can
only focus on one thing at a time.
It's my ability to multitask
that allows me to focus
not just on how Bannon sounds
like he's trying
to Monday morning quarterback
the football team of a high school
he's not allowed within 500 feet of,
but also on how he somehow
always looks like he was
recently pulled out of a wet hole.
But it is true that, if you try
and focus on everything,
you'll focus on nothing.
So tonight, we thought
we'd try and pull back
and focus on one major theme
of the last month,
and that is
the Trump administration's attempt
to dismantle
the federal government from within.
And to do that, we're going to try
and answer a few basic questions:
what they're doing,
who it's hurting
and what can be done about it.
And let's start with exactly
what is happening right now.
You might remember,
last year we talked about Project 2025,
the playbook for Trump's
second term.
In that story, we mentioned one
of its main architects, Russell Vought,
was hellbent on decimating
the civil service.
Here is in 2023,
laying out exactly what he hoped
to do once Trump returned to power.
We want the bureaucrats
to be traumatically affected.
When they wake up in the morning,
we want them to not want to go to work,
because they are increasingly
viewed as the villains.
We want their funding
to be shut down
so that the EPA can't do all of
the rules against our energy industry
because they have no bandwidth
financially to do so.
We want to put them in trauma.
When I pictured the evil masterminds
who would be taking down
the American government
from within,
I pictured comic book villains,
standing over the city
as lightning struck.
Not Russ from budgets
in history's worst polo shirt,
clicking through his slide deck
and saying he wants
to give bureaucrats
clinical depression.
News flash, Russ,
they already have it!
That man is now Trump's director of
the Office of Management and Budget
and has begun carrying out
his plans
for a systemic purge
of government workers.
But he's had a lot of assistance
in that from the fact
that Trump's also brought in
this guy, Elon Musk,
seen here looking like a scrotum
dressed for a funeral.
He looks like a witch
from Dutch folklore.
Musk's self-invented Department
of Government Efficiency, or DOGE,
has been trying to eliminate
federal workers,
and sometimes
in alarmingly blunt ways.
One of the administration's
early moves was to send out
an email offering many
a "deferred resignation",
where they could quit their jobs
and get paid through September
or stay, and risk being laid off.
Which is already bizarre.
And setting aside whether
it's even a real or legal offer,
"take this money now
or risk being eliminated"
isn't how you run
the federal government,
it's how you run "Beast Games".
But for some workers, it's gone
well beyond just getting an email.
There have been mass firings,
and Musk has hired a team
of young aides to assist
in downsizing the government,
some of whom have stationed
themselves in government offices,
as this federal worker explains.
My colleagues are getting 15-minute
one-one- one check-ins
with 19, 20, 21-year-old
college graduates
asking to justify their existence.
One of Musk's top lieutenants
and his wife and young child
have shacked up on the sixth floor
of our agency and are living there.
Yeah, it is madness.
Imagine being a federal worker
and having to listen to a guy
who wasn't alive for 9/11,
Shrek 1, or Shrek 2,
say to you:
"You're being downsized,
please leave this office,"
"which is now my bedroom. Also,
can you please buy me a beer?"
And all this of is bad enough
before you get to the fact
that Musk's team includes members
with, shall we say,
checkered employment histories.
Another DOGE worker,
Edward Coristine,
who called himself "Big Balls"
on social media,
was fired from an internship
with a data security firm,
called Path Network, in 2022,
accused of leaking information
to a competitor.
A spokesperson telling CNN
his "contract was terminated"
"after the conclusion of an internal
investigation into the leaking"
"of proprietary company information
that coincided with his tenure."
What a fun time to be alive this is.
I'm so glad our country
is "based on merit" again,
otherwise, candidates like Big Balls
the fired intern
might've been overlooked.
And it gets worse, because
it's been reported that Big Balls
at one point started a website
allowing users to redirect
to content on the site
by creating shitposting URLs,
including names
like "child-porn-dot-store"
and "KKK-is-cool-dot-club".
And I never thought I'd say this,
but I expected
better of Big Balls,
or as he's now known,
senior advisor at the State Department
and Department
of Homeland Security.
And the thing is,
some of Musk's team
have had an extraordinary amount
of access to sensitive data.
Another DOGE staffer,
a 25-year-old named Marko Elez,
was given access to Treasury
Department payment data,
basically, "the checkbook for
the entire federal government".
Which was worrying
even before it emerged
that, within the past year,
he'd tweeted things like,
"Normalize Indian hate",
"You couldn't pay me to marry
outside of my ethnicity"
and "I just want a eugenic
immigration policy,"
"is that too much to ask?"
And those are some bad tweets.
And not even the fun kind.
Like when "Breaking Bad"'s
Dean Norris tweeted out:
"Sex GIFs",
or the Pabst Blue Ribbon
account tweeted out:
"Not drinking this January?
Try eating ass!"
Which, honestly,
isn't even a bad tweet.
That's just pretty good advice.
And there've been claims
and counterclaims
of whether Elez
had "read-only" access
or the ability to actually
change data, but either way,
it is alarming
he had access in any form,
especially given
what's inside that database.
I file my taxes electronically.
Does that put me inside
this database
of the Bureau of Fiscal Service?
And your bank
account information.
That's how you get
your refund electronically.
Not just who I am, where I live.
How much you made,
how much your refund is.
- All of that is in there?
- Absolutely.
The most private, sensitive data
about American citizens
sits in the Bureau of Fiscal Service
and the Treasury payments ecosystem.
That is definitely not information
I want in the hands of Elon's gang.
But, if I may,
a little correction there:
"the most private, sensitive data"
about an American
isn't their bank account information.
It is their Google search history.
Although having said that,
I am pretty sure
that most Americans' search history
over this last month
was a mix of
"What the fuck is happening?"
"What is a DOGE?"
"Why is everyone so sad about Luka?"
"What the fuck is happening?!"
all caps,
and "What to do when country go
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
It's frankly
no wonder an internal email
from the Treasury Department's
threat assessment unit said
allowing Elon's team access was
"the greatest insider threat risk"
"the Bureau of the Fiscal Service
has ever faced."
When pressed on the obvious
risks here, Kristi Noem,
Trump's director of Homeland Security,
had a weirdly blasé answer.
I remember a time
when Republicans were very careful
and worried about the government,
particularly unelected people…
We can't trust
the government anymore.
…having access
to personal data.
- Absolutely.
- You are the government.
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Is that the American people now
are saying that we have had
our personal information shared
and out there in the public.
Now Elon Musk has access to it.
Elon Musk
is part of the administration
that is helping us identify
where we can find savings.
His information that he has
is looking at programs,
not focusing on personal data
and information.
Not focusing on it,
but he has access to it.
We'll be continuing to talk to him
about what all he has access to.
Respectfully, what the fuck
are you talking about?
"We can't trust the government."
"But you are the government."
"Says who?"
"Says you."
"That's what I'm saying."
"What about data?"
"Don't know her."
"What about Elon?" "Yes, chef."
"What about Elon having access
to personal data?"
"We'll continue
talking to him about it."
Are we absolutely sure
that Kristi Noem shot her dog
or did she just talk to it
and its head exploded?
We are still in the early days
of DOGE's incursion into agencies.
They've reportedly just begun
to mess around
at the Department of Education
and the EPA.
But to see where things
could be heading,
it's worth looking at one place
they've already done a fuckload
of damage, and that is USAID.
An agency that provides humanitarian
and development assistance
in over 100 countries,
and it's been described
as "the world's single
largest humanitarian donor".
But as soon as USAID found itself
in Elon's crosshairs, it got butchered.
Sources tell us USAID, the relief
agency that brings food, water
and healthcare to victims
of natural disasters,
will soon have its global workforce
reduced from roughly 14.000 people
to fewer than 300 employees.
An internal email shared
with ABC News shows
just 12 employees to be assigned
to the entire continent of Africa.
12 employees. 12!
That is not even enough people
to fully staff a Chili's.
And to be clear, those cuts
will have real consequences.
People are going to get badly hurt
because of what we're doing now.
Which, honestly, is a pretty
good slogan for Chili's itself.
And look, you can think there's
waste in the USAID budget.
I'm sure that there is.
And you can think a review
is necessary, that is why most
presidents undertake one.
But this is different.
And while they've claimed that this
is merely a "90-day pause"
while spending is reassessed,
you might want to tell that to Elon,
who tweeted last Monday:
"We spent the weekend feeding
USAID into the woodchipper."
"Could gone to some great parties.
Did that instead."
Which, first, no you could not,
because any party you attend
is definitionally terrible.
And second, don't you have,
like, 100 kids?
Go hang out with them on
the weekends, you parasitic freak.
Already, USAID workers have been
recalled from postings overseas
and the agency's name
has been physically removed
from its headquarters in D.C.
They even went so far
as to tape a black garbage bag
over the logo on the glass.
I guess we're all just lucky that
it's not October right now,
they'd have already turned it into
a Spirit fucking Halloween.
And I know, in some ways,
USAID is an easy target
with some populist appeal.
Many Americans think we spend
too much on foreign aid.
Opinion polls have repeatedly shown
that the public estimates
that a quarter of the federal budget
goes to foreign assistance,
and they'd prefer it to be just 10%.
Although, all that really shows
is that Americans have no idea
how much we spend on foreign aid,
given that the actual share
is less than 1%
of the federal budget.
And never has a poll shown
such distance from reality,
since the one where one in eight men
genuinely thought
they could score a point
off Serena Williams in tennis.
And let me just say this,
as a man of above-average height
and some knowledge of sports:
if I played tennis against
Serena Williams, I would die.
To be clear, we get a lot in return
for that minor investment.
First, it's the right thing to do.
But on top of that,
it's also in our self-interest.
One of the things they're involved in
is disease prevention overseas.
And you may remember,
a few years ago,
it emerged that viruses
don't tend to respect borders.
Also, spending to gain goodwill
in other countries
tends to make diplomacy easier.
But if you listened
to Trump's press secretary,
you'd think that all we were doing
with USAID money
was complete nonsense.
If you look at the waste and abuse
that has run through USAID
over the past several years,
these are some of the insane priorities
that that organization has been
spending money on.
1.5 million to advance DEI
in Serbia's workplaces,
70.000 for a production
of a DEI musical in Ireland,
47.000 for a transgender opera
in Colombia,
32.000 for a transgender
comic book in Peru.
I don't know about you,
but as an American taxpayer,
I don't want my dollars going
towards this crap
and I know the American people
don't either.
If that sounds like mostly bullshit
and spin to you, it's because it is.
Though I will say,
a DEI musical in Ireland,
a transgender opera in Colombia,
and a transgender comic book in Peru
all sound like her best guesses
for what "Emilia Pérez" is.
But the thing is,
not only is she mischaracterizing
some of those projects,
the last three that she listed
weren't even funded by USAID
but by grants
from the State Department.
Again and again, the Trump
administration and Elon Musk
have boosted misinformation
about where USAID money has gone,
from Elon retweeting a fake E! News
segment claiming it had paid
to send celebrities to Ukraine,
which it didn't,
to Trump posting that Politico had
received 8 million from the agency,
which it hadn't,
to his press secretary saying
that the agency spent 50 million
on condoms in Gaza, which it did not.
That claim set off
an absurd game of telephone,
with Elon excitedly
retweeting her remarks,
Trump bumping it up to "100 million
on condoms to Hamas",
only for a Republican congressman
to go on TV to announce
that it was actually "15 million
for condoms for the Taliban."
But I guess Trump and Musk
being outraged
at any money being spent on condoms
shouldn't be that surprising.
These are two men who seem
like they've said:
"But it just doesn't feel the same!"
more often than they've said
their own fucking names.
But again, none of that was real.
And when a reporter confronted
Musk about all of this,
his answer was infuriating.
How can we make sure
that all the statements that you said
were correct
so we can trust what you say?
First of all, some of the things
that I say will be incorrect
and should be corrected.
So, nobody
is going to bat a thousand.
We will make mistakes, but we'll
act quickly to correct any mistakes.
Now, to answer your first
question: "Who is that child?"
that's the new undersecretary
of Housing and Urban Development.
Or it's one of Elon's kids.
Or possibly both.
But it is noticeable
that his answer to:
"How can we trust
what you're saying is true?"
is basically, "You can't!"
Also, for the record, Trump isn't
even pretending to care anymore!
He is so restless and bored,
he's making the exact same face
as a four-year-old
at the exact same time.
But the thing is, those mistakes
have had real consequences,
especially for an agency that provides
critical, lifesaving aid overseas.
The suspension has reportedly
halted national food programs
that serve millions of people
and "disrupted critical aid deliveries
of food and medicine."
The impacts are already being
felt on the ground,
as you can see
in this report from South Africa.
This is just one
of the sexual health clinics
that have been shut down
since the USAID funding freeze.
This one
in the heart of Johannesburg
has been catering for women
with sexually transmitted diseases
like HIV,
now completely closed.
We've seen people try and
enter and be turned away.
- Are you trying to go to the clinic?
- Yeah.
- It's closed.
- What happened?
The USAID funding has been frozen,
so they're closing down clinics.
Do you have alternatives?
I don't know.
I'm going to ask next door.
Hopefully, they'll assist me.
If they can't, I don't know.
I don't know what to do. Serious.
What will I do? There's nothing.
Yeah, it's awful. And it is somehow
made even worse
by the "we value you" message
on the shuttered window,
which they should probably
now change to
"we value you, but unfortunately,
we can't help you,"
"thanks to one of the worst white
guys South Africa has ever produced,"
"parentheses, which is
really saying something."
After blowback to all this,
the Trump administration announced
that they'd given limited waivers
for some lifesaving programs.
But unfortunately,
thanks to the sheer confusion
over who is even eligible,
the waivers "have not resulted in
the resumption of many vital programs."
That is what they don't seem to get
about shutting down work like this.
Even if the faucets get turned
back on completely,
which they almost certainly won't,
huge damage will still have been done.
For instance, USAID funds
things like anti-retroviral treatments
that prevent HIV being transmitted
to babies
before, during, and after birth.
As one agency employee put it,
just a few days into the pause,
"at a minimum, 300 babies
that wouldn't have had HIV, now do."
Which is terrible,
especially given,
"without treatment,
up to 30% of HIV-infected children"
"die by their first birthday."
Another worker characterized this as:
"the richest person in the world"
"taking away from the poorest
people in the world."
"People will die from this,"
"like thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands."
But don't worry everyone:
the person proudly feeding this agency
into the woodchipper has admitted
that he's not batting a thousand,
so it's fine.
He definitely gets it.
Even as Elon and the White House
run like a buzzsaw through agencies,
it is worth noting
that Musk has an active interest
in what does
and doesn't get cut.
His companies have 100 contracts
with 17 different federal agencies.
SpaceX alone holds about
22 billion in government contracts.
And his companies are regulated
by some of the very agencies
now under attack.
At least 11 agencies have more
than 32 continuing investigations,
pending complaints, or enforcement
actions into Musk's companies.
But don't panic, the White House
has reassured everybody
that there is nothing
to worry about here.
If Elon Musk comes across
a conflict of interest
with the contracts and the funding
that DOGE is overseeing,
then Elon will excuse
himself from those contracts.
Well that is great to hear!
Thank goodness for that.
Although I will say, as a public
policy professor pointed out:
"self-determination of a conflict of
interest is a conflict of interest."
Which is both true
and something you probably
shouldn't need a professor to tell you.
I could've told you that and I'm
not even a public policy professor.
I just look like this.
This all feels incredibly fast
and head-spinningly corrupt.
It is genuinely hard to summarize
how overwhelming all of this feels
and honestly, the best encapsulation
I've seen of this particular moment
didn't come from an academic or
a reporter, it came from this guy.
We're in the middle of a hostile
government takeover.
I wanna talk about it
but I'll be late for work.
And if you're saying:
"Wait a minute,
who we have to stop this?"
We had one, but you didn't want
that lady in office.
Now that we're a part
of a Nigerian prince scam, surprise,
surprise, it end up
being a white man.
I just wanna know, what the hell
do I do? Probably drink.
Excellent.
Absolutely excellent.
Put this man and his pink Fabletics
sweatshirt in every NBA arena
in a 500-mile radius,
because this should be
the new national anthem.
No Canadian in their right mind
would be able to boo that.
And I'm not alone
in loving that song.
There are already
multiple remixes of it online,
all of which are very good,
and one of which is my favorite.
We're in the middle of a hostile
government takeover,
I wanna talk about it
but I'll be late for work.
And if you're saying:
"Wait a minute,
who we have to stop this?"
We had one, but you
didn't want that lady in office!
I'm calling it now:
song of the summer.
But in that excellent song,
that guy actually addresses
our final question tonight.
Namely,
what the hell do we do?
Is anyone going to stop this?
And let's start with the people you
would naturally expect the least from,
and that is
congressional Republicans.
Technically,
what Trump is doing right now
is usurping Congress' power
of the purse.
But they don't seem
that upset about that.
Mike Johnson has punted, saying:
"If they're executive branch agencies,"
"the executive branch
is in charge of them."
And others,
like Senator John Kennedy,
have actively cheered
on Trump and Musk,
in the grossest possible way.
Let me try to put all this
in context for you.
I like omelets.
I mean, I really like omelets.
I could eat an omelet at every meal.
I like omelets better than sex.
Not really, but you get
the point. I like omelets.
You can't make an omelet
without breaking some eggs.
Okay, there's just so much
to unpack there.
First, we got that you liked omelets
when you said: "I like omelets."
We also got it when you said
"I really like omelets."
And were made even further aware
of it when you said:
"I could eat
an omelet at every meal."
All three perfectly effective ways
of conveying your weird affinity
for hard egg soup.
There was absolutely no reason,
though, for you to bring up sex at all
except for the fact
that you clearly wanted to.
And now I am very mad at you
because I haven't had to think about
you having sex since you famously
said this during a Senate hearing.
I can't wait to have
your cock in my mouth.
Really?
That's a lovely offer,
but as we've already established,
there's probably half a dozen eggs
in there, how is it going to fit?
But to be fair, it is hardly surprising
Republicans have been
so quick to fall in line.
Democrats, though, are supposed
to be the opposition.
Some, like AOC, have made it clear
how unacceptable all of this is.
And others have attempted
to match her energy,
even if that meant straying out
of their comfort zone.
We do have to…
I don't swear in public very well,
but we have to fuck Trump!
Excuse me, we most certainly
do not have to do that.
I believe that law doesn't take effect
until at least his third term.
And I've got to say,
there is something genuinely charming
about a non-curser deciding that
this is the moment to start.
It's a pretty moving distillation
of where we are right now
that a reserved 52-year-old
Oregonian is like:
"You know what?
It's fuck time!"
But unfortunately, when it comes
to congressional Democratic leaders,
they've sometimes shown far
too little stomach for the fight.
In the early days
of the Trump presidency,
when a reporter asked Dick Durbin
who'd be leading the charge against
Trump, he replied:
"I can't answer that. Give us
a little time. This is brand new."
But the thing is,
it is definitionally not new.
The presidency is not new.
This man is not new.
All of this was possible
to prepare for.
We've literally known there
was going to be a 2024 election
since 1789.
But maybe the clip that sums up
Democratic leadership the best is this.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries
citing New York Yankees
outfielder Aaron Judge
in arguing it's better to pick
and choose their fights
and focus on a clear message.
One of the reasons that
he's a great hitter
is he does not swing at every pitch.
He waits for the right one.
And then he swings. We're not
gonna swing at every pitch.
We're gonna swing at the ones
that matter for the American people.
Okay, first, and least importantly,
are you sure you want
that to be your example?
A guy who hit .184 in the postseason
as his team lost the World Series
in five games,
because he played bad defense?
Is that really the analogy
that you want to use here?
"Don't be mad at us.
We're just like a baseball player"
"on the most hated team in America"
"who shit the bed in the most
high-stakes situation imaginable."
But much more importantly,
"We're going to swing at the ones
that matter for the American people?"
Who is that exactly? Is it trans
people getting denied healthcare
and bullied out of public existence?
Is it immigrant families
being terrorized by ICE?
Or thousands of civil servants
being harassed out of their jobs?
Just let us know who
you think is worth swinging for,
because it looks to me like you
are striking out looking right now.
And look, if you have a representative
who's dragging their feet,
I do think calling to yell at them
has value.
At the very least, it shows them that
their inaction isn't going unnoticed.
If Democrats continue not to react,
we should be primarying
the shit out of them,
and groundwork for doing that
needs to be laid pretty soon.
But so far,
the best backstops for all this
have been outside
of the legislative branch.
In some cases,
Democratic state AGs
have banded together
to file lawsuits.
Courts have stopped or slowed some
of Trump's most damaging moves,
with even judges appointed by Trump
pushing back.
Just this week, the DOJ announced
plans to drop their case
against New York Mayor Eric Adams,
saying if charges were dismissed,
he'd be better able to help
with immigration enforcement.
They denied
it was a quid pro quo,
despite it doing a pretty good
impression of one,
but multiple federal prosecutors
refused to go along with it.
Several even quit in protest,
with one writing a letter saying:
"I expect you will
eventually find someone"
"who will be enough of a fool,
or enough of a coward,"
"to file your motion. But it was
never going to be me."
"Please consider this
my resignation."
While he didn't write the word
"bitch" at the end of that letter,
I would be amazed if Clippy
didn't pop up
to suggest to him that he do it.
And that's not the only moment
of courage that we have seen.
A doctor here in New York
told his patients:
"I'm willing to go to jail to continue
to provide your gender-affirming care."
And in many cities, groups like
these, fighting for immigrants,
have coordinated responses
to ICE raids.
Remember Trump's border czar,
Tom Homan, taking Dr. Phil
and a bunch of cameras
out on raids?
In Chicago, which he'd said
would be Ground Zero for
their mass deportation plans,
those raids were less successful
than he wanted them to be
and he was pretty open about why.
Sanctuary cities are making it
very difficult to arrest the criminals.
For instance, Chicago,
very well educated.
They've been educated
how to defy ICE,
how to hide from ICE.
And I've seen many pamphlets
from many of the NGOs,
"Here's how you escape ICE
from arresting you."
"Here's what you need to do."
They call it "know your rights".
I call it "how to escape arrest".
There's a warrant for your arrest
and they tell you how
to hide from ICE.
"No, don't open your door.
Don't answer questions."
Right. And that is good advice.
Also, if you're relying on people
not knowing their rights
in order to do your job,
it seems like you might be
part of the problem here.
And all else aside, I fully get
why people are not letting you
in particular into their home.
You're a thumb-headed weirdo
with terrible vibes.
You look and sound like J.K. Simmons
choking on a marble
and I am rooting
for the marble.
Look, the next four years are
going to feel incredibly shitty.
The potential for pain is devastating,
as is the sheer amount of it
that's already been doled out.
We're seeing wealthy, powerful men
use the levers of government
for their personal advantage as
well as their personal grievances.
And we're being governed by people
who think good public policy consists
of "cut off funding to anyone
who isn't me,"
"make it illegal to mention people
who are different from me,"
"and fuck it,
let's steal Canada while we're at it."
Meanwhile, many of those
that we've elected to fight back
seem to be resting on their heels
"waiting for their pitch".
This is all bonkers, terrifying,
and darkly absurd.
It is worse than we thought
and we thought about it a lot.
To put it mildly,
things aren't looking great right now,
but defeat
is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As much as we roll our eyes
at some of the "resistance"
in Trump's first term,
some of which was very annoying,
some of which I am annoyed by, too,
please, tell your aunt
to stop saying it,
but some of that energy
did make a real difference.
Remember those early protests
at the airports
over Trump's proposed travel ban?
A former prosecutor recently wrote
about how seeing those protests
helped others like him who were
fighting within the DOJ
to rescind or limit the order,
saying:
"Public outrage gave us courage
and the knowledge"
"that we were, in fact, working
in the public interest"
and "Advocacy on the outside made
advocacy on the inside possible."
So, for all those federal workers
going through it right now,
support and solidarity really matter.
The point is, now is not the time
to be looking away and saying:
"This is what you fuckers voted for"
and turning your backs.
Especially when there are many good
people doing important work out there
who you can both
join and support.
What's ahead is gonna be exhausting.
And to get through this,
we're going to have to find a balance
between acknowledging the hell
of what is going on
and finding the joy
that can sustain us, and sometimes,
if we are lucky,
finding both
in the exact same place,
in the form of the single
catchiest song ever written.
We're in the middle
of a hostile government takeover.
I mean, we are. He's just
straight-up right.
And now, this.
And Now: Once Again,
Better Names for the Dogs From
This Year's Westminster Dog Show.
Roadhouse.
Shrimps.
The Perv.
Steven.
Chilaquiles.
Berp.
The Dreamer Who Lives
Inside the Dream.
Sabrina Carpenter.
Violence.
After the Taliban
Took Power in 2021,
Afghan Opium Production
Declined by Over Ninety Percent.
Corncob.
Bong Connery.
Paul Rudd.
And Luigi Mangione.
That's our show, thanks for watching.
We'll see you next week, good night!