March 7, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:28:33
3225 The Truth About Donald Drumpf: John Oliver on Donald Trump
On February 28th, 2016, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver broadcast their "epic takedown" of Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump. Oliver criticized Trump's business history, licensing of his brand, possible insecurities, potential inconsistencies, self-funding of his campaign, telling it like it is, political correctness and created the Donald Drumpf meme.Includes: Jon Stewart's name change, Trump University, Trump Steaks, Politifact, Trump Vodka, Trump Shuttle, Go Trump, Trump Magazines, Trump Mortgage Company, Disavowing David Duke, Ku Klux Klan and much more!Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Donald Trump (HBO)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnpO_RTSNmQSources: http://www.fdrurl.com/john-oliver-on-donald-trumpFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
So, as you're probably aware, quite recently, John Oliver dedicated, nay devoted, a 22-minute blistering segment towards criticizing and attacking Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
And he did so to near universal acclaim.
Rolling Stone said, watch John Oliver annihilate Donald Trump, rebrand Trumpf!
Huffington Post said, John Oliver demolishes serial liar Donald Trump launches campaign to make Donald Trump again.
Salon said, John Oliver demolishes Trump.
Finally, here's why his self-funded, business-savvy, tough-talking campaign is a lie.
Raw Story said, John Oliver annihilates Donald Trump.
Quote, he's a bullshit artist selling a shitty lifestyle.
The Daily Banterer, with his instantly iconic Donald Trump takedown, John Oliver becomes the hero America needs.
Vogue said, Is John Oliver's Donald Trump segment a game changer?
Was John Oliver's takedown a factual rebuttal or simply the usual sophistic snarkument that is commonplace amongst popular mainstream media figures?
We'll give you some facts and you can make your own decisions.
So, he started, John Oliver started by saying, our main story tonight, and I can't believe I'm saying this, is Donald Trump.
And I say that knowing that every time his name is said out loud, he has a shattering orgasm.
First of all, that's pretty funny.
Secondly, class question, is that a superpower you would like to have?
I've spent a lot of the weekend thinking it over.
I'm torn.
I'm torn between two lovers.
John Oliver said, So at this point, Donald Trump is America's back mole.
It may have seemed harmless a year ago, but now that it's gotten frighteningly bigger, it is no longer wise to ignore it.
Now, this of course is the timing as to why this segment happened at this time.
And at the very end of our chat today, I'll give you the real reasons behind it as far as I see it.
But because it looks like Donald Trump may emerge to take on Hillary Clinton in the final battle for the presidency...
In 2016, now people on the left are really sharpening their swords.
Now, what's important to notice here is that John Oliver is comparing the leading Republican presidential nominee to cancer.
To cancer.
Now that, maybe as a cancer survivor, I find that a little offensive.
Maybe it's just offensive to most people who have either a pulse or a conscience.
Take your pick.
That is pretty vicious.
And that seems to have kind of gone unnoticed.
You know, lots of people die of cancer.
One of the biggest killers.
And calling Donald Trump a cancer is...
Kind of extreme, kind of tasteless, kind of offensive to people who've battled, survived or died from cancer, but nonetheless.
Now, he goes on to say, and I do understand why Trump supporters might like him.
He's unpredictable and entertaining.
Just look at how he went after Marco Rubio on Friday.
And he played a clip of Trump mocking Rubio's infamous water drinking moment.
Oliver said that's objectively funny.
Okay, so here he's saying that people like Donald Trump because Donald Trump is unpredictable and entertaining.
What that tells you right away is that there's nobody in John Oliver's circle, nobody he works with, nobody he's friends with, nobody he cares about, nobody he loves, nobody he's even remotely close to him, Who supports Donald Trump.
This tells you he lives in the usual liberal moat biosphere where he doesn't have anybody else telling him what's going on outside the echo chamber of liberal yes-men and yes-women.
There are significant reasons why people support Donald Trump.
They mostly have to do with jobs and trade and illegal immigration or the dilution of European culture within the United States.
And whether you like it or not, there are very real issues as to why people support Donald Trump and his campaign.
And a lot of them are very frustrated Republicans who are really angry at the Republican Party for betraying their goals, values and preferences repeatedly.
And Cruz and Rubio are sort of part of that.
And so they have wanted Republicans to defund Obamacare, to push back, to deal with illegal immigration, to complete the war.
That was originally funded as of 2006 and all of these things.
And Republicans keep promising to do it and they don't.
And so Donald Trump is their way of taking a big giant sledgehammer to the existing Republican betrayal machine.
And they're very frustrated at not getting their wishes, which they clearly express to their potential politicians, ever get enacted by those politicians when they get into office.
Same thing happened with the Tea Party.
The Tea Party was supposed to, you know, get in and tax enough, already shrink back the power of the state.
And all that happened was the Tea Party candidates got in and stuck their nose deep into the filthy trough of taxpayer lucre, exactly the same as everyone did before them, and did virtually nothing.
So...
Don't want to get into a big political argument here, but there are some very important reasons why people support Donald Trump, and John Oliver knows none of them, either the reasons or the people who support him.
And this just tells you that John Oliver is not really that much into what we call diversity.
In other words, he wants a monomania of opinion around him.
So, John Oliver goes on to say, it was funny years ago, when a few years ago, He, Donald Trump, tweeted, Okay, wow.
John Oliver said he wished haters and losers a happy 9-11.
Now that's bad.
Does it sound bad?
I don't know.
Comparing someone to a cancer?
Okay, that seems kind of bad.
Saying that there are haters and losers in the world?
Well, as it turns out, it's kind of a running gag on the very well populated, or at least highly populated, Donald J. Trump Twitter feed.
2014, he said, Happy 4th of July to everyone, including the haters and losers.
He also said, I'd like to wish all fathers, even the haters and losers, a very happy Father's Day.
So, apparently it's really horrible to say that there are haters and losers in the world, and there are.
On the other hand, it's perfectly fine to say that the leading Republican presidential nominee is just like cancer.
It seems a little precious.
You know, the cry bully, you know, like vicious verbal abuse, and then the moment somebody punches back, oh, I'm shocked that you're going to faint back on your Victorian couch, clutching your pearls and demanding your smelling salts.
John Oliver went on to say, there is a part of me that even likes this guy.
It's a part of me I hate, but it is a part of me, and if you are someone who is sick of the party establishment, he might seem like a protest candidate with some attractive qualities.
So then, and this is pretty standard on the left, It's a Saul Alinsky 101.
So you take the least informed statements from the least informed voters and then play a whole series of them to give the impression that everyone who supports Trump is exactly that ill-informed and that inarticulate.
So they get the usual, you can do this with any candidate, it's pretty boring.
A woman says, we like him.
He tells it like it is.
Another woman says, he says what he means.
I honestly believe he's telling the truth.
A woman says, he's funding his own campaign.
Nobody owns him.
The woman said, he's aggressive and he's strong and he's bold.
Man says, I think he's an incredible businessman.
If he runs the country like he runs his organization, we would be in good shape.
So these are empty virtues.
Listen, if somebody says, you're ill with a terminal illness, he's saying it like it is.
He's saying what he means.
He's being honest and forthright, but it's not like you love the guy for doing that.
So these are all empty virtues.
It's not that he tells a particular kind of truth.
It's the content of the particular kind of truth that That he tells.
And, you know, when people on the right or, you know, people who are on the side of facts look and say, okay, well, native white households or native households in America consuming welfare at 23%, illegal immigrants are consuming welfare at 62%.
In fact, if those illegal immigrants come from Central America or Mexico, they're consuming welfare at the rate of 73%.
That's pretty high.
The Muslim migrants, I guess is the word these days, 91.4% are on food stamps, 68.3% of them are on cash welfare, so there's a lot of people who don't particularly like that.
They're not racist, they just like keeping the money that they earn, through often very hard work, in their own wallets.
And Trump speaks to that to some degree, and so it's not just that he speaks the truth.
You know, I don't know.
Ottawa's the capital of Canada.
Look, I've just spoken the truth.
Can I have your vote?
I mean, it's not that he tells the kind of truth.
What he tells.
Anyway, John Oliver doesn't want to know.
John Oliver says, Donald Trump can seem appealing until you take a closer look, much like the lunch buffet at a strip club or the NFL or having a pet chimpanzee.
Sure, it seems fun, but someday Coco is going to tear your fucking limbs off because let's look at each of those qualities that people listed.
So again, it's a way of associating your metaphors with people that cheapens them.
Right?
So, lunch buffet at a strip club, that's like Donald Trump.
You know, lunch at a strip club is not a particularly appealing thing, I think.
And, you know, then of course now he's a dangerous ape who's going to attack you and kill you.
And again, these are just, guys, the presidential nominee with some arguments.
So, it goes on to say, John Oliver, first he tells it like it is, does he?
Because the website PolitiFact checked 77 of his statements and rated 76% of them as varying degrees of false.
Well, in 2013, George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs released a study which empirically demonstrated that politifact.org was biased against Republicans.
From the study, politifact.com has rated Republican claims as false three times as often as Democratic claims during President Obama's second term, despite controversies over Obama administration statements on Benghazi, the IRS, and the AP. So here are some examples of Donald Trump's statements which PolitiFact claimed to be false and which John Oliver regurgitated without question.
Quote, when Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate, that was the end of Romney's chances to win.
Can you really objectively claim that that political opinion is 100% false or false?
Donald Trump has said, if it weren't for me, illegal immigration wouldn't even be a big subject.
I think that's at least arguable.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, quote, was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone.
Donald Trump has done business with China for decades.
Let's find out a little bit more about PolitiFact.
But the first thing to mention as well, of course, Checked 77 of his statements.
Now, which 77 of Donald Trump's tens or hundreds of thousands of statements are you going to check?
Well, if you want to make him look bad, you'll check the ones that are on the least shaky empirical ground and then rate them false.
If John Oliver has told five lies in his life and PolitiFact then just goes and examines those five lies, then people could say, well, PolitiFact checked...
Five of John Oliver's statement have found 100% of them to be false, which makes it sound like John Oliver is 100% of a liar.
It's a boring game for anybody who understands how this stuff works.
So PolitiFact is actually owned and run by the Tampa Bay Times until recently the St.
Petersburg Times.
Yeah, that's a bit of a Russian connotation there.
It has a notoriously pro-Democrat bias.
Every endorsement of a presidential aspirant since 1948 has been a Democrat.
It rated Clinton, Hillary Clinton's statements as true or mostly true, at 48%.
Rand Paul, true or mostly true, they rated at 15%.
Ted Cruz, true or mostly true, at 8%.
Now, in 2015, Donald Trump's campaign was Liar of the Year.
Just out of curiosity, I browsed through the PolitiFact website.
I looked for anything about Hillary Clinton's email scandal or her lies about the cause of Benghazi, you know, when she said it was an internet video, when it wasn't, of course, a planned terrorist attack.
And the only statement that they checked of hers was that she said, if I had not asked for my emails all to be made public, none of this would have been in the public arena.
And they said, that's mostly false because it was a reactionary measure.
That's it!
Right?
Thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton's personal server have turned out to be classified when she said there were no classified emails on it.
However, they did devote, Politifact did devote 416 words to Hillary telling a supporter, I can't sign money.
Because the supporters said, sign money, right?
Apparently that's a big thing on PolitiFact, whether or not you can sign money, not, did you lie about the cause of the murders of the Americans in Libya?
And then the supporters said, well, Bill Clinton just signed the money, and PolitiFact said, well, if she's right, and you're not allowed to, then Bill's a criminal.
Other things that PolitiFact could have talked about, 11 women or so have accused Bill Clinton of rape or sexual assault.
In September, Hillary Clinton spoke out in support of college students who have been the victims of campus assault.
She said, Today I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault.
Don't let anyone silence your voice.
You have the right to be heard, you have the right to be believed, and we're with you.
So you should believe those who accuse men of sexual assault.
Again, if she's right, Bill's a criminal.
Find any of this on PolitiFact?
No, they're too busy complaining about Donald Trump's political opinions.
So, John Oliver, in a true case of precious snowflake cry-bullyism, said, we attacked my old boss by tweeting, if John Stewart is so above it all and legit, why did he change his name from Jonathan Leibowitz?
He should be proud of his heritage.
And then two years later, Donald Trump wrote, I never attacked dopey John Stewart for his phony last name.
Would never do that.
Okay, is that an attack?
I don't really think so.
And Donald Trump is continually talking about, like, oh, I never did that when he just did it.
It's just part of the jokes that he makes.
So, again, this is a bit specious.
But okay, let's say that everything that John Oliver accuses him of in terms of changing his story is true.
I wonder if Jon Stewart has ever said anything unpleasant or untowards about or to Donald Trump.
Hmm.
I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.
Let's find out.
Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, and I apologize for the language.
Jon Stewart said, by the way, did you know Donald Trump's birth name is Fuckface Von Clownstick?
By the way, did you know Donald Trump's birth name is Fuckface Von Clownstick?
Yeah, good thing that John Oliver's coming to that poor victim's defense, John Stewart, so hard done by Trump pointing out that John Stewart had changed his name.
John Oliver then went on to say, And just last year, Trump claimed falsely to have turned down an invite to appear on this very boring show.
And who's he trying to impress with that lie?
Our show's guests include sloths and puppies.
We're basically a petting zoo with a desk.
But when we pointed out that he had never been invited, this is how he responded.
Now, just before we go on with that, let me just kind of mention something here.
this has happened all the time with Jon Stewart as well.
They would put down some very serious political journalistic stuff, and then people would say, well, you don't have journalistic standards, you don't have integrity, you don't have a lot of fact-checking, and they'd say, oh, no, we're just a comedy show.
I mean, the people who come on after me are clowns and puppets, and, you know, we have llamas on the show.
So, I mean, just, you know, then be that show.
You know, you don't see America's Funniest Home Videos doing a whole lot of political hit pieces When you step into the political arena, you can't then use the human shield or the giggle shield and say, well, we're only comedians.
I don't know.
It's just kind of cowardly.
So Donald Trump responded saying, all of a sudden I see people saying that John Oliver, and I'm saying John Oliver, and I checked with my people.
He asked me to be on the show four or five times, and I don't even hardly know who he is.
I wouldn't know what he looks like.
John Oliver went on to say, well look, first, first, I wouldn't expect him to know who I was.
Although for his inevitably angry tweet about this segment, I'll tell him what I look like.
I look like a near-sighted parrot who works at a bank.
I mean, that sounds sort of self-deprecating and so on, but it's sort of endearing.
You know, that would be like a character in some My Little Ponies thing, right?
The nearsighted parrot.
But it's, you know, when you compare Donald Trump to cancer and you're just a parrot, you know, like, I don't know.
It's not exactly a fair set of standards for comparison.
He said, but secondly, it was genuinely destabilizing to be on the receiving end of a lie that confident.
I even checked to make sure nobody had even accidentally invited him, and of course they hadn't.
And I'm not even sure he knows he's lying.
I think that he just doesn't care about what the truth is.
Genuinely destabilizing?
I mean, I get these comments on my YouTube videos as well, you know, like I'm shocked and appalled, Steph, that you would have this opinion.
It's like...
You're easily shocked and appalled.
You were easily, genuinely destabilized, John Oliver, if that is the case.
This kind of stuff.
Now, I don't know what the truth is.
We only have John Oliver's word that Donald Trump was never invited, and it doesn't really matter fundamentally.
But, I don't know.
I just sort of picture working for John Oliver, and John Oliver comes in and says, Nobody ever damn well invited Trump on this show.
Did they tell me you didn't invite Trump on this show?
Nope.
Just a possibility.
He said, Donald Trump views the truth like this lemur views the Supreme Court vacancy.
I don't care about that in any way.
Please fuck off.
I have a banana.
So now Donald Trump is a cancer.
He is a chimpanzee who's going to rip your arms off.
Now he's a lemur who only cares about bananas.
Like, it's just silly.
I mean, if Donald Trump is such a fool, you don't need all of this crap.
Now, John Oliver did work on The Daily Show from 2006 until 2013.
He was actually a full-time guest host when Jon Stewart was off in 2013 making a movie.
Maybe Trump or his people confused last week tonight with The Daily Show, which, of course, John Oliver hosted for a while.
Did John Oliver check?
Well, of course not, because it's too funny a narrative to get facts down.
It's always easier to overlook the idea of a misunderstanding when it fits your predefined political narrative.
Now, what else has John Oliver said about Trump?
On Trump running for president August 2013, he said, You might think that the clown car is full, but that's the thing about clown cars.
Do it.
Look at me.
Do it.
I will personally write you a campaign check now on behalf of this country which does not want you to be president, but which badly wants you to run.
Now, there's nothing like a British immigrant telling Americans who they want to have as president, especially when John Oliver turns out to be so spectacularly wrong.
A lot of America does want Donald Trump to be president.
That's why he's leading the Republican candidacy race.
So, John Oliver pointing this...
Well, of course, he didn't bring this up in his segment because...
It would show just how wrong he is in working in the American political arena.
He seems right to people on the left, right?
See, there's one of the challenges about comedians is because they make you laugh and they're funny.
And I've been a fan of John Oliver's off and on since his days at the Bugle, but still days at the Bugle.
But because they're funny, this is where you have to be really on your guard against confirmation bias.
It doesn't seem to be happening with the people who enjoy this segment.
John Oliver, September 21st, 2014, said Miss USA is owned by Donald Trump, a clown made of mummified foreskin and cotton candy.
It is a little ironic that the Miss USA beauty pageant is owned by one of the darkest souls on the planet.
That's really quite an astounding statement to make.
See, John Oliver is all hysterical because...
Donald Trump pointed out that Jon Stewart had changed his name from something more Jewish.
Like being Jewish is a big problem in the comedy industry.
But John Oliver compares Trump to an enraged ape, cancer, and now says he's a clown made of mummified foreskin and one of the darkest souls on the planet.
It's astonishing to say about a real estate developer and reality TV show producer and star.
One of the darkest souls on the planet.
I can think off the top of my head of hundreds if not thousands of people far more evil than anything that even in your wildest nightmares you could think of with regards to Donald Trump.
But there's a reason why he goes after him so hard.
We'll talk about that in a bit.
John Oliver, July 19, 2015, quote, But hold on, John, what if I'm an asshole who couldn't give a shit about America's hungry families or the long-term viability of life on Earth?
Well, first, let me say, Mr.
Trump, thank you so much for taking the time to watch this show tonight.
So now...
Donald Trump doesn't give a shit about America's hungry families or the long-term viability of life on Earth.
Where does this hatred come from?
Now, the fact that Donald Trump has provided jobs for tens of thousands of people, that's helping feed some families, John.
Just a point.
It's a lot easier to say you care about the poor than go out and actually create jobs for them.
John Oliver on September 21st, 2015.
On a human level, Trump makes me sad.
On a comedic level, it makes me sad.
I'm sure that it will pass like a hemorrhoid.
It will pass.
So, he's cancer, a crazy ape, made of mummified foreskins, the darkest souls on the planet, and he's a hemorrhoid.
When asked about Donald Trump by Stephen Colbert on October 1, 2015, he said, I couldn't give less of a shit.
It's physically impossible.
Now, that's just bullshit.
If you expend this much hatred on a human being, if you pour this much vitriolic verbal abuse on a human being, then claiming that you don't care about them at all is a complete and total lie.
And just part of your I'm-so-superior stuff, right?
John Oliver, quote, so let's move on to his next selling point, that he's truly independent and not beholden to anyone, or as he puts it, Trump, I'm self-funding my campaign.
I tell the truth.
Interviewer, how much have you spent so far?
Trump, probably 20 to 25 million dollars.
John Oliver says, okay, let's break that down.
First, I'm rich, therefore I tell the truth, has the same internal logic as I'm a vegan, and therefore I know karate.
There is no course and effect between those two, and the correlation usually goes the other way.
Okay.
And it only shows just how bad people are at thinking that this seems to have gone largely unrebutted.
Donald Trump is not saying, I'm rich, therefore I tell the truth.
What Donald Trump is saying is that because he is not taking any donations from large corporations, they are not dictating his agenda.
One of the things that rank-and-file Republicans hate about the Republican Party...
Is the degree to which the Republican Party has sold them out by pursuing the cheap labor policies wanted by big corporations, bringing in lots of H-1B and other kinds of visas to replace Americans in their jobs, and leaving the borders porous so that lots of low-wage immigrants can come in driving down the wages.
So the fact that Donald Trump is not taking money from big corporations is why he's able to talk about immigration as frankly and openly as he does.
So he's not saying, I'm rich, therefore I tell the truth.
He's saying, I am more free to give my full opinions, unfiltered or uncluttered or unrestrained by the fact that I am being bought and paid for by people who will dictate what I have to say in return for that money.
This is not that hard to understand.
Bernie Sanders keeps talking about wanting to keep money out of American politics.
Well, Donald Trump is an example of that, and again, it's not hard to figure it out.
Saying that someone who self-funds their campaign is able to be more authentic because of their independence from lobbyist pressure, not that controversial, and you have to work pretty hard to avoid understanding that.
So Oliver changes the self-funding truth sentence into I'm rich, I tell the truth.
It's not even close to what Donald Trump was saying.
It's very cherry-picked, out-of-context sound.
You see this a lot in media takedowns.
Now, of course, John Oliver is paid $2 million each season to host his show.
So if being honest is inversely correlated to having wealth, wouldn't Oliver also likely be dishonest according to his assertion?
In other words...
If the people who pay you have a particular political vantage point, would that affect what you say on your show?
Well, don't worry.
The big reveal is on its way.
John Oliver said, and while it's true he hasn't taken corporate money, the implication that he has personally spent $20 to $25 million is a bit of a stretch because what he's actually done is loaned his own campaign $17.5 million and has just personally given just $250,000 and that's important because up until the convention he can pay himself back for the loan with campaign funds.
And if you don't think there is a significant difference between a gift and a loan, try giving your spouse an anniversary loan and see how that goes.
And this is, I don't know, it's just complete nonsense.
Look, the fact that if there's a way to get his money back, he'll take it back is kind of what people like about Donald Trump.
He's a smart businessman who's not going to just burn money for no reason, but if he can get the money back, fantastic.
Oliver says, and even he himself sometimes admits that his campaign is by no means completely self-funded.
And the way he puts this, like he's somehow cornered into admitting it, he's admitted it repeatedly.
Donald Trump says, I'm self-funding my campaign other than the little tiny ones where women send in, we had a woman send in $7.59.
What are you going to do?
How can you send the money back?
You know, it's cute.
It's beautiful.
They feel invested in your campaign.
So, for those who don't know the history, Donald Trump didn't want anyone's donations, but people just kept writing to Donald Trump at Trump's house, mailing it in and so on.
It took a lot of labor to collect all this money up, put it in some bank account.
Sometimes it was a misaddress.
They'd have to send it back.
People got upset.
It's a big waste of time and money.
So then he said, okay, look, if you want to donate, here's how you donate, and we can do it in a more efficient way.
John Oliver said he makes it sound like women are stuffing grimy dollar bills in envelopes writing Donald Trump on the front and he's just too kind to send them back but he's taken in 7.5 million dollars in individual contributions so this is this is how much people like him anyway he goes on to say and if he didn't want it maybe he shouldn't have had two donate buttons on his website because money isn't unsolicited when you have to ask for someone's credit card expiration date to receive it again People want to donate to Donald Trump,
and it's a huge waste of time, energy, and money, plus kind of insulting to people who've taken the time to send him money to just send it back, or deposit it even.
So he's found a way to make it more efficient.
So what?
So he's loaned his own campaign, $17.5 million.
He's taken in $7.5 million in individual contributions.
So he's still spending a lot of his own money to pursue this.
He's keeping the money out of politics.
And Oliver's also been very critical of the Citizens United decision that brought lots of big money into the sort of political action committees and so on.
So which way do you want it, John?
Do you want money in politics or not?
Now, he's really appalled, apparently, John Oliver's really appalled that Trump has taken in $7.5 million since the start of his campaign, which was last summer.
Hmm.
Bernie Sanders raised $40 million just in February.
Hillary Clinton raised $30 million just in February.
So you put your two Democratic presidential candidates together, they raised $70 million in just one month.
In just one month, which is almost 10 times what Donald Trump has raised since the very start of his campaign months and months and months ago.
Really?
You're going to go after Donald Trump for taking money when people really want to give it to him and it was ridiculously inefficient for him not to have a donate button?
Crazy.
John Oliver went on to say, OK, so how about the claim that he is tough?
Again, I'm not sure about that because for a tough guy, he has incredibly thin skin.
Back in 1988, Spy Magazine called him a short-fingered Bulgarian.
And ever since, the editor Graydon Carter says, he received envelopes from Trump, always with a photo on which he circled his hand to highlight the length of his fingers, usually with a note reading, see, not so short.
Now, for a comedian not to get that that's funny...
Is itself funny and tragic, but funny.
I mean, obviously that's a joke.
Is he sitting up at night, you know, oh my, are my fingers long?
I mean, it's a joke.
And Spy Magazine was pretty brutal in the fact that he's just making fun years after the fact of a comment they made about him.
I don't know.
You know, it'd be like, it'd be like people saying, Steph's bald, right?
And then I take little pictures of a few little hairs over the top of my head and say, not totally.
I mean, that's not insecurity.
That's just playing along with the joke, for God's sakes.
And look, said Oliver, his fingers seem fine, but the very fact he's so sensitive about them is absolutely hilarious.
As is the fact that those notes were apparently written in a gold sharpie, which is so quintessentially Donald Trump, something that gives the passing appearance of wealth, but is actually just a cheap tool.
Actually, John, that's just kind of a cheap joke, because you're making this association, and you're calling it a cheap tool, and so it's just a clever way that you can call Donald Trump a cheap tool.
he goes on to say now Trump's signature tough talk often involved lawsuits he loves to threaten to sue people like he did with Rosie O'Donnell now the Rosie O'Donnell thing which came up of course from Megyn Kelly in the first um republican debate hosted by Fox is um a story that somehow has become negative to Donald Trump was quite a positive thing so Donald Trump decided not to fire Miss USA he was Tara Connor After it was revealed that she'd participated in
underage drinking, public sexual activities, and drug use, she'd tested positive cocaine, heroin, crystal meth.
It's violated her contract.
He said, no, I'm not going to fire her.
I'm going to put her into rehab, give her another shot.
Rosie O'Donnell started insulting him.
His previous marriages, his appearance, for being a moralist.
Okay, yeah, so Donald Trump worked hard to get a girl off heroin.
We could have just fired her.
What a monster.
And then Trump hit back after a while.
So...
How this turns into him being negative on women, I don't know.
The irony is that Rosie O'Donnell's, one of Rosie O'Donnell's kids ended up running away from home, ended up in some sort of heroin or crack house, if I remember rightly, so could have used some of Donald's help on that.
Donald Trump.
She said I was bankrupt.
I never went bankrupt, so probably I'll sue her, because it'd be fun.
I'd like to take some money out of her fat-ass pockets.
Oliver said, Well, see, he doesn't know see, he doesn't know that.
Because maybe his lawyer sent cease and desist letters.
Maybe the threat of a lawsuit changes the behavior that he wishes to change, in which case there's absolutely no point having a lawsuit.
So, again, John Oliver doesn't know, but he's just pretending he does.
So, including the rapper Mac Miller, Lawrence O'Donnell, Vanity Fair, and an activist which launched a petition for Macy's to drop Trump's products.
I'll sue you is Trump's version of Bazinga.
It doesn't really mean anything, but he says it all the time.
Again, I don't know what to say about that.
People get involved in lawsuits.
I mean, America's tort system is a bit messed up, but I don't know if suing people is really bad, then why is everyone upset about Trump University when he's being sued?
Oh, he's on the receiving end, so it's totally different, right?
John Oliver went on to say, but perhaps Trump's biggest selling point as a candidate is his success.
And where could people get that idea from?
Various Trump clips.
I'm really rich.
I actually think I have the best temperament.
People love me.
And you know what?
I've been very successful.
Everybody loves me.
I went to an Ivy League school.
I'm very highly educated.
I know words.
I have the best words.
So, I mean, this is a standard comedic thing.
I don't know where people might get the idea that Trump is successful and Trump pointing out that he's successful and so on.
Now, this to some degree is a New York versus Britain thing.
Like in Britain, you're supposed to always underplay any success that you have.
Whereas in New York, it's usually brash.
I mean, Frank Sinatra, right?
If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
It's up to you.
I mean, the whole song is him bragging about how great he is.
And it's a different kind of cultural thing.
John Oliver wouldn't necessarily have that background.
John Oliver goes and says, oh please, literally the biggest word in the sentence, I have the best words, is the word words.
And again, He's pointing something out that he's got a good vocabulary.
Okay, Donald Trump is a best-selling author, and he's written what is arguably one of the biggest or most successful business books of all time, The Art of the Deal.
So that's good.
It means he's got a good vocabulary.
Now, the fact that he has to talk down, in a sense, to his audience members is more a function of really terrible government schools, not teaching people literacy, not teaching people critical thinking, and so on.
That's not Trump's fault that this is the audience that he has to deal with.
That's more criticism of government schools than it is of Donald Trump.
I mean, you can't disprove a general claim about vocabulary by looking at a single sentence.
And why do the biggest words always mean the best words?
One of the big influences on me was when I took a course on Aristotle.
The professor was saying that Socrates never used the word epistemology or metaphysics.
To say reality and knowledge, why are the biggest words always the best?
Trump is a very effective communicator.
You get 30,000 people to show up for a political speech, you are a very effective communicator.
So...
Until 30,000 people show up to see John Oliver give a speech about politics, I think I've got to give it to Trump on this one.
John Oliver.
But it's worth noting that while yes, he has made more money than most of us will make in a lifetime.
Okay, John, got to stop you right there.
Got to stop you right there.
No.
Most people in their lifetime make between $800,000, $900,000 and up to $1.8 million in their whole lifetime, depending on their level of education, work, some luck, other factors and so on.
So, no, Donald Trump has not just made more money than most of us will make in a lifetime.
He's made more money than 5,000 to 10,000 people will ever make in a lifetime, so it's quite a lot.
So he says not only did he get a multi-million dollar inheritance from his father, but he's also lost a huge amount, and this is where we need to be careful, because as we've learned, he will threaten to sue your fat-ass pockets with his cocktail sausage fingers if you talk about his company's bankruptcies.
Now that's straight-out false.
Straight...
Because Donald Trump has never threatened to sue anyone for saying Donald Trump has put four companies through bankruptcy proceedings.
But if you say Donald Trump has personally gone bankrupt, that is not a true statement.
Donald Trump has never gone personally bankrupt.
He has put four companies through bankruptcy proceedings of the hundreds of companies that he's owned or been involved in.
So that is not valid.
So yeah, Trump received a loan from his father to help get him started in his own projects.
And he worked for his father's company for many years, which added value to the business.
Trump's dad was doing real estate outside of Manhattan.
Trump drove into Manhattan and got involved in Manhattan real estate, which is a challenge.
When Fred Trump died in 1999, his estate was divided amongst his five children.
It was not given entirely to Donald Trump, as people wrongly claim.
And just getting money, having a million dollars, is not why Donald Trump made 10 billion dollars.
Lots of people end up with a million dollars.
They inherit it, they win it in the lottery, and they don't all end up as Donald Trump.
So it's not just the million dollars.
So yeah, Trump gets upset when people claim he's filed personal bankruptcy, which is not true.
If they talk about his business bankruptcies, yeah, it's perfectly valid.
But people always conflate the two because they have motive and lack of understanding.
John Oliver.
I will just let his own daughter describe the state of his finances at one point in his life.
Ivanka Trump, quote, I remember once when my father and I were walking down Fifth Avenue and there was a homeless person sitting right outside of Trump Tower and I remember my father pointing to him and saying, you know, that guy has eight billion dollars more than me because he was in such extreme debt at that point, you know.
That's not true.
I mean, it only takes a moment's thought.
Does anyone seriously think that Donald Trump was $8 billion in debt at any point, personally?
And the state of his finances?
So is John Oliver saying that Donald Trump was $8 billion in debt?
Of course not.
This is Ivanka Trump remembering something that when she was a kid, maybe he was talking about $8 million, maybe it was whatever, but he was just trying to comfort his kids, saying, you know, don't worry, don't worry.
And of course it's a great comeback story, and it's a very interesting way of looking at things.
Oliver goes on to say, and that really shows you the indomitable spirit of Donald Trump to fall to his lowest point, and in that very moment still find a way to be kind of a dick to a homeless guy.
Now, his campaign claims his current worth is in excess of $10 billion, and they've written it in all caps, so it must be true, but others have disputed that figure.
In fact, a book once suggested that Trump might be worth a mere $150 to $250 million, which Trump protested by suing the writer for $5 billion, which is quite the roundabout way of getting half the way to $10 billion.
And you know, and you should know that, for the record, that Trump lost that lawsuit twice, but I am glad that he sued, if only because during the deposition he explained that his estimate of his net worth fluctuates based on, and I quote, feelings, even my own feelings, and that can change rapidly from day to day.
Right, see those little dots there?
They're called ellipses.
And that's when something has been cut out of what is being said.
John Oliver said, think about that.
He claimed that his net worth changes depending on his mood, which makes absolutely no sense.
Partly because he always seems to be in the same mood, specifically smug yet gassy.
Fart joke!
We are a long way from Oscar Wilde, my friends.
The full quote from the deposition, quote...
Even my own feelings as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day.
Right?
So, value is based upon perception.
I mean, value of stock is based upon perception of what other people are willing to pay for it and so on.
My own feelings, not with regards to the value, his own value, but with regards to where the world is, where the world is going, that can change rapidly from day to day.
Of course it can.
Of course it can.
So John Oliver apparently really loves people who tell it like it is, who tell the truth, who are straight shooters.
But takes the absolute meaning out of what Donald Trump is saying and presents it as if he just smokes a doobie and then ruminates about his own value.
And look.
The Trump brand, which is based upon real estate, or at least was for a long time only based on real estate, if there's a housing crash, then the value of that brand is going to be diminished.
So of course, where the world is and where the world is going is going to affect the value of his brand.
I shouldn't have to explain these things to people.
John Oliver said, Interesting, a significant portion of his self-valuation is intangible.
Robert Costa, Washington Post, quote, His brand is what he values very much, and his disclosure form that is released, it's about $3 billion.
That's what he values his brand as.
Now, I don't know much about Bob Costa from the Washington Post, but I do know that you're not just allowed to make things up about the value of your brand.
There are things called goodwill in accounting.
There is intangible assets like the value of a brand, right?
If you want to stop for a burger, a lot of people like to go to chain stores because you know predictable quality and you know what it's going to taste like and predictable cost and so on.
And that's why people get a McDonald's franchise or a Burger King franchise rather than opening up Bob's Burger.
So what is the value of the Golden Arches?
Well, it has great value.
Because there's a brand reputation there.
And you don't just get to make that up.
There are very specific things, a sequence of things that you have to go through from an accounting standpoint.
in order to be able to put a dollar figure on that it's not just made up but again for people who don't understand anything about business or accounting it's just easy to imagine people just make up numbers put them down and magically have value wait that's the federal reserve not donald trump John Oliver says exactly he values his own name at three billion dollars and I'm not saying a name can't have value it's why people will pay 120 dollars for a plain white t-shirt that
is designed by Kanye West they don't want just any white t-shirt they want one designed by a bored sociopath with a finger-free anus now full disclosure I have absolutely no idea why John Oliver is referring to Kanye West's finger-free anus.
I was mildly curious, but I really didn't want that showing up on my search history.
I never looked it up.
I guess if you want to tell me below, I'll brace myself and have a look.
He says, but three billion seems a bit high, especially because what Trump has said, quote, if I put my name on something, you know it's going to be good.
Over the years, his name has been on some things which have arguably been very ungood, including Trump Shuttle, which no longer exists, Trump Vodka, which was discontinued, Trump Magazine, which folded, Trump World Magazine, which also folded, Trump University, over which he's currently being sued.
And of course, the travel booking site, gotrump.com, whose brief existence was, I imagine, a real thorn in the side of anybody hoping gotrump.com featured a single thing worth masturbating to, and that's not even mentioning this.
Donald Trump, when it comes to great stakes, I've just raised the stakes.
Trump's stakes are the world's greatest stakes, and I mean that in every sense of the word.
And the Sharper Image is the only store where you can buy them.
Okay, I mean, Trump has been involved in hundreds of businesses.
A few of them haven't worked out.
That's what people like about him.
He's willing to take risks.
When something doesn't work out, war on poverty, he cuts the funding and shuts it down.
That's kind of what is a good thing to do.
So the fact that things haven't worked out and no longer exist...
is kind of important head start as to what people really like about him imperialistic wars in the middle east so the fact that he's willing to shut down things that don't work how is that a negative trump shuttle Well, it's a little airline that operated from 89 to 92.
So what?
Over 50 airlines have filed for bankruptcy since 1980.
Trump Vodka, here's a quote from Trump.
He said, a great friend of mine was a founder of Grey Goose.
And what can I do is top it.
I want to top them just because it's fun to top my friends.
Trump magazines, he had some success with the last attempt, but the whole business model of magazines has somewhat died.
Trump University, he licensed his name for real estate seminars.
It was a profitable business for Trump.
It is embroiled in a lot of controversies.
We're going to do a second round of the untruths about Donald Trump.
People want more information on that.
Go Trump was just this thin veneer.
It was a Trump-branded veneer over a Travelocity-powered search engine.
Very low overhead.
Didn't really work out.
So, again, these are...
I don't know.
Are you never supposed to try anything in this world?
Because otherwise, people will...
If you try a lot of things in this world, people will lump together the few percentage points of your failures, play them back-to-back, and rub their hands in sinister little cockney-glee.
I don't know.
John Oliver went on to stay.
And not only can you not buy those steaks anymore, but why did he sell them at the Sharper Image?
That is a weird choice.
I will take a massive chair, an indoor waterfall, and 8.5 pounds are the finest meat in America.
But they weren't sold at Sharper Image.
They were mail-order steaks.
They were packed in dry ice and shipped out to you.
It was a deal made with Sharper Image for promotion.
They didn't have big freezers filled with steaks.
And the fact that at Shopper Image you can buy a lot of steak knives, anyway, I mean it's not, maybe John Oliver can't fathom it, which is why he does comedy, not business, but anyway.
So Donald Trump said, I think it's a great time to start a mortgage company.
We're going to have a great company.
It's Trump Mortgage at trumpmortgage.com and it's going to be a terrific company.
Yeah, it wasn't, says John Oliver.
In fact, starting a mortgage company in 2006 would be like one of the worst decisions you could possibly make.
But I guess you can convince yourself it was a good idea when you say 30 words and five of them are great, great, terrific Trump and Trump.
So what he's saying, what I think John Oliver is saying, is that really smart people, for really smart people, it would be completely obvious in 2006 that there was about to be a housing crash.
Okay, by that logic, our good friend Peter Schiff should be president.
Eh, could be worse things on the planet, I think.
So, yeah, I mean, the Federal Reserve was saying that the housing market was strong.
The banks were saying it was strong.
The media were saying it was strong.
The news were saying it was strong.
No problem.
No worries.
So, why does Donald Trump get singled out?
Oh, because he's going to end up opposing Hillary, probably.
believe we'll get to that so Oliver goes on to say and you might say well never mind side business What he really is is a builder.
But a building with Trump written on it is not necessarily owned by him.
He may have just licensed his name to them, something he claims is actually better than ownership.
You don't put up money.
You don't put up anything.
Spoken like a true builder.
Sigh.
Go try starting a show called Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, if you're not John Oliver, or his network, and see what happens.
They'll say, no, no, no, that's our name, right?
Does it mean something?
And so the fact that Trump licenses out his name, so what?
I mean, does that somehow mean he doesn't build anything?
The only reason his name is valuable is because he did build a bunch of things.
It's directly analogous to saying this.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has licensed out his name for weightlifting supplements.
Therefore, Arnold Schwarzenegger never lifted any weights himself.
You see, because the people who are using his supplements aren't Arnold Schwarzenegger, and therefore Arnold Schwarzenegger has no muscles.
Now there's your logic 101.
John Oliver went on to say, And some of those licensed buildings sell his reputation hard, like the sales video for the Trump Ocean Resort in northern Mexico.
Donald Trump said, People ask me, what does Trump stand for more than anything else?
And if I could use one word, it's always quality.
Right, but it's easy to throw around the word quality.
Have you ever stated a quality inn?
The pillows are stuffed with hair they fished out of the bathtub drain.
He was never the builder for that project, which was later abandoned, leaving would-be condo buyers like William Flint, who lost $168,000, feeling understandably betrayed.
Okay.
First of all, the projects...
That John Oliver references all occurred right before the housing crash.
So the entire housing market, not just in America, but around the world, kind of went down a sinkhole.
Is that Donald Trump's fault?
Of course it's not.
It's the fault of the Federal Reserve.
And we've got whole videos on this about this, so I won't get into more details here.
I'll put a link or two below, I'm sure.
And also, when you invest in something, there are risks.
So when people invest, the housing market collapses.
Maybe something went on weird in Mexico.
Maybe they couldn't get licenses.
Maybe they couldn't get water rights.
Who knows?
Who knows?
I don't.
But neither does John Oliver, I bet.
So yeah, the fact that people invested, something went south, and they lost some money.
That's what happens when you invest.
Sometimes you can lose your money.
William Flynn said Donald Trump was an expert in these kinds of projects, or so we thought.
A newswoman said in a deposition regarding a lawsuit involving the property, Trump's son Donald Trump Jr.
conceded that the Trump brand could lead people to believe that a project was a solid investment.
Interviewer Here's one of the things you learned through this process, was that the Trump name brings stability and viability to the project.
Donald Trump Jr., I don't know that it brings stability or viability, but I imagine certain people feel that.
Okay, I'm not a lawyer, but when you're being deposed...
You have a challenge in that your lawyers have coached you on what to say.
This is not like honest, off-the-cuff.
Well, I'm sure it's honest, right?
But it's not off-the-cuff and it has to be very carefully calibrated, right?
So, Donald Trump is trying to defend a case.
He's been well coached by a lawyer.
And if he says, yes, it brings stability, that could lead to negligence charges, other issues, and so on.
So, personally, when people are being deposed, I know that they're in a combative situation with significant consequences.
Legal consequences hanging on their every syllable, so I'm never going to take something like that and say, well, this is the person's honest, spontaneous opinion while they have lawyers powering up ungreased dildos all around them.
And, um...
The guys, the people who invest in these buildings, of course it's in the contract that says Donald Trump is only licensing his name and he's not actually doing the building himself out there, you know, his hair whipping in the wind.
And so if people don't read their contracts, that's their business.
You know, I remember...
After high school, I went and worked up north as Gold Panther and Prospector to get money for college.
And I just went into a...
I needed tapes.
This is back before MP3s.
I went into a store and just grabbed, scooped up a whole bunch of tapes.
I was really into Simon& Garfunkel at the time, and I picked up a Simon& Garfunkel tape.
Or was it?
I was in such a hurry that when I got it and put it in, it really didn't sound that good.
And it was like, you know, two cats giving each other scratchy back rubs in a toilet.
And it said, sounds like.
Simon& Garfunkel, the sounds like, was kind of small on the top.
So, yeah.
If you don't read the fine print, then saying that you're shocked and appalled afterwards, okay, well, you gotta read these things.
John Oliver says, and that might be the most honest slogan for the Trump campaign, Trump 2016.
I don't know if it brings stability or viability, but I imagine certain people feel that.
And again, That's a, I mean, that is a long muscle to work from a comedy standpoint, taking something that Donald Trump Jr.
said while under deposition and legal threat, having been coached by his lawyers with millions of dollars hanging in the balance and then saying, oh yeah, that should be the campaign slogan for his father.
Silly.
He goes on to say, Oliver says, now, not only did investors in their property sue Donald Trump, but they also did in Trump Tower Tampa, another project that never got off the ground.
And in both cases, Trump characteristically defected blame onto the developers.
And you might think those investors would be facing an impossible legal battle given Trump's tough talk.
And again, this construction happened right before the housing crash and...
That's not mentioned, of course, by Oliver because he's not interested in informing you.
He's interested in controlling you.
Donald Trump, when I get sued, I take it all the way.
You know what happens when you settle suits?
You get sued more.
I don't settle anything.
I don't settle.
Now, these guys were in court for years.
And in America, 95%, I think it is 95% of lawsuits are settled before they get to court.
And when you say you don't settle anything, I would imagine what that means.
I don't speak for Donald Trump, but I imagine what that means is when someone comes at me with a lawsuit, I don't pay them immediately to go away, right?
That's probably what Donald Trump means.
To settle something means that you're going to fight it for a long time and make it difficult, expensive, costly, time-consuming, draining to sue you.
That's all.
It doesn't mean that you're then going to go all the way through the court process after years of back and forth when you get what you want through a settlement.
It just means that you're not going to roll over.
Like if I say I don't get sick and someone says, oh wait man, there's a recording of you and you had a cold four years ago.
So, Oliver says, guess what?
He settled both those cases.
But the problem, even when you can demonstrably prove Trump to be wrong, is it somehow never seems to matter.
You can hold his feet to the fire, but he'll just stand there on the stumps bragging about his fireproof foot skin, and that may be because he spent decades turning his own name into a brand synonymous with success and quality.
And he's made himself the mascot for that brand like Ronald McDonald or Chef Boyardee.
And again, it's just low-rent stuff that he's one who associates this with.
And that is who we have seen in The Apprentice or WrestleMania or Home Alone 2 where Trump had a little cameo.
But if he's actually going to be the Republican nominee, it's time to stop thinking of the mascot and start thinking of the man.
Because a candidate needs a coherent set of policies.
Whatever you think of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, at least you basically know where they stand.
Oh, John.
Ted Cruz played both sides on immigration.
He was very pro letting in Syrian refugees until he wasn't.
Cruz was against discussing deportations until the border was secured until he wasn't.
Cruz talks about crony capitalism but doesn't disclose Goldman Sachs loans while running as an anti-bank Tea Party candidate.
Ted Cruz's wife works for Goldman Sachs.
He didn't talk about that a lot when he was running against big financial interests.
Ted Cruz called the Council on Foreign Relations a pernicious nest of snakes that is working to undermine our sovereignty, while his wife worked for them for five years, working on globalist policies.
He was for the Trade Promotion Authority until he was against it.
He supported Chief Justice John Roberts until he didn't.
We've got presentations on Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio below.
But this is just...
I mean, that's...
That's not even...
I mean, good...
Words fail me.
Look, people will just play the hat and say, look, Steph's completely incoherent.
Oliver goes on to say, but Trump's opinions have been wildly inconsistent.
He's been pro-choice and pro-life for and against assault weapon bans in favor of both bringing in Syrian refugees and deporting them out of the country.
That inconsistency can be troubling.
Just this morning, for instance, he was asked about the fact that David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, had told supporters to vote for him.
Okay, so years ago Donald Trump was pro-choice, and then a couple he knew were considering aborting their fetus or their baby.
They didn't, and Trump realized that, you know, comes out of the theoretical into the real and really likes the child who grew up, so he changed his perspective.
I mean, this is the funny thing about American politics.
If you hold the same perspectives exactly when you were 18, then you're dogmatic and never bow to evidence.
And if you change them, you're a flip-flopper.
Ooh, smart game.
That's going to encourage a lot of deep thinkers into public life, isn't it?
And we'll get into more about this.
But Trump said about the Syrian refugees, he kind of hated the idea.
But, you know, as a humanitarian basis, we'll take a small number of them.
And then he immediately changed his position when he was informed that the director of the FBI said that we can't vet the Syrian refugees.
So now he supports safe zones in Syria for the refugees, right?
So...
And Trump on David Duke, August 2015.
He said, I don't need his endorsement.
I certainly wouldn't want his endorsement.
I didn't need anyone's endorsement.
Asked whether he would repudiate the endorsement.
Trump said, sure, I would if that would make you feel better.
And, um, I don't know.
Was Obama be asked to disavow the Nation of Islam, the new Black Panthers, and La Raza, for heaven's sakes?
I mean, it's just the usual double-standard crap fest known as, uh, Well, being in the mainstream media and being extremely on the left.
And so the KK thing is a complete non-starter, but it's okay because it allows lots of people on the left and some on the right to put Donald Trump and KKK into the same sentence, which because people aren't that good at critical thinking, also known as thinking, I guess it's just kind of an associative smear, you know?
I'm gonna wave this squirting skunk around until you no longer find this naked woman attractive.
Matt Tapper said, quote, will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don't want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election?
Donald Trump said, well, just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, okay?
I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.
Honestly, I don't know David Duke.
I don't believe I've ever met him.
I'm pretty sure I didn't meet him.
And I just don't know anything about him.
Oliver says, really?
That's your best answer there, because you definitely, you definitely know who he is.
Partly because you called him a bigot and a racist in the past.
But that's not even the fucking point.
The point is, with an answer like that, you are either racist or you are pretending to be.
And at some point, there's no difference there.
I don't know.
It's easy when you're outside someone's brain to pore over after the fact everything they've ever said publicly and then say, well, this doesn't jibe with that.
But nobody's omniscient, right?
Like Donald Trump has had like over 31,000 tweets and then people take tweets from years apart that seem to contradict each other and say, look, he's a hypocrite.
Maybe he didn't remember.
Maybe years ago he did talk about David Duke, and maybe he didn't remember him at the moment.
He was also saying he had a bad earpiece.
I don't know.
It's just pretty sad, that's all.
I mean, this is not where American political discourse needs to be, but obviously this is where it is.
Oliver said, and sure he disavowed David Duke later in the day, but the scary thing is we have no way of knowing which of his consistent views he will hold in office.
Oh yeah, the concern trolls.
I'm really concerned.
It's scary.
Donald Trump is scary.
I don't know.
I don't know.
President Barack Obama has ordered or committed war crimes.
Is that scary to you?
Or is it just someone talking about David Duke's Klan membership from 40 years ago.
You know, Hillary Clinton's political mentor, Robert Byrd, was in the Ku Klux Klan a lot longer than David Duke was, who, by the way, was never Donald Trump's political mentor or has anything to do with him as far as I know.
Hillary Clinton's political member was a long-term Klan member.
Is she ever asked about that?
No.
Ah, the Matrix continues.
John Oliver says, will he stand by his statement that vaccines are linked to autism or his belief that Mexico is sending us rapists?
Oh, and what about that plan he had to defeat ISIS? So, with regards to autism, Trump's comments on that relate to a personal friend whose child had significant problems after mass vaccinations.
And it's not backed up by the science.
Absolutely.
Donald Trump has talked about spreading out the vaccinations and not doing tons of them at the same time.
Not that vaccines as a whole are bad.
Anyway, I mean, female antidepressants during pregnancy, like women who use antidepressants during pregnancy, that's been linked to autism.
And there is, of course, significantly increased diagnosis of autism and so on, but...
Donald Trump on Mexico, who is sending, he said, quote, when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best.
They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems.
They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some I assume are good people.
But I speak to border guards, and they're telling us what we're getting.
Now, the fact that Mexico benefits enormously from people going to America, Mexicans go to America, Get money on welfare or through working.
A lot of it through welfare.
And they send that money back to Mexico.
Very good for the Mexican government.
They get lots of money coming in without having to provide any services for the people currently illegally in America.
So whether they're sent or not, I don't think they've got a lot of incentive to prevent it.
Let's put it that way.
Donald Trump.
Quoted in the Oliver piece.
We're fighting a very politically correct war.
And the other thing is, with the terrorists, you have to take out their families.
When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.
They care about their lives.
Don't kid yourselves.
But they say they don't care about their lives.
You have to take out their families.
Now the wife of one of the Paris terrorists, a terrible shooting in Paris, wrote, And so Donald Trump...
I'm guessing, I'm guessing, is talking about the kinds of people who support the terrorists and then get on a plane out of there.
Well, should you go and pursue those people if they're materially tied to supporting these terrorists?
Yeah.
Obama is, I guess, accidentally blowing up wedding parties and hospitals with drones, but it's really important to talk about Donald Trump going after the family members of people and the family members who directly support the terrorists.
Oliver says, that is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination advocating a war crime.
And he might say he was joking or that he's changed his mind about any of these things and private individuals were allowed to change their minds.
We all do it.
But when he's sworn in as president on January 20th, 2017, on that day, his opinions are going to matter.
And you will remember that date because that's the one that time travelers from the future will come back to try and stop the whole thing from happening.
Well, it's interesting that It's interesting.
John Oliver, quote, Oliver said, and she's not even wrong.
Trump does sound rich.
It's almost onomatopoeic.
Trump!
It's a sound produced when a mouthy servant is slapped across the face with a wad of thousand dollar bills.
Again, that's pretty funny.
He goes on to say, Trump!
It's the sound of a cork popping on a couple's champagne-iversary.
The date renovations on the wine cellar were finally completed.
That's not quite as funny.
The very name Trump, Trump, is the cornerstone of his brand.
If only there were a way to uncouple that magical word from the man he really is.
Well, guess what?
There is.
So apparently, Trump, it's just because he's got a word that is synonymous with winning or winning hand or whatever it is.
And so, Trump is the Republican frontrunner because magic name?
This guy thinks that Trump is crazy?
Oliver goes on to say, Because it turns out the name Trump was not always his family's name.
One biographer found out that an ancestor previously changed it from, and this is true, Drumpf.
Now, Trump is a funny sound, but this is the contribution John Oliver is fundamentally making, that people are going to have complex, challenging issues to discuss in the upcoming presidential race in America.
And like a bunch of bayoneted goats, there'll be idiots lounging around going, Trump!
Trump!
Excuse me, we're actually trying to have a...
Sorry, could you hold it down?
Because we're actually trying to discuss something in...
Trump!
Ah...
Oliver goes on to say, And it may sound weird to bring up his ancestral name, but to quote Donald Trump, he should be proud of his heritage.
Boy, talk about your case lesson in false equivalency.
So Jonathan Leibowitz changes his name to Jon Stewart the night he starts going out into the world of comedy.
His personal choice he's responsible for, and the reasons are pretty obvious.
Hundreds of years ago, Donald Trump's ancestor changes his name from Trump to Trump.
And somehow these two are exactly the same.
Hmm...
And of course, if Donald Trump should be proud of his heritage, then Jonathan Leibowitz, aka Jon Stewart, should also have been proud of his heritage.
So how do you take down Donald Trump, who never made the decision to change his name, and save Jon Stewart?
Oh, it's okay.
We're in the Mobius magical strip of comedy false equivalency.
Oliver goes on to say, because Drumpf is much more reflective of who he actually is.
So if you're thinking of voting for Donald Trump, the charismatic guy promising to make America great again, stop and take a moment to imagine how you would feel if you just met a guy named Donald Drumpf.
A litigious serial liar with a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former Klan leader, who we can't decide whether or not to condemn, would you think he would make a good president or is the spell somewhat broken?
String of broken business ventures.
I don't know if a string of broken business ventures end up with you sitting on $10 billion, but hey, I'm not in real estate.
Oliver goes on to say, and that is why tonight I'm asking America to make Donald Drumpf again.
Make Donald Drumpf again.
You may have seen the hashtag spewed out like the fart from a Zeppelin.
He says, we've actually filed paperwork to trademark the name Drumpf, and incidentally, when we own it, I will have the best words.
And if you go to DonaldJDrumpf.com, which we own, you can download the Drumpfinator Chrome extension, which will replace the word Trump with Drumpf wherever it appears in your browser.
You can also buy these Make Donald Drumpf Again hats, which we're selling at cost, meaning we've chosen not to make a profit, a fact which would probably irritate Mr.
Drumpf more than anything else we've said tonight.
You know, it's funny.
John Oliver is very proud of the fact that he doesn't want Donald Trump on his show, never asked Donald Trump to be on his show.
Well, Stephen Colbert had Donald Trump on his show.
Stephen Colbert got the best rating since his show debuted, his new show.
So he's not in it for the money, because if you're in it for the money, you'd have Donald Trump on your show because he's a ratings magnet.
He's in it for something else, and we'll get to that in a second.
But this just reminded me when he says he doesn't want to make a profit.
He goes on to say, and if you're thinking, well, that's all great, but I wish there was a new campaign anthem for Donald Trump.
Here it is now.
Here it is right now.
Listen, we keep getting blinded by the magic of his names.
We need to see it through fresh eyes.
So please don't think of him as Donald Trump.
Think of him as Donald Trump.
Yeah, he's milking it.
And don't vote for him because he tells it like it is.
He's a bullshit artist.
Don't vote for him because he's tough.
He's a baby with even smaller fingers.
Don't vote for him because he's a builder.
He's more of a shitty lifestyle brand.
And that is our show.
Mr.
Drumpf, I await your lawsuits in the morning.
I have no doubt the complaint will be signed in gold sharpie.
Good night.
So this was his big, epic takedown.
Just a string of verbal abuse and, you know, encouraging people to stick their metaphorical pitchforks into Donald Trump.
And of course people do that.
They cheer for this kind of takedown because they know that if they're not on the cheering side, they'll be on the receiving pitchfork side, right?
The reason that these kinds of takedowns occur is so that if you dare to support Donald Trump, you're next and people will attack you.
And it's a great way, if you feel enthusiastic for Donald Trump, it's a great way for people to skewer you and take down someone you admire and, you know, all this kind of stuff.
So...
This is complex, obviously.
There's a lot going on.
But these are just my thoughts about what is going on.
Why is there such vitriol?
Not just from the left, but also from the right.
Why do the Republicans hate him so much?
Why does the Republican establishment hate him so much?
Well, in the world, there are the makers and the takers.
There are people who make stuff, who work hard, who build stuff, who found companies, who employ people, who increase the profit and value of everything in society.
And there are people who get that stuff through government power.
Those people can be rich, they can be part of the military, industrial, warfare welfare complex, they can be poor, they can be taking welfare, they can be people who get government jobs and then who use the power of the state to eliminate competition and so on, right?
There are the makers and there are the takers.
America was founded by the makers and as a result they created a huge amount of largesse which now the takers are swarming in from all around the world to try and grab a piece of all the stuff that's been created by the makers without actually having to create things themselves to take risks and so on.
The makers are getting fed up.
The makers are getting fed up of everyone swarming all over the place and taking all their stuff.
And Donald Trump is saying, let's build a wall, let's cut taxes, you know, let's take it back into a place where jobs get created, where they're not just getting shipped overseas and so on, where There aren't over 90 million Americans of working age not currently working and so on.
So there are the makers and there are the takers.
Now, the takers scream verbal abuse at the makers when the makers ever dare to ask the basic simple question, what's in this for me?
Right, so if you live somewhere in the south of America and your kids go to school and somebody says, hey, you know what would be great?
Let's get 500 migrants to come and live in your town.
And people will say, well, wait, what?
They're not going to be working.
They're not going to be paying taxes.
Their kids are going to need a lot of educational resources.
They don't speak the same language.
That means my taxes go up.
My quality of life goes down.
Cross-cultural conflicts.
Oh, and I get to be called a racist if I have any problems with this.
And my kids get a worse education as a result.
What's in this for me?
So anytime the makers say, what's in it for me?
The takers all start screaming verbal abuse at them because...
parasites don't want the host to shrug them off and say this is not symbiotic anymore you know like the hippo will let the egret sit on its head if the egret packs away some parasites or whatever but if the egret is just continually taking a shit into its eyeball well it's gonna go underwater it's gonna go shrug the thing off and not want it to come back so this I think is the fundamental dynamic that is occurring now Donald Trump is a complex candidate.
There's pluses and there's minuses and so on.
So I don't endorse.
It's not my job.
But I will point out that there is something that he's tapping into that's really important and people are either going to have rational discussions about it or they're just going to scream about his tiny fingers, make fun of a bassoon sounding name from hundreds of years ago and think that they've somehow dealt with the problem.
And if you don't allow people because you're screaming verbal abuse and pretending hysteria at people and so on, if you don't allow people to have rational discussions about How resources are allocated or forcibly transferred through the state and society.
All that means is that the necessary conversations get suppressed until people really blow up in anger.
And that's what we don't want.
We don't want that to happen.
So, yeah, the makers and the takers are finally beginning to square off because the number of takers is overwhelming the makers and they're being sucked down into the quagmire and they're getting sick and tired of it and they're pushing back.
And the tea party was their initial try.
to push back and now Donald Trump is their second try to push back where he's saying we're going to keep out some of the takers and we are going to create conditions wherein the makers can start making jobs again and it's not like the makers don't want any takers I mean, having kids is being a maker and having takers and producing a lot of things when their babies are young.
It's not like there can't be any.
There just can't be too many.
We all understand that.
You all understand that, right?
I mean, you can carry a few people on your back.
You can't carry 20 people on your back.
So...
This nonsense.
Oh, he stinks at business because he didn't have a magical 100% success rate.
I wonder if things or plans or projects that fail should be criticized mercilessly and the people who start them should be mocked viciously.
I wonder if John Oliver applies that very same standard to government programs that fail.
Huh.
I betcha he doesn't.
I don't watch the show.
Let me know.
Now, here's the important thing.
Donald Trump says money corrupts politics.
That's why when he says I'm not taking money from big corporations, which means I'm not going to end up running their agenda for you, lying to you while serving their interests.
Now, John Oliver works for HBO. HBO is owned by Time Warner Cable, and Time Warner Cable works.
Contributes to Hillary Clinton.
Now, Donald Trump has just emerged as the front-runner probably to take on Hillary Clinton, which is why John Oliver is doing this now.
Now, Time Warner Cable donated almost $600,000 to Hillary Clinton over the years.
That is a lot of money.
That is a lot of money.
In other words, John Oliver's bosses once removed are madly pro-Hillary, which means that Donald Trump is their enemy.
This is not that complicated.
This whole segment, this whole hullabaloo about John Oliver's anti-Donald Trump segment is exactly why Donald Trump is so necessary, or at least it's such a necessary conversation to have in American politics.
Money corrupts people.
Now, I'm virtually certain that John Oliver's bosses didn't call him up and say, hey, you know, Donald Trump looks like he's the frontrunner against our gal, so you've got to take him down.
I'm sure he's got perfect independence.
So what?
That doesn't matter.
None of these contracts are ever written down.
None of this is ever explicit.
You know, the people who donate a lot of money to politicians don't get some signed contract about what they're going to get in return.
They just get access and they get favors and it's all just under-the-table stuff.
So I'm sure that John Oliver didn't get any orders.
I think that they all just got together and instinctually kind of, you know, the salmon all swim in the same current.
They all point the same direction.
That's what ideology does.
They're all working in concert without any particular coordination, although there is sometimes.
So John Oliver is attacking Donald Trump because John Oliver's bosses, at least twice removed, are mad Hillary Clinton supporters, which is why he attacks the Republicans, or he certainly attacks Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton, which is why PolitiFact attacks Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton.
It's just an extension.
They're a pack for the Democrat Party.
That's all it is.
And this is how corrupting Money in politics is.
It's an old saying that says, when congressmen have the power to buy and sell things, the first things to be bought and sold are congressmen.
The problem is that the government has so much power to make or break businesses that of course they have to invest in politicians.
So the politicians can give them the favors they need to survive, and they can have the politicians facing them rather than their competitors.
So this John Oliver segment is exactly an example of why Donald Trump and the conversation he brings to American politics about corruption, money, corporatism, John Oliver's segment, I believe, is at least to some degree shaped and motivated by the political preferences of his bosses.
Did they give him orders?
Of course not!
But they hire him knowing that he is a lovely little nearsighted cockney political attack poodle.
He's going to make fun of Trump's fingers.
He's going to call him a cancer.
He's going to call him one of the most evil people in the world.
And then he's going to recoil in Victorian horror if Donald Trump even slightly hits back a tiny bit.
So John Oliver is going to mock someone for selling steaks It's going to sail over and ignore nearly a dozen credible accusations of rape and sexual assault against Hillary Clinton's husband.
It's not going to mention that Hillary Clinton, the supposed defender of women, unleashed a whole series of private investigators to investigate and torment the women who accused her husband of sexual assault or rape.
It's a heck job.
It's just a pack.
That's all it is.
It's as objective a commentary on American politics or Donald Trump as a well-bought Coke commercial is about Coca-Cola.
That's all it is.
It's not objective.
It's just another manifestation of the deep, black-hearted shadow cast by political money in American politics.
And it's true all around the world as well.
And the fact that a comedian puts it out, of course, is confirmation bias and it's hard to rebut because comedians are funny and so on.
And the fact that it's kind of funny verbal abuse, torrents of verbal abuse and people say, actually, it's kind of offensive to call a presidential, somebody aspiring for presidential nominee status, call them a cancer.
It's kind of offensive.
As a whole, people who've had cancer, it's kind of a serious matter and really use it, score political points.
But then you say, you see, you don't have a sense of humor if you say that.
And they're doing it to Trump as a threat to you.
What they're saying to you is that if you're a maker, if you create things and if you're tired of paying for everyone else, and you dare to ever ask what's in it for you, if you dare to ever ask what's in it for you, because if you ask what's in it for you and you start pushing back, Against the takers.
If you say, yeah, my taxes are too high, I'm tired of supporting all these people, forget it.
I don't want these crazy pensions I can't pay for, I don't want all the teachers to get summers off, I'm tired of it all.
Tired of it!
Well...
What do the politicians do?
The politicians are selling all of the stuff they're stealing from you.
So if you ever get annoyed about being stolen from, a lot of politicians aren't going to have anything to sell to people in return for their votes.
Of course they're going to get enraged.
Of course.
Why is he considered to be one of the most evil people on the planet by...
John Oliver.
Because John Oliver is on the left.
And the left needs the makers in the same way that a cow is needed by a farmer.
A farmer needs the cow for milk and meat.
And the politicians need the makers so that they have people to steal from so that they can give it to the takers in return for votes.
And that's why Donald Trump is the real enemy of the left and the right at the moment.
He's basically saying to people, wait a minute, what's in it for me?
Ask yourself what's in it for you.
If you're a productive human being, you're making money.
What is in it for you?
For everyone who comes swarming into your country or for people who can't afford kids to be paid to have those kids, which further ups your tax bill, what is it for you?
What does the war have to do with you?
What does the prison industrial complex, what does it all have to do with you?
How is it benefiting you?
So, Trump must be taken down as a warning to people who ask what's in it for them.
Because he threatens the basic redistribution, which is how almost all politicians these days get into power and stay into power.
It's by handing over The bloody money, some with fingers attached still, from the people trying to hold onto it for themselves, handing over the bloody money to other people.
Can't bribe a politician, apparently.
But bribing voters is politics these days.
And John Stewart, John Oliver, these guys, to some degree Stephen Colbert...
They're just playing to the crowd.
Nobody ever boos them.
There's no shocked silence.
Watch the Carlin bit and there's lots of people like, oh, he's talking about religion.
George Carlin was willing to slap the face of his audience.
He was willing to push back against their prejudices, which is pretty heroic, in my opinion.
I try to do it myself as well.
But John Oliver, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, these guys, they're never booed by their own audience.
They're always playing to the prejudices.
They're always enhancing the prejudices.
And the basic fact of life, this has been repeated throughout history, is that there are demigods and sophists who always play to the prejudices of their audience.
And the more uninformed and irrational your audience is, the more they cheer you, the more you are seriously and literally leading them.
