Drain the Swamp: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

donald trump a man whose presidential library could conceivably exhibit a razzie award seriously he won a razzie in 1991 for his supporting role in the film ghosts can't do it as a businessman negotiating with bo derek in this room there are knives sharp enough to cut you to the bone and hearts cold enough to eat yours as hors d'oeuvres you're too pretty to be bad that kissy face is the single most disgusting thing that's ever been in a movie and i'm very much including the human centipede but look we're not going to talk about trump's movie career tonight instead we want to focus on the two-year anniversary of one of his signature campaign promises we are going to drain the swamp in washington d.c it's time to drain the swamp of corruption drain the swamp look at that sign drain the swamp we're gonna drain the swamp of washington we're gonna have fun doing it we're all doing it together wait we're gonna have fun doing it and we're all doing it together sounds less like a campaign promise and more like a nervous host rambling through the introduction of their first ever orgy so we're going to have fun doing it and we're all doing it together and thanks for the hummus spread tom oh we said no names didn't we uh dominique dominic domini everybody now mind the coffee table and look look limiting the power of industry lobbyists and special interests is a genuinely good idea and while i would love to give him credit the odds are if your whole political platform is just screaming random three-word phrases one of them is gonna bound to end up being good lock her up no build the wall no all dog zoo stop that's actually a great idea it took a while but you finally threw out a good one and while trump by no means came up with that phrase it clearly caught on after he won because other candidates began using it and perhaps not more memorably or literally than this guy i'm bob gray an outsider and a businessman i'm running to fuel the economy choke off wasteful spending and secure our nation but most importantly i promise to drain the swamp i'm bob gray conservative republican and i approve this message right except you're not really draining the swamp so much as you are moving it a couple of feet off camera and and scooch the swamp it just doesn't quite have the same ring to it does it but as much as people have taken to trump's drain the swamp promise it won't remotely surprise you to know that he has not drained the swamp even one little bit his capita has included many swamp creatures from these two goldman sachs veterans working on tax policy gary cohn and certified handful of man candy steve mnuchin to wilbur ross commerce secretary wealthy corporate raider and living worst-case scenario what can happen when wallace shaun is not stored at the proper temperature now trump trump has a laughable number of wealthy businessmen presiding over policies that could directly benefit themselves and their former employers and incredibly despite drain the swamp being one of trump's greatest hits at his rallies many of his supporters do not seem troubled by this the swamp is horrible and trump is there he's there for the small guy he's there for people like myself though his cabinet is filled with multi-millionaires i love that they're not politicians and you don't see them as part of the swamp who have capitalized on the system in in in in a capitalist system you're allowed to make money being rich is good yeah so then what is the swamp the swamp for me the mainstream is is it it is yes you almost nail it it's the mainstream it's the elites that look down on a small guy like myself okay first if you're mainstream you can't be elite by definition elites are a select group superior to the mainstream those terms are mutually exclusive digging into this logical fallacy makes me sound like an elitist it does not make me sound like a mainstream do you see what i mean but the second second and perhaps most importantly the narrow question of self-enrichment is only part of why the swamp is a problem a much bigger issue is the harm that can that it can actually do and that is what our story is about tonight because real damage is being done to the small guy by this administration's actions take payday lending as we've discussed on the show before people's lives can be destroyed by misleadingly marketed high interest loans but the new acting head of the consumer financial protection bureau mick mulvaney has been actively working with the payday loan industry to block rules reigning them in why would he do that i don't know what i do know is that as a congressman he got sixty thousand dollars in campaign contributions from payday lending interests and earlier this year he told a room full of bankers this amusing anecdote we had a hierarchy in my office in congress if you're a lobbyist who never gave us money i didn't talk to you if you're a lobbyist who gave us money i might talk to you now he did say he would always talk to constituents whether they gave him money or not but the fact molly he's admitting that as a lobbyist money might get you a meeting you don't often hear that from a politician yeah you actually don't i mean it's something that everyone naturally assumes but it is weird to hear it out loud it's like a disney world park attendant saying hey kids who almost have their photo taken with a 30 year old theater major who couldn't hack it in the industry and who now wears a full body mouse suit i mean there's no new information there but it is still unpleasant to listen to but just focusing on the famous alligators in trump's swamp is missing some of the most important damage that is getting done by lesser-known bureaucrats and to illustrate that let's look at two agencies tonight first the epa now for a year it was run by scott pruitt who became a household name for doing things like spending forty thousand dollars on a soundproof booth in his office trying to get the ceo of chick-fil-a to give his wife a franchise and demanding an expensive 24-7 security detail then making it drive him around town to see which ritz carlton had the lotion he likes which is simply insane because everyone knows the best lotion comes from la quinta inn that's right if you want to masturbate with hotel lotion choose lakita it's like their slogan says la quinta has the lotion that will help you jeez now once once pruitt left there were not as many flashy headlines about the epa but that itself is actually dangerous because he was not an isolated case nearly half of the political appointees hired by trump at the epa have strong industry ties and the guy who replaced pruitt is not much of an improvement the man tapped to be pruitt's replacement andrew wheeler a man who forbes says earned more than thousand dollars in recent years as wait for it a coal lobbyist yeah at this point though cnn you really don't need to ask the american people to wait for it surprise is just one more emotion that trump has completely destroyed along with joy wonder and the ability to see someone wearing a red hat from behind without mentally saying god damn it now now as as a coal lobbyist wheeler pushed hard to roll back environmental regulations impacting the industry in fact here he is as a lobbyist meeting with rick perry doing exactly that and little over a year later he is running the epa and dismantling the very regulations he lobbies against which is ridiculous it's like handing your city's waste management over to a seagull so let me get this straight the new strategy is we just throw our trash everywhere and leave it strewn around and we should have more french fries in our garbage how the are you in charge but but wheeler wheeler is actually a really good example of how once trump's swamp starts seeping in it can filter all the way down an organization and for just how deep it can go simply look at the department of the interior on this show we've lavished quite a bit of attention on trump's appointee to head them ryan zinke which is understandable he rode a horse to work on his first day at the department he swung karen pence around like a bag of potatoes and despite the fact that he is very much not a geologist he has a weird habit of doing this that's the question i asked and i'm a geologist i'm a geologist i'm a geologist i'm a geologist i'm a geologist he's not a geologist at all besides bragging about being a geologist is a very weird boast it's just behind walking around saying i own crackers saltines cheez-its you name it i own it not oyster crackers of course who am i bill gates zinke has also taken 66 personal days in his first year and a half on the job and has been the subject of no less than 15 investigations and reportedly he may actually be gone any day now but even if that happens serious problems will remain because the swamp runs deep interior is a massive department and there is real power at every level i'll show you look at this organizational chart below zinke and the deputy secretary and the assistant secretary for land and minerals management you will find a very important subdivision called the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement or bessie which is in charge of safety on offshore oil rigs i don't know what you're thinking safety on offshore oil rigs wouldn't regulatory oversight of any resource development on the outer continental shelf fall under the jurisdiction of the minerals management service would wouldn't that be where the responsibility lies john to which i say congratulations on being a sex god and you know what you're right you're right the minerals management service actually used to be in charge of safety until 2010 when there was that catastrophe at deepwater horizon this is the video bp did not want the world to see a toxic blend of oil and gas spewing from its broken well at the bottom of the gulf of mexico yes the deepwater horizon famously pumped over 130 million gallons of oil into the gulf of mexico about 12 times the size of the exxon valdez spill costing the region billions and badly hurting the fishing and tourism industries and you know you know it was a disaster because mark wahlberg made a movie about it and he usually chooses his starring films about the most absolutely appalling things stuff like tragic shipwrecks acts of terrorism and mel gibson's seamless reintegration into hollywood and and years years after deporter horizon the region was still feeling the effects when the little boats fish in this area right here powerful what they catch is the form really half half and what kind of deformities they got tumors on the head little bumps off the side it's all in the gills where they breathe at sit all in there yeah so that's oil in these gills yeah if you take this shell off you could pull the oil out you could smell it yeah that's horrible not only did that spill devastate an economy it somehow actually managed to make shrimp even more disgusting and i hate shrimp they are slimy armored alien bugs for whom proper preparation involves pulling out their bane there is not enough cocktail sauce in the world to erase the memory of a vein and yet somehow that oil spill made them even grosser now now before deepwater horizon the minerals management service was in charge of both safety on oil rigs and collecting revenues from oil companies which was clearly a bad idea because it was an obvious conflict of interest so after deep water they created bessie an agency whose only job is to keep people and the environment safe that is their sole responsibility promotion of drilling in the gulf that is someone else's job bessie's is safety that is all they do that is probably why its last two heads were a former coast guard officer specializing in marine safety and a former coast guard officer specializing in marine safety however trump has taken a different path appointing scott angel former lieutenant governor of louisiana and a guy who is aggressively pro drilling for a sense of just how aggressive he is just days after the deep water well was capped angel was at a rally organized by the louisiana oil and gas association where he called for an immediate resumption of deep sea drilling saying this enough is enough and it's time to quit punishing innocent american workers to achieve some unrealistic political agenda while we too support the use of renewable and alternative energy let's keep the conversation real america is not yet ready to get all of its fuel from the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees hold on hold on america is not yet ready to get fuel from trees you mean wood scientists have understood how wood works for years now maybe even decades but after serving as lieutenant governor angel joined the board of sunoco logistics partners and oil pipeline company earning nearly a million dollars and now he's regulating the oil industry and if there is any doubt about his priorities which there is not just wait until you see something we found on youtube because last year angel gave a presentation at an oil industry conference where he was flanked by two men one in a hard hat both of whom were eating during a significant portion of his speech but that is not the important part the incredible moment is when he makes it painfully clear exactly how accessible he the man in charge of enforcing safety remember is willing to be to industry leaders my cell number is anybody wants to give me a call to talk about it my cell number is 571-585-3730 571-585-3730 i'd rather you call me everything you texted me is a public record so be careful this is a business uh opportunity for you to engage with me on what you believe uh we ought to be about holy he just gave out his work cell phone number and encouraged oil bosses to call him on it as a business opportunity that is outrageous for two reasons first because he's doing that to avoid the public record and second no one should ever call rather than text i don't care what the scenario is if you prefer calling to texting you're a psychopath and you should be put in prison forever your text detects whatever the situation and and that is his real number we know because we called it and apparently he gives it out publicly to executives all the time at another industry conference he even announced it from a stage and who knows what those executives tell him it's not part of the public record but by sheer coincidence he's urged the white house to loosen safety requirements implemented in the wake of deepwater horizon which they are now planning to do and which is estimated could save oil companies nearly a billion dollars over the next decade which is the most shocking 10 digit number i've heard since 571.58 37 30. so it seems pretty clear at this point that trump has in no way drains the swamp what he has done is drained the phrase of its original meaning and in fairness to him he was pretty transparent from the beginning about how little he meant it this is him just one month after his election essentially telling everyone to their faces that the phrase was meaningless funny how that term caught on isn't it i told i tell everybody i hated it somebody said drain the swamp i said oh that's so hokey that is so terrible i said all right i'll try it so like a month ago i said drain the swamp place went crazy i said whoa watch this then i said it again then i started saying it like i meant it right and then i said it i started loving it and the place loved it strained the swamp i mean it's true it's true it's true it isn't it isn't it isn't trump never meant to drain the swamp and you can tell that by what has happened since because he promised to clean up dc and instead the guy in charge of the cfpb is holding hands with loan sharks the epa might as well be run by a sentient piece of coal and is head of oil rig safety wants the industry to blow up his digits like an under-regulated oil well all in all it seems like if there is anyone remaining who is still hoping that trump might drain the swamp you can now officially kissy face that idea goodbye you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 8,431,691

Keywords: last week tonight drain the swamp, john oliver drain the swamp

Id: 5HS2TstPfW4

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 11 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/evilspyboy]

Sorry, I didn't know how to make it one mirror for international people like me, so...

Part 1 and Part 2

[u/violue]

Xenu next week, everyone.

[u/Denz292]

That was genuinely sad seeing the Trump voter explain how draining the swamp involves choosing multimillionaires for government roles when they have conflicting interests

[u/[deleted]]

i know i shouldn't text that guy... but i did

[u/Wingnut0055]

I'm surprised they didn't mention that a 3 man company from Zinkes hometown got a very large contract to turn the power back on in Puerto Rico.

[u/MonsantoYams]

He did a fantastic job (as usual) with this piece - I was actually there for the taping! He comes out before and takes questions from the audience and cracks a few jokes on the spot, really funny unscripted. The pants gag killed both times since they killed the lights while he was walking to the desk to keep it hidden.

[u/kingguy459]

He was wearing black pants, on top was his butt-jeans, and on top was the yoga pants.

That must have been a hot episode to record

[u/jeajello]

That bit about Steve Bannon covering the election was fucking hilarious oh my god what a disaster

[u/BoogsterSU2]

What are your thoughts about John Oliver secretly promoting Scientology while also wearing Diva Jeans that was made by a scam corporation formerly created by our current Attorney General?