Election Results 2020: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

hi there welcome to the show are still taking place in this blank void which fun fact is actually just a zoomed in picture of this i voted sticker which is great unfortunately that sticker is attached to james woods which is very much not and obviously we're going to start with our main story tonight which is the 2020 election or as it's known for horses just another week look at them they've got no clue hot idiots this was clearly a very long very tense week although thankfully it all felt worth it due to how it ended cnn projects joseph r biden jr is elected the 46th president of the united states winning the white house and denying president trump a second term yeah that definitely happened trump isn't going to be president anymore something i personally learned from no less than 20 text messages from my friends and family all saying it's over which in this situation was welcome but on any regular day would terrify the living out of me as we are taping this on saturday people across america are still taking to the streets to celebrate not just that biden and harris were elected but you sensed mainly that a certain someone was about to get evicted from the white house [Applause] [Applause] hey [Applause] you know what that person screaming donald trump from the back of a moving scooter actually sums up pretty nicely how a lot of people feel right now and i've got to tell you it was like that all day here in new york there was a mood here that can only be described as a reverse 911 why because it combined complete euphoria and abiding disgust for rudy giuliani and this time people were actually dancing on the rooftops in new jersey it was a really good day never forget it is genuinely hard to overstate the level of relief that has been flying around parts of this country especially at the end of a truly draining week and tonight we thought it might be worth mapping out exactly how we got to this point over the last seven days because at the start of this week we all knew that due to the pandemic this election was going to be different crucially that it was going to require more patience than usual yet for some reason as soon as tuesday came around everyone seemed to immediately forget that because starting that evening almost every news channel was overtaken by some version of a guy playing with a big screen while someone comes in to interrupt and pester them with questions it was basically the equivalent of watching the security footage of the best buy for four straight days and while news outlets tried their best to be patient as things dragged on it was clear they just couldn't do it something perhaps best summed up by this exchange between don lemon and a philadelphia city commissioner so how long do you think it's going to take to count all the votes commissioner you know it's interesting hearing reporters talk about listen everybody this is going to take some time and then the polls close and then it's why don't you have the results yet so everyone needs to recalibrate their expectations between it's nothing personal so let me let me ask you this and speaking of that was a good answer but are you talking hours are you talking days he doesn't know lemon leave the man alone at that point it would have been just as productive to ask him when will penguins learn how to fly or when is michael keaton going to win an oscar or what does the rest of the pringle guy's body look like is he tall or short does he have a lot of body hair or is he completely smooth when will he be able to tell me what his nipples look like are you talking hours or are you talking days what was also entirely predictable was how trump was going to react as the count slowly unfolded because long before the results were in he took advantage of the fact that he was ahead in some states to declare a premature and completely unfounded victory at 2 30 a.m on wednesday he delivered this nightmarish speech from the white house this is a fraud on the american public this is an embarrassment to our country we were getting ready to win this election frankly we did win this election so we'll be going to the u.s supreme court we want all voting to stop we don't want them to find any ballots at four o'clock in the morning and add them to the list okay uh no it's not okay it's not okay at all for a start you can't just threaten to go to the supreme court when things aren't going your way it's the highest court in the land not the middle school principal's office and second they weren't finding ballots they were counting them and counting and finding are just not the same thing that's why the movie finding nemo wasn't called counting nemo because that would have been a very different and much shorter movie one nemo the end unfortunately that press conference set the tone for the rest of the week with the soon-to-be former president and his camp doing absolutely everything they could think of to subvert this election on wednesday after the count in michigan began to favor biden trump tweeted out we hereby claim the state of michigan which is clearly not how it works calling dibs on states is not how we elect presidents we use the electoral college which is at least three percent less stupid than that the very same day the president's personal lawyer and recent star of the borat movie rudy giuliani arrived in pennsylvania to try and stop them from counting the votes that were still remaining which stood out nearly a million that morning most from heavily democratic areas and he did so with this impassioned speech how many votes do we have to be ahead 400 000 is not enough with 80 plus percent counted i think there's only 14 of the vote to go do you think we're stupid you think we're fools yeah yeah we do yeah and uh actually this is a bit awkward now because we had space for a joke here but that took no time at all so tell you what instead let's look at this raccoon-shaped cookie jar with a raccoon in it did you eat all the cookies i bet you did those cookies have gone from being inside one raccoon to being inside another what an absolute delight anyway giuliani's press conference was truly unhinged with him throwing around wild accusations with absolutely no evidence and perhaps the best response to it came from john fetterman pennsylvania's lieutenant governor to come in and stand on on on a street corner in philadelphia say we've won pennsylvania it's like you know like like lol i mean like you know like it's just bizarre i mean it's it's like a bad a bad house of cards episode yeah he's right lieutenant governor stonecold is absolutely right because this is like house of cards in that it's full of political intrigue there's a sexual predator pretending to be president at the very heart of it and it's gone on for at least four seasons too long and for what it's worth the trump camps protests were consistently inconsistent in their messaging primarily because early on in some states trump looked like he was ahead while in others he looked like he was behind which meant that in michigan where he led early on his supporters showed up at a detroit ballot counting site to chant this stop the count okay right but in arizona where trump seemed to be behind his supporters chanted this [Music] now setting aside the absurdity of two groups on the same side shouting completely opposite instructions it is worth taking a minute on just how weird it is that one of those instructions is count the votes because they were that's exactly what the ballot counters were doing it'd be like a dad chanting at his teenage son's bedroom door beats that meat beat that meat he is he's doing it you really don't need to cheer him on in fact all you're doing is making it way harder for him to finish and unfortunately the information vacuum that formed in those three days provided ample space for trump and his supporters to just throw complete around at one point trump's twitter timeline looked like this with a whole run of tweets flagged as disputed or misleading meanwhile giuliani was tweeting out this article and implying 21 000 dead people had voted in pennsylvania which they hadn't also rumors were flying around that trump ballots were being disqualified in arizona because sharpies had been used to fill them out which was false and eric trump tweeted out a fake video of ballots in virginia beach being burned a video that the city itself had debunked a day before he tweeted it and that is really a shame because normally the trump sons are so good at getting to the truth you know like the time that they solved the mystery of can a beard actually make someone look more like a child the answer turned out to be a resounding yes good work gumshoes but conspiracy theorizing ran so rampant this week that during a press briefing from a nevada voting registrar this happened oh my god the media is covering up the violent crime family on this election the media is covering it up the blind crime family steal this election somebody is covering up we want our freedom for the world give us our freedom to abide in your mind is covering up this election he's stealing that where were we what was the last question okay there is so much to deal with there there is the arctic call displayed by that registrar while he was being interrupted by a walking internet comment then there was that man's shirt featuring what i assume were his three favorite things which i'm legitimately jealous of because now i want a tank top with my three favorite things on it specifically oversight foyer requests and hamsters and speedos now that is a shirt but i think my favorite thing is just how painfully clear it is there that that guy was expecting to get dragged away and was then completely stuck when it didn't happen the biden crime family is stealing our freedom the bond crime family is still really guys nothing no one's going to escort me out of here because honestly i was really counting on someone tossing me in the car and taking me away i don't actually have a ride home otherwise all right you know i guess i'll walk have a good day everyone petergate was a 911 or whatever and in the midst of all of this the trump campaign was loudly announcing that it was filing multiple lawsuits in multiple states trying to cast a cloud over the whole process but it is important to know just how ridiculous those lawsuits were and still are one case in georgia centered on a poll watcher who left the room and thought that a stack of 53 ballots that may or may not have arrived late might or might not have been counted while they're away although the poll watcher could not say for sure because again he had left the room that particular case was dismissed by a judge because and i quote the court finds that there is no evidence meanwhile in michigan the trump campaign requested the absentee ballots stop being counted after and this is key the counting had essentially been finished in the state that suit relied on one poll watcher having heard a rumor from someone else that some late ballots were being counted and when the judge pointed out that that was total hearsay the trump campaign's lawyer tried to wriggle out of it before being slapped down hard this is a firsthand factual statement made by uh miss conneran and she has made that statement based on her own first-hand physical evidence and knowledge i heard somebody else say something tell me why that's not here say come on now yeah come on now and look i'm no legal expert but i am pretty sure it's not a great sign for your case when a judge gives you the judicial equivalent of out of here now one big trump complaint that he is making a lot right now so you will probably be hearing it for the rest of your life is that the election is illegitimate because republican poll watchers weren't given access to the ballot counting in pennsylvania he actually tweeted on saturday bad things happened which our observers were not allowed to see which is a tough charge to make stick because by the nature of the accusation you didn't see them but the claim was actually even more meritless than it appears which of all networks fox news pointed out the trump campaign has said that they wanted to have their their poll watchers there and that i guess they're being asked to provide evidence for something that they say they weren't able to even participate in or to be able to see and so that's i think where they would say that needs to be rectified if it could be that's not true it's not true it's just not true the claim from the trump campaign and the president about that is not true it is false in fact the lawyers for the trump campaign last night in federal court admitted that he's right they admitted it specifically the judge asked are people representing donald j trump in that room to which the campaign lawyer said yes and the judge replied i'm sorry then what's your problem making this officially the single sassiest week in the history of the judiciary they must have traded in their gavels for umbrellas because these jurists are throwing some shade and the embarrassing flimsiness of these fraud claims starts to make sense when you see just how desperately the trump camp was trying to drum them up take arizona they announced at a press conference on thursday that they had gathered concerns by thousands of people about voting irregularities which on his face sounds dramatic but it's also a little at odds with this moment captured just minutes earlier hi everyone if anyone has any personal example of where they've witnessed election fraud here in arizona please come see me i need i need a concrete example i need someone to talk to right over there in the corner thank you okay that is just pathetic although i do like the idea that someone who actually witnessed election fraud and had proof was waiting until that glorified block party to tell anyone about it yeah i saw a guy in a ski mask pulling fake ballots out of his kia festival but it honestly didn't occur to me to tell anyone about it until a representative from the law firm hangover hangover divorce and meat sweat told me to meet him over there in the corner i'm so glad i was wandering by but wait that's not all the trump campaign also set up this website and phone number where they invited people to submit evidence of voter fraud meaning if you say wanted to supply them with an incident that you found suspicious you could do that you still can actually you can simply go to this address and send them whatever evidence you want there's even an option to add photographic proof and quick fun fact here i don't know why i'm even mentioning this a political term of art for election shenanigans is rat so if you say that happen to have any access to images of pennsylvania-based rat it's frankly your patriotic duty to send them to the trump campaign straight away and all these pointless lawsuits are clearly going to cost a lot of money which is probably why the campaign has spent the last few days frantically trying to fundraise for them emailing supporters in an increasingly aggressive manner with one message reading this is your final notice so far you've ignored all our emails asking you to join us in defending the election you've ignored team trump eric lara don the vice president and you've even ignored the president of the united states and final notice for what exactly to not give them money maybe it's the last chance to go to the official donald j trump site and buy this dog leash featuring a dog who i can only assume was lobotomized and given rabies immediately before having this picture taken also quick side note about those solicitations in the fine print it mentions that rather than funding lawsuits half of any contribution will be used to retire debt from trump's reelection campaign which is both completely unsurprising and also not even the worst thing he's ever asked his supporters to do because that would obviously be when he made them watch him do this dance which looks like he's milking two cows at once and enjoying it sexually very much indeed but perhaps the single most pathetic part of this entire week was that in the moments before this race was called on saturday morning trump tweeted out i won this election by a lot all caps exclamation mark and if that wasn't a bad enough case of denial this is how some of his supporters responded to news of his defeat [Applause] [Music] [Applause] look i would love to make fun of that but unfortunately i have no time for losers but here is the really important thing after this absolute year of a week the days of counting the misinformation the desperate pathetic attempts to paint this process as fraudulent the fact is trump lost this election he lost all that which we've grown accustomed to seeing work did not work this time and it's not like trump and his family are gonna stop they're gonna carry on drifting and lying like they've always done but once he's out of the white house it's just not gonna have the same effect anymore it's not gonna directly impact every american's life and that alone is fantastic and look by temperament i'm inclined to over analyze everything and i can already feel myself starting to do it i'm starting to focus on the negatives here and be cynical about what a biden presidency could or is even going to try to achieve but before we get into anything negative at all let me just give us all a quick moment with no caveats of celebration in fact let's put 30 seconds on the clock right now during which time everyone could just experience joy in whatever form you want dancing screaming banging a frying pan it is really up to you personally i'm going to do one of my favorite activities which is dispensing excellent facts about octopuses over footage of people celebrating this election ready go octopuses are great they have three hearts blue blood they can taste with their arms their brains are spread throughout their body they can change shape and color they have beaks they can open bottles they they remember faces and they hold grudges one time an octopus escaped a new zealand aquarium by crawling down a drainpipe into the ocean also there was an experiment a few years back where scientists gave octopuses ecstasy and they learned that if octopuses take ecstasy they'll hang out and party with other octopuses but if you don't do that they prefer to keep themselves to themselves that's from a real study isn't it great i'm not saying i want a octopus but you know what i kind of wanted oh that's it that's it that's it that was time that was uncomplicated fun so given we just did that if you don't mind i am going to over analyze this election just a little bit not much though mainly because it is still too early to draw any big conclusions there are two key things that we know though the great news is that this election had record record-breaking turnout and over 74 million people chose to kick donald trump out of office the less good news is that more than 70 million people voted for him and everything he said and stands for and that is something that we are going to have to reckon with for the foreseeable future and i know that biden has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that the ugliness trump represents is simply not who we are he did it constantly in moments like this the only thing that can tear america apart is america itself and that's exactly what trump's been trying to do from the very beginning dividing america based on race religion gender national origin it's wrong it's not who we are this is not who we are everybody knows who donald trump is let's keep showing them who we are look that is a really nice sentiment but dividing america based on race religion gender and national origin has frequently been very much who we are in fact you could well argue that in the history of america the one sentence version of trump's presidency is he kept showing them who we are so we cannot and should not ignore that millions voted for trump meaning they either actively supported his bigotry or at the very least were comfortable enough with it to vote for him anyway which isn't great it's like if your grandma was dating two old guys both of whom had fought in world war ii and in the end she picks pete who seems decent and works at the library and you're really happy for it but at the same time you are wondering how the she got so far with klaus because that doesn't really reflect that well on her and even in the joy and relief at the end of this week it does feel worth remembering just how scary it felt as it was unfolding with trump supporters swarming and following a boyden harris bus in texas and that moment in detroit that we saw earlier where a largely white crowd showed up in a city that is 80 black to shout that they should stop counting their votes and if you don't understand how those images rhyme with history it might be because you're just not used to seeing them in color because the last four years were not about just one man and this isn't just about the last four years and even that one man is by no means going away whatever happens donald trump is the current and future leader of the republican party certainly at least until someone else comes along with his stamina charisma and drive putting aside the wildly divergent definitions we have of stamina charisma and drive that get out garden party guest is right when she said that donald trump is here to stay although not in office however hard he resists going as a biden campaign spokesperson told the press this week the united states government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the white house which is just a nice sentence to hear and there is going to be time to talk about what trumpism is going to mean going forward just as there's going to be time to talk about what this week means for the democratic party which didn't get everything they hoped for they lost seats in the house and the question of whether or not they'll have a senate majority is down to two runoff elections in georgia in january but the real takeaway of this election might be that there is no easy answer to the question of who we are a perfect example is this kamala harris is now going to be vice president the first woman vice president the first south asian american vice president the first black vice president and the second black person we've sent to the white house in the last 12 years that's incredible unfortunately we did elect a white supremacist in between them and the fact is that all of that together is kind of who we are we're the country that did all those things and it's important not to deny that reality and just a final quick point here defeating trump took a lot of work much of it by activist groups led by those with the most to lose from a second trump term a big factor in the vote in arizona was indigenous and latino people coming out for biden and in pennsylvania michigan and georgia black voters were absolutely key with the groups organizing that vote particularly black women working relentlessly for years and in the days and the weeks ahead there's likely to be a lot of talk from white people about how black and brown voters saved us which just kind of missed the point a little bit because they weren't so much voting as a favor for white people so much as voting to protect themselves and their communities from someone trying to do them active harm although there are some lessons in some of that organizing in georgia stacy abrams along with many others helped to register hundreds of thousands of new voters over the past two years half of them people of color and turn them out to the polls in fact just before the presidential race was called she was already tweeting out details about the january 5th run off for senate and making sure that people request their ballots why because she knows what she's doing and if the democrats are smart which they are not always they should listen to her and activists like her going forward look it is going to be a long road to dig us out of the place that the last four years have put us in but that is why it might be so important to remember the moments of triumph that this week has managed to provide richie torres and monday jones became the first gay black men elected to congress cory bush a black lives matter activist is missouri's first black congresswoman in delaware sarah mcbride became the country's first openly transgender state senator multiple counties elected reform minded prosecutors and sheriffs florida voted to increase the minimum wage and every state that had a marijuana initiative on the ballot approved it and most importantly despite his lies his obstructions and his depressingly popular racism this guy lost do you realize what that means one he's sad right now which is great but also no more stephen miller at the white house no more steve mnuchin hate to see him go love to watch him walk away no more helicopter shouting time i'm not going to miss that no more mike pence or betsy devos or jared no more jared and there'll be big systemic institutional problems we need to talk about in the months and the years to come and we will because for some reason this is the life i've chosen but for now after what's just happened i frankly think that we've all owned the right to put on our masks go outside and party like octopuses on ecstasy

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 12,150,486

Rating: 4.8056974 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: LyC855KdBKo

Length: 27min 5sec (1625 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/violue]

Absolutely gutted that Four Seasons Total Landscaping didn't make it into the episode.

[u/BoogsterSU2]

Next week is the final episode for this year, until it returns in February 2021.

[u/Cirenione]

Oliver* brings up a very important point about nearly half of the US still voting for Trump. Especially to many outside the US the whole „he doesn‘t represent us, he didn‘t win the popular vore“ comments seem hardly assuring when nearly 50% of the votes still went to him. Trump may not represent the US as a whole but he sure represents a huge part of the population.

[u/DJ__Bobo]

The comment about the shouting idiot who ran up on stage was so spot on. Seeing him stumble back down with his tail between his legs was priceless.

[u/XAMdG]

The only thing I disagree with the video is the call to celebrate on the street in droves. I totally understand the reasoning behind, but the virus doesn't really care about your political views. There has been some irresponsible gatherings celebrating Biden's victory that will most likely end up becoming super spreader events, just like Sturgis or the white house SC nomination event that we so condemned.

[u/Cunningcory]

Very informative episode. I've seen a lot of election fraud and was looking for a place to report it, so I'm glad John Oliver provided that link. Let's hope these people are brought to justice.

[u/chariot122]

Mirror?

[u/ToneBone12345]

Am I the only one who finds the irony of a group of heterosexual white people who when they found out trump lost where singing a song by band who’s front man was a bi-sexual immigrant funny

[u/themanifoldcuriosity]

Holy shit that "reverse 9-11" analogy.