Trump vs. Truth: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

normally we like to focus this part of the show on complex depressing policy issues something fun like a co2 emissions from hearses or space poverty or the proliferation of special-purpose taxing districts a topic so boring you didn't even realize we literally already did that exact story last year and we want to keep doing those kind of things but unfortunately we can't until we address something even bigger the concept of reality itself and that is because of this guy now since taking office around four hundred and twelve years ago long has made it clear that reality is not important to him think about it he exaggerated the size of his inauguration crowd he said the election was marred by massive voter fraud with no real proof of that he also falsely claims that that compared to Muslims it was almost impossible for Christian refugees from Syria to get into the u.s. he even lied about the weather during his inauguration it was almost raining the rain should have scared him away but God looked down and he said we're not gonna let it rain on your speech no he didn't but it did rain while you were speaking that's why your wife was holding up an umbrella and people behind you were wearing ponchos and second if God did lock down his only thought would have been wait the Mormon Tabernacle Choir come on I'm sick of them and I'm God could you not book silence always silent somehow boycotting this thing - so so that is where we are currently at we have a president capable of standing in the rain and saying it was a sunny day and before we go any further Donald Trump lives is clearly not a fresh observation liberals are probably thinking well hot plate there Johnny next you're going to tell me that Obama is aloof Dick Cheney is evil and Paul Ryan doesn't climax dude he checks his Fitbit to see how many calories he's burned I know what if you're on the other side if you're on the right you probably thinking oh great another blizzard of snowflakes from last Cup tonight with Johnny trigger warm and and yes I know all other President had liked PolitiFact found that just over a quarter of President Obama's statement survey evaluated was some degree or thoughts but with Trump that number is currently over two-thirds perhaps that is why one reporter has been covering Trump found himself saying this this is what makes it covering Donald Trump so very difficult what does he mean when he says words Wow what does he mean when he said words we are talking about be president like hey to the match we've been on four dates with I asked him if he was going to hang out this Friday and he said prolly dot dot dot I'm starving bicycle emoji poop emoji what the does that mean what does he mean when he says what Trump's relationship with the truth is going to be of profound importance going forward because any policy discussion has to begin with a shared sense of reality and Trump's reality can change within a single sentence when you hear four point nine and five percent unemployment the number is probably twenty eight twenty nine as high as thirty-five in fact I even heard recently forty two percent well well which one is it better because a four point nine percent rate might result in a cautiously constructive monetary policy whereas a forty two percent rate might result in the purge so tonight we thought it would be useful to try and answer four basic questions how did we get a pathological liar in the White House where are his lawyers coming from why do so many people believe him and what can we possibly do about it and to that first question Trump's lying is obviously nothing new he has a well-documented 40-year history of he lied about being invited on this show and about the ratings for the Celebrity Apprentice he pretended to be his own publicist he's building Trump Tower is not as big as he said it is the inflated the floor numbers is 58 storey building became a 68 storey building it made a lot of sense in his mind because if you're renting a room you'd rather be on the 14th floor than on the 6th one just bear a thought for confused firefighters turning up through that building the smoke alarms going off in penthouse B on the 68th floor which is apparently an alcove studio on the 58th quick it's an emergency but lies like that are almost charming what is less harmless is when he started lying about the presidents birth certificate and then as a presidential candidate started making troubling statements like these the murder rate in the United States it's the worst the highest it's been in 45 years now our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria our gross domestic product a sign of strength right but not for us it was below zero who ever heard of this okay okay so just real quick on those no one isn't no he didn't and no one's ever heard of a GDP below zero because that is impossible [Applause] horrified him for office but we were so accustomed to Trump nonsense people could just shrug it off as Donald being Donald even his own advisers like Peter Thiel argued that people shouldn't worry about his statement but he didn't really mean them I think a lot of the voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally and so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment or things like that it's not the question is not are we going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China or you know how exactly are you going to force these these tests what they here is we're going to have we're going to have a saner more sensible immigration policy oh yeah that is definitely the sense I got from watching those strong rally yes well we're all furiously chanting build that wall we all understand in this context wall is a clever use of metonymy a or a figure of speech in which one word wall in this example is used as a stand-in for a singer more sensible immigration policy now if you will let's unpack subject and yet the travel ban literally happened and as for the wall the wall is getting designed right now a lot of people say oh oh Trump was only kidding with the Watterson kid Idol kid exactly when he says he's going to build a wall he means it now it might be 30 feet high and labels 156 stories but a seal that it's coming so it was worth taking him seriously Trump was telling the truth about his solutions to the problems he was lying about and he is now making real policy based on faith facts which brings us to our second question where is his information coming from now Trump himself has admitted he gets a lot of it from TV which may explain why he speaks so confidently about cable news staples like crime and terrorism but when it comes to the nuts and bolts aspects of government like the nuclear triad he struggles now he famously flopped a question on the Triad during an early debate in an exchange that ended like this as a three legs of the Triad that you have a priority they want to go to Senator wrong I think I think that me look nuclear it's just that the power the devastation is very important to me now that is terrifying the components of that triad are important it is unacceptable not to be able to name every stable one of them they are nuclear weapons not your children what is her name Donald what is her name I'll give you a hint it starts with ki and it's not the other one and you would hope that as frozen he's now be getting information from primary sources and briefings but chump still watches a phenomenal amount of cable news his tweets frequently echoes things that just aired on TV just two weeks ago he tweeted ungrateful traitor Chelsea Manning who should never have been released from prison is now calling President Obama a weak leader terrible which is interesting because Chelsea Manning never used the words weak leader but that phrase was used on Fox News just 15 minutes before he tweeted in a segment which also called Manning and ungrateful traitor so the president seems to tweet about whatever information he just saw on cable news if someone changed the channel to the sprout network between Colliers life is boring even for a transitive sad give you a sense of just how much he watches cable you a few hours later he was on Air Force One and you could actually hear the commercials from Fox News blaring in the background that's real that is the Empire carpet jingle playing at full blast Trump just made the interior of Air Force One sound like the living room of an old person who died three days ago and who nobody's found yet he watches so much table TV he presumably also gets daily briefings from this guy I'm a professional cowboy and I use catheters been cowboy in for 25 years I've broken 14 bones had two concussions and a punctured lung I know pain and I don't want any more of it especially when I can okay stop I have so many questions is calf a real verb if you've only been cowboy in for 25 years what did you do before you were Cowboys and why are you in a library and one that doesn't want to overdo it with the book you fascinates me the trunk doesn't just watch cable news he also takes information in from frightening ly unreliable sources such as Breitbart the organization which gave us Steve Fallon C Fallon now Trump chief strategist Breitbart has published such pullet for eligible stories as birth control makes women unattractive and crazy racists pro-nazi roots of Planned Parenthood revealed and hoisted high and proud the Confederate flag proclaims a glory of heritage you know the kind of the kind of headline you see your old high school friends share on Facebook and think oh that's a shame I guess Greg sucks now but the Trump trust in Breitbart actually goes way back a few years ago Trump was challenged by Bill O'Reilly who correctly pointed out that he's claimed that thousands of Muslims were seen celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11 was based on no evidence whatsoever and this is how Trump responded why I wrote that I'm wrong built you know this just came out from Breitbart I mean literally it just came out Trump vindicated 100% vindicated then me afterward thousands that would have been reported they were swarming at Dyl this article says they were swarming all over the place so I don't know what that means but it means a lot of people wait holding up a Breitbart article does not make you seem more credible you might as well have gone oh hold on a second bill hello okay Frank sort is going on right bill what sort of talk to them and straight choices yet even worse because he also cited nautical to support his Muslims on 9/11 claim from Infowars a website run by this guy Hillary and Obama want to make you poor and pathetic we have all their white papers they hate you they hate Prosperity they hate God they hate children and god damn them now that man is Alex Jones and that is actually him at his most preventable Sammis Alex Jones at a job interview that's Alex Jones meeting his girlfriend's parents for the first time now in his more outspoken moment Jones has argued that the government has the ability to control tornadoes that the Boston Marathon bombing was a false flag attack and that tap water is a day bomb and that they are putting chemicals in the water that turned the friggin frogs gay and then there is the Sandy Hook school shooting yeah so Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors in my view manufactured I couldn't believe it at first I knew they had actors there clearly but I thought they killed some real kids and it just shows how bold they are that they clearly used actors now that is not just offensive it's stupid if the government had actually hired child actors there is no way their stage parents would have stopped talking about it well he didn't get the tide commercial but he did like a leading role in a government-sponsored false flag attack it's the same director who did the moon landing with very excited Trump is apparently such a fan that Alex Jones himself has said it is surreal to talk about issues here on air and then was the word here Trump say it two days later and I'll be skeptical of that if Trump haven't gone on jeonggi's show and said this I just want to finish by saying your reputation too amazing I will not let you down you will be very very impressed I hope and I think we'll be speaking of that you know what I guess it makes sense the Donald Trump wants to impress Alex Jones why would you want to drain the swamp it's not to eradicate although gay frogs you say they're you to stay where you are this is really dangerous though because there is a pattern here Trump see something that jives with his worldview doesn't check it half remembers it and then passing it on at which point it takes on a life of its own and appears to validate itself let me try to show you that machine in action Trump's constant claim that millions of people voted illegally originated as far as anyone can tell from some dude on Twitter who claimed in November while providing no evidence we have verified more than 3 million votes cast by non-citizens the next day Infowars picked that up and it spread like jet fuel among the right-wing sites now it was quickly debunked by multiple outlets but despite that days later translated legs Trump started tweeting about billions of illegal votes and serious voter fraud in states like California and by early December people were on TV expressing similar concerns voting is a privilege in this country and you need to be legal not like California where 3 million illegals voted where are you getting your information from the media and that right there actually answers our third question of why so many people believe Trump because if you get your news from similar sources to him as many many many people do he doesn't look like a crank he looks like the first president ever to tell you the real truth but rumors can be really tenacious and I'll prove it what rumor do you think of when you hear the name Richard Gere well here's the thing there is no proof that he did that if you think about it it's ridiculous have you ever held one of those things there's no way it was possible but if the president went on TV and told you it was true you'd go I knew it thank you I knew it finally someone said it but that loop gets much more dangerous when you're not talking about something as silly as gerbils from validated his supporters beliefs about voter fraud and in turn they validated his because even where he was directly confronted with the lack of evidence this how he responded you know it's important millions of people agree with me when I say that if you would have looked on one of the other networks and all of the people that were calling in they're saying we agree with mr. Trump we agree there is more people right but just because they believe you and you believe them doesn't make it true this is like Peter Pan we're believing in fairies will keep think Abell alone this isn't a magic thing Peter she has Lou Gehrig's disease and maybe instead of clapping you should it on the ice bucket challenge then she still be alive I'm sorry Peter but she's dying think about dying the Poynting even if you take the kindest approach here and assume translate an honest innocent mistake and passed along a new story without checking it when he was presented with a lack of evidence he disregarded that fact at which point he is lying and it seems no one in the White House has a problem with that because when asked to justify the president's views this is what Sean Spicer did I think the president had believed that for a while a long-standing belief that he's maintained it's a belief he maintained it's a belief that he's maintained for a while as I noted several times now he's believed this for a long time it was a comment that he made on in a long-standing belief I've asked an inch of this question twice he believes what he believes based on the information provided does believe that what does that mean for democracy I've answered your question have you know you haven't Melissa no you haven't it's hardly the incidence of voter fraud is a verifiable fact and faith and facts are like Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton when you confuse them it actually matters real people get hurt when you make policy based on false information billions will get spent on a wall that won't work to prevent a crime wave but isn't happening while refugees sit in dangerous situations to prevent Bowling Green style massacres that never took place so what are we going to do well the press is going to be a key element in helping a sort out fact and fiction and they are under attack this administration has seized on small corrections in news coverage to paint critical outlets as fake news attempting to delegitimize all of them and this is only going to get worse Steve Palin has already labeled the media the opposition party although there does seem to be one exception news reports said the only seat that was reserved for the media at Trump's news conference Wednesday was in the front row and it was for Breitbart news oh that is so late and favoritism you are Snow White introducing the dwarfs I meet grumpy sleepy sneezy awesome big dick calls warf and the three others and anything off thinking that Breitbart went out of their way to ask a challenging question think again for the state news in all the problems of the center of the details and course of the election would reform he recommends for this industry here and I actually have to follow up questions does this feel good and will you let me know when you're going to come just to pop my head it's obvious will they completely seamlessly to my friend you only go to one source to get your news from as one congressman happily pointed out better to get your news directly from the president in fact it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth getting your news directly from the leader is basically the philosophy of North Korea and the notion that our leaders should be able to pass on this truth with impunity should be alarming to absolutely everybody regardless of politics Republicans should badly want our sense of objective reality to remain intact just in case the Democrats ever find their own appealing reality star to win back White House rupaul for instance makes America fierce again hashtag and make America peers again but we all need to commit to defending the reality of facts but it's going to take work as we've already seen a protest caused to legislators and lawsuits are effective ways to try and drag the administration back to reality but this needs to go down to a personal level as well we should make extra effort on social media to try and verify stories before passing them on especially if they confirm our pre-existing biases ask questions of yourself like is this a source I know and recognize has any one fact check this does it link to primary sources and do those sources match what the story says and if you see an outlet repeatedly getting things wrong and never correcting it maybe stop trusting it whether that outlet is some idiots blog or the White House and and because I know our president will not follow any of those suggestions partly because rightfully he does not watch this show so if there is one small way we wanted to try and sneak some useful facts into his media diet as we now know he watches morning cable news forum so we've actually created a series of commercials in an attempt to bring him up to speed also information shows that we know he watches every day take a look the pension catheter patient I'm a professional cowboy and I use catheters been cowboy in for 25 years and there's two things I know I don't like pain when I cat and the nuclear triad consists of land-based missile submarine launch missiles and aerial bombers this increases our ability to strike back any event one of those is destroyed and deters an attack on us or our allies so that's the nuclear triad in case you're the kind of person who might really need to know that all these tunnels in the DC area until we shut down we also plan to educate Donald Trump one by one on topics we're pretty sure he doesn't know about here's just a space it might seem like a show of strength to kill the families of terrorists but according to the Geneva Convention it's actually a war crime not all black people live in the inner city and not all people in the inner cities are black and there's something they may not know appetizer fork entree put now I know we can sometimes feel as if you are the only person in the world but as you can see here there are actually many non you people we call those other people just because sometimes it's cold that don't mean there's no global warming you're confusing climate with weather partner Gabon is a country on the west coast of Africa Tiffany kill me kisum the unemployment rate is a carefully calculated measure derived from a monthly survey conducted by two federal agencies and has been the agreed-upon standard since 1948 and that little fella boy is what we call but the tourists just remember Donald if you don't know it's okay to ask see you tomorrow [Applause]

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 33,563,064

Rating: 4.7100015 out of 5

Keywords: last week tonight, last week tonight with john oliver, trump truth john oliver, trump, donald trump, trump john oliver

Id: xecEV4dSAXE

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 12 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/MacDerfus]

I want to sort by controversial but I also don't.

[u/jakeyjakjakshabadoo]

I live in a world were O'Reilly is a moderate.

[u/Coffinspired]

I'm sure someone in here has posted a clip by now, but in case some didn't see it...they're real and it's amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9wI2cE72cw

[u/GreenShield42]

I could watch Catheter Cowboy teach me basic common sense facts all day every day for the rest of my life.

[u/90sBojack]

"Trump was telling the truth about his solutions to the problems he was lying about". This pretty much sums up his whole campaign.

[u/Biomilk]

I'm pretty sure a part of my soul died when I saw that clip of Trump clutching that Breitbart article.

[u/JustAdolf-LikeCher]

Sean Hannity was actually on that banana, saying Trump was right.

[u/venusrhymeswithpenis]

"This is what makes Donald Trump so difficult to cover. What does he mean when he says words?" - CNN commentator's hot take

[u/thenamesalreadytaken]

Caillou's life is boring even for cancer kids. SAD!

Welcome back, good sir.