Venezuela: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Venezuela not to be confused with Venezuela because that is the hot new celebrity couple that's just Ben Affleck avoover sailor yeah he's happy he's happy you should be happy for him Venezuela is the country famous for giving the world oil uh seven Miss universes at six Miss worlds and of course most importantly one Wilma Valderrama who I like to think of as the Miss Universe of That 70s Show now over the last few years it has seemed like every time Venezuela has been on the news it's it's because something awful has been happening food riots and looting this is now the only daily diet Venezuelans can count on violent protesters stormed the National Assembly Sunday even punching some lawmakers chaos and Caracas are still on police helicopter fires on Venezuela's Supreme Court the clashes in Caracas between protesters and police are looking more like all-out War it's true things in Venezuela have been extremely groomed so fair warning here this is not going to be one of those feel-good Last Week Tonight stories like slippers or everything looks okay at the pudding factory or a genocide but it's only happening to balloon animals and it has been hard to keep up with events in Venezuela due to the hurricane of that we've all been dealing with here although if you follow conservative media at all you may have seen it frequently painted as the inevitable dire consequences of a socialist government for a case in point just watch this Infowars reporter quizzing an extremely chill Bernie Sanders supporter well you know Venezuela right I've heard of it a majority of the country is currently eating rats while their politicians are drinking champagne on a daily basis well I'm saying since if Bernie Sanders were President right and he wanted to bring the same ideas as social for socialism into this country don't do you think that would be a benefit uh yeah but I just told you Venezuela's eating rats but I just want people to have health care honey I don't want like the same thing oh my gosh people have like worms in your brain honestly [Applause] for that Infowars reporter she essentially just got served by sassy Popeye but what you do have there is a nice distillation of the current level of political discourse in America two people who don't really know what they're talking about condescending to each other nonsensically until one of them lands a sick bird but what is happening in Venezuela is not just extremely important it is absolutely worth paying attention to because this is not just a story about socialism there are plenty of socialist countries that look nothing like Venezuela it's a story about epic mismanagement so epic that a nation of 31 million people with the largest oil reserves in the world have been forced to resort to some pretty creative forms of protest social media Ablaze for the past few days encouraging protesters to fill jars and bags with human feces this is one of our last options says this masked man we are calling it cocktails yes who put off cocktails named of course after the Soviet Premiere vyachas laugh pupitov who was Infamous for pooping in Jaws and throwing them at people a little bit of history for you there and while while that is funny because you know it's poop it is also desperate people resorting to a desperate measure and given that next Sunday Venezuela is having their presidential election tonight we thought we'd check in on what's been happening there to try and understand how Venezuela got into this mess and how despite making it even worse their current president Nicolas Maduro seen here absolutely going to town on a Nana is almost certainly going to win despite having the support of only around a fifth of the population and to understand anything about present-day Venezuela you really have to start with maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez shown here looking understandably smug about the fact that he's got a bird in a hat on his shoulder now Chavez was massively popular in Venezuela beloved for both his generous social programs and his Larger than Life personality every Sunday he staged Marathon TV broadcasts that sometimes ran up to eight hours on a show Aldo Presidente the show featured special guests dance numbers and prize giveaways over here we have flat screen TVs it's the opposite of capitalism here you go on TVs is truly the opposite of capitalism then the most successful socialist leader in history is comrade Drew Carey now Chavez could act the way that he did because Venezuela was oil rich and over the course of his presidency he took more and more State control over their National Oil Company enabling him to fund programs benefiting the poor and when that company protested some of the changes that he was making he responded by using his TV show to address its Executives directly I'm firing the following people Mr Juan Fernandez you were fired from petroleum of Venezuela Eddie Ramirez thank you very much you were fired also Mariana Rodriguez you are not fired but if you don't stop talking to your boyfriend on speakerphone you absolutely will be and Mateo Martinez if you use the office kitchen to microwave fish one more time so help me I'm gonna have you murdered now now to be to refer to Chavez many of his social programs were initially effective during his tenure the poverty rate was nearly halved and to this day many Venezuelans Revere Chavez to a dramatic degree the late president's eyes are painted on public buildings as if watching over the revolution this man even tattooing the eyes onto his forehead that's the image the eyes of our Supreme Commander Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias the eyes that see the world the whole world now that is dedication right there I like my president so much I want him to watch me masturbate for the rest of my life because that's what those eyes are going to see they'll see other things but it's they're also seeing that and and the thing is some of Chavez's programs could have been sustainable if he pursued a sound economic policy and run a tight ship but not only did he stop saving oil revenues in a rainy day fund he also oversaw a government that Transparency International found to be the most corrupt country in Latin America and remember Latin America has Colombia in it a country where the only campaign Finance law is please report all bribes consisting of more than 10 kilos of cocaine still as long as the price of oil went up forever and Chavez never died the cracks could have been papered over unfortunately in 2014 the price of oil plummeted from over a hundred dollars a barrel to just fifty dollars a barrel just one year after Chavez plummeted from being alive to being very much dead and and here is where Maduro the big banana fan comes in because because he was Chavez's hand-picked successor but unfortunately had neither his booming economy nor his Charisma although he has desperately tried to make up for that even going so far as to tell people that he'd received messages from the spirit of Chavez who'd visited him in the form of a little bird it's a story he's told repeatedly and sometimes even throws in sound effects now what I like the most about that other than the whistling which I like very much is is the idea that when powerful leaders die they become Birds because that is a pretty humiliating second act unless my people to Greatness and now I will bath my lunch into my child's mouth and fly into a glass window and look I don't want to say that maduro's child offensive hasn't been working but just watch this moment from a TV appearance where he was reading messages from viewers live on air Moises David tells me Nicolas Maduro suck on it you suck on your own [Music] you can suck yourself yes that's right Maduro essentially appeared on a segment of celebrities read mean tweets completely by accident and the thing is it's easy to see why Maduro has pissed people off because he has managed Venezuela's economic crisis in the worst possible way he's doubled down on many of Chavez's most unsound policies like unrealistic currency and price controls while attempting to make up for missing Revenue by simply creating more money and as a result inflation has exploded with the IMF forecasting 13 000 inflation for 2018. and and to give you an idea of just how ridiculous that can look this was a trip to a Venezuelan market last year the currency is so devalued some shopkeepers weigh the money rather than waste time counting and if residents are lucky enough to find food on the shelves prices are out of sight this plantain costs what your house costs 25 years ago wow I mean there's clearly two options there either inflation is completely out of hand or that is one incredible plantain I mean World Class by time and inflation is just one of many reasons why uh why many Venezuelans are struggling to find or even afford basic necessities like medicine or food and those shortages have had some terrible consequences this food shortage is widespread over the last year three quarters of the population has lost an average of almost 20 pounds look how fat I used to be this is how many holes I had to make in my belt on the Maduro diet yes the Maduro diet that is actually now a commonly used phrase in Venezuela and it's a very healthy sounding term for a truly horrifying situation it's like saying Jim Jones was the pioneer of the Jonestown juice cleanse and and it is it is not like Maduro isn't aware that people are starving in fact during one of his media appearances a reporter noticed that the video feed cut away every time Maduro helped himself to the plates of charcuterie and cakes so he knew that eating would look insensitive although those camera cutaways haven't always worked because just watch this clip that went viral last year and and know that that what he's saying here doesn't matter what's important for you to remember is he's about to think that the camera is off him [Music] yeah he just housed an empanada in front of a starving nation and come on Maduro a nationwide famine is no time for fourth meal and and if you think that is the most tone-deaf reaction to Venezuela's Mass food shortages just wait until you see him do some pretty insensitive crowd work why are you so skinny Gustavo have you been jogging what happened to him maduro's diet [Laughter] maduro's diet makes you hard huh no need for Viagra wow that is the most awkward presidential attempt to be in on the joke since Herbert Hoover claimed that Hoover towns make you wet without the need for cornmeal or castor oil they they didn't totally understand how vaginas Works back then and even even when the Maduro government has tried to help it's done it in a truly ham-fisted way for instance Maduro has proposed a so-called rabbit plan basically a program to encourage Venezuelans to breed and eat bunnies but when people started putting bows on them and keeping them as pets instead his administration gave a pretty callous correction a rabbit is not a pet it's two and a half kilos of meat that is high in protein with no cholesterol holy a rabbit is just two and a half kilos of meat that sounds less like a government pronouncement and more like a tank top model and bundo used to wear back in his clubbing days as for economic policy Maduro has generally lived in complete denial his most recent plan to address rampant inflation was to introduce a new version of their currency the Bolivar just with three zeros lopped off the end and in case any part of you thinks that might actually fix their inflation problem we asked Yale Economist Robert Schiller if that's how money Works take a look no that's not how money works thanks Robert thanks sir I appreciate it good to know and I mean in the absence of solutions Maduro has reached for the next best thing blaming someone else over the years he suggested that the United States was responsible for injecting Chavez with cancer he said that the U.S was sabotaging Venezuelan ATMs and he's chalked up protest against him to this this is part of a scheme of non-conventional war that the U.S has perfected throughout recent decades okay so here's the thing there America has undoubtedly done some awful things in Central and South America we've backed coup attempts uh hunters and atrocities in Chile Argentina and Guatemala but refreshingly what's happening in Venezuela is actually not our fault accusing America of creating Venezuela's crisis is about as Fair as accusing O.J Simpson of murdering Princess Diana I'm not saying it will be completely out of character it just happens to not be true in this particular instance so that's that's basically what I'm saying and yet and yet despite all of this Maduro is about to dominate this election like he absolutely dominated that banana so how is that possible well he's basically bent Venezuela's Democratic process to his will back in 2015 when his party lost control of the National Assembly he responded by stacking the Supreme Court with 13 new justices and then simply created a whole new assembly wants to create a political assembly with vast power to rewrite the Constitution and potentially dismantle the democratically elected legislature all of the candidates today are Maduro supporters including his wife and son now just just think about the sheer scale of what Maduro did there that'd be like if here Trump put a bunch of his friends on the Supreme Court who then happily allowed him to create a second Congress that outranks the real Congress and whose members include Melania and Eric and which by the way you just know he'd call dongress you know he would do that and you know it and please take that down before he gets any ideas I already regret bringing it up now on top of that Madura has either jailed or barred from public office a number of his political opponents and has even turned down help from other countries and agencies including food and Medicine he has turned down food and Medicine telling Venezuelans that humanitarian Aid is part of a conspiracy to overthrow his government all of which has left Venezuelans feeling so hopeless that nearly one million of them have left the country over the past two years and many of those who've remained are now at their Breaking Point situations [Music] that's absolutely horrifying and when you listen to her it starts to hate you that poo poo tough cocktails might actually turn out to be pretty restrained and the most frustrating thing here is there aren't a lot of great options to help the Trump Administration has imposed some sanctions and is considering more but if they're not extremely careful those could wind up causing even more hardship so at this point seeing as Maduro won't listen to reason or to the will of his own people perhaps it's time to call in the one voice that we know he'll listen to so ladies and Gentlemen please welcome a bird [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] it's me a bird remember we spoke a few years back okay and if you're thinking this is just Wilmer Valderrama and the birds who would well you should think it was Hugo Chavez so you're not exactly the authority on what's Birds but listen up buddy because I'm two and a half kilos of high protein and meat and I'm here to tell you you're in some serious trouble compadre is that a good sign when the people are throwing their poop at you I should know I'm a bird come on man I invented the poopoo top cocktails yeah that's right every time a bird poops on you you should know it was a political statement also that we aimed and I thought it was funny Maduro the whole world can see what mess you are making even TV hosts here in America like that idiot [Applause] a little Slack that's just bad time in Zazu foreign is Maduro you need to accept humanitarian Aid and cool it with the dictator stuff well I've got a poo poo top cocktail with your name on it right here all right this is it for me and because I am a real actual bird I'm going to exit with effortless Beauty and Grace [Music] [Applause] foreign

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 9,791,124

Keywords: venezuela, venezuela crisis, wilmer valderrama, john oliver venezuela, last week tonight venezuela

Id: IYfgvS0FA7U

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Mon May 14 2018