Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s12e25 Episode Script
Presidential Libraries
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us. It has been a busy week!
Eric Adams dropped out
of New York's mayoral race,
the NFL "controversially" gave
the Super Bowl halftime show
to one of the hottest, most
commercially successful people alive,
and on Wednesday,
the government shut down,
disrupting federal programs and forcing
hundreds of thousands of employees
to go without paychecks,
something that Trump then celebrated
by going on a meme-posting spree,
including this video.
What the fuck is that?
I don't know what's worse there,
Trump in a hood playing the cowbell,
doubling down
on this racist sombrero shit,
giving JD Vance cheekbones he's never
had in his wettest of dreams,
or the tacit admission
that Russ Vought, of Project 2025,
is basically in charge
of everything right now.
It is all very bad. Now, just before
the government shut down,
Tuesday saw a rare gathering of nearly
800 of the military's top officials.
They'd been summoned on short notice
to hear Secretary Pete Hegseth
give a speech in which he complained
about so-called
"stupid rules of engagement",
wokeness, and to a surprising degree,
physical appearance.
Today, at my direction, the era
of unprofessional appearance is over.
No more beardos.
Frankly, it's tiring to look out
at combat formations
or really any formation
and see fat troops.
Likewise, it's completely unacceptable
to see fat generals and admirals
in the halls of the Pentagon
and leading commands
around the country and the world.
It's a bad look.
Oh, my God. I cannot think of a worse
reason to be dragged to a meeting
than to get a lecture on appearance
from someone
who looks like Mattel's first
"Killed a Pledge During Rush" Ken doll.
And that wasn't all,
because Hegseth was then followed
by the commander in chief, who gave
his own meandering address,
including this sleepy digression
about boats.
In the Second World War, there were
freighters and different types,
but we were doing a ship a day.
And now we don't do ships.
And I'm not a fan of some
of the ships you're doing.
I'm a very aesthetic person,
I don't like some of the ships
you're doing aesthetically.
They say, it's stealth.
I say, that's not stealth.
An ugly ship is not necessary
in order to say you're stealth.
You know, he is right.
We don't do ships anymore.
And it's not stealth to be ugly.
And during the Second World War,
there were freighters
and different types.
You can actually read
about those insights and more
in the helpful pamphlet
"Grand-dad Used to Sing:"
"How to Recognize Dementia in Loved
Ones and When to Say Goodbye."
But it wasn't all body-shaming,
boatshaming and weird tangents,
as Trump also repeatedly hinted
at the use of troops
in Democrat-run cities,
with lines like this.
What they've done to San Francisco,
Chicago, New York, Los Angeles,
they're very unsafe places.
And we're going to straighten
them out one by one.
And this is going to be a major part
for some of the people in this room.
That's a war, too.
It's a war from within.
Okay, set aside just how chilling
the phrase "war from within" is,
did he swallow a fistful of Xanax
before walking onto that stage?
'Cause he has the energy level of
a cat who just walked into a sunbeam.
That basically sounds
like civil war ASMR.
Obviously, threatening military action
against your own people is alarming.
Especially given we've seen troops
deployed to L.A. and D.C. this year
and Trump has now ordered similar
deployments to Portland and Memphis.
In fact, the day after that speech,
Hegseth went to Memphis,
and stood behind Stephen Miller,
as he bragged about
a ramped-up federal presence there,
in a speech that I'm sure
sounded tough in his head.
The gangbangers that you deal
with, they think that they're ruthless.
They have no idea
how ruthless we are.
They think they're tough? They
have no idea how tough we are.
They think that they're hardcore?
We are so much more hardcore
than they are!
What a fucking loser!
And I gotta say, at this point,
white supremacists just have
to be embarrassed, right?
This is your champion right here?
A man who looks like he still
has a soft spot on his skull?
But the thing is,
it is more than just talk.
Because yet again this week,
we saw nauseating footage
of ICE raids around the country.
With perhaps the worst
happening in Chicago,
where federal agents handcuffed
a city council member,
tossed a tear gas canister
onto a busy street near a school,
and raided a whole apartment building,
turning apartments upside down.
And the details of that raid
are grotesque.
Neighbors tell us
there were dozens of ICE agents.
Neighbors like Eboni Watson says
they ducked for cover
as they heard
several flash bangs go off.
They was terrified, the kids
was crying. People was screaming.
They looked very distraughted.
And I was out there crying
when I seen the little girl
come around the corner
'cause they was bringing the kids out
too, had them zip tied to each other.
That's all I kept asking, where's
the morality? Where's the human?
One of them literally laughed.
He was standing right here.
"Fuck them kids."
That is completely unacceptable
coming from a federal fucking agent
who has zip-tied children.
Honestly, the only person who might
be allowed to mutter "fuck them kids"
is the guy who has to clean the piss
out of the Chuck E. Cheese ball pit.
But absolutely nobody else.
But as grim as all of this has been,
the one glimmer of hope has been
the strength of the pushback from
local communities around the country.
There've been widespread protests
against ICE, and some of them funny,
from someone dancing
in a giant frog costume
outside an ICE detention center
in Portland,
to a protestor outside Chicago
holding up this excellent sign,
which read, "I fucked two of you
on Grindr, parentheses, pretty sure."
Which is very good. The only way
it could possibly be better
is if the "pretty sure" was only
because the guy couldn't remember
if it was Grindr or Scruff.
"I definitely fucked you and you."
"I just want to be accurate
regarding how we got there."
And in Rochester last month,
ICE cornered some men
working on a roof and were waiting
for them to come down to arrest them.
But a local pastor went on social
media to summon people to protest,
and just watch what happened next.
A chaotic scene on Westminster Road
Tuesday morning in Rochester
as federal agents were carrying out an
ICE enforcement-removal operation.
They're here putting on a roof
trying to make a dollar,
and paying taxes on that dollar,
and ICE was here bothering them.
So, I came to bother ICE.
Details from federal authorities
are limited,
but cameras captured a Border Patrol
vehicle at the scene with flat tires.
In response to the large crowd,
agents left Westminster
and the SUV was towed
a few blocks away.
Hey, hey, hey, goodbye!
Perfect.
Well done to everyone involved.
And I absolutely love
that that woman said,
"I came to bother ICE",
because that seems reasonable to me.
If ICE can show up and bother
some guys at their roofing job,
then bystanders should be able
to bother ICE
at their state sanctioned
kidnapping job. It is only fair.
And look, this administration
is clearly still hell-bent
on trying to intimidate
communities with shows of force.
Which is why it is so important
for them to be met with strong pushback
each and every time.
Because this administration
is obsessed with appearances.
And the thing is, they can dress up
their bureaucrats as the Grim Reaper.
They can taunt gangbangers about
being more "hardcore" than they are.
They can kick out all the beardos
and fat-shame our ships.
But what they cannot do
is cover up the ugliness of
what they are doing right now.
It deserves to be pushed back on and
exposed at every available opportunity.
Because if we do not do that,
then, much like two ICE agents
somewhere outside Chicago,
I'm pretty sure we are fucked.
And now, this.
And Now:
Conservatives Are Not Happy
About the 2026 Super Bowl
Halftime Performer.
Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl
is a very bad idea.
I should share
with Mark that when I texted Larry,
he wrote me back,
"Bugs Bunny? I don't know
if we should do that on our show."
No, it's Bad Bunny.
A reminder, Bad Bunny is an outspoken
critic of ICE and the president.
It's, you know, America's pastime.
It's football.
And we're gonna have the halftime
performance in Spanish?
Imagine if Bad Bunny
sang all of his Bad Bunny songs
in Arabic or Chinese or Russian.
You think maybe this story would get
more attention than it is today?
You know, they call him
the king of the Latin trap.
The trap is hiring somebody
who's partisan
and who has very dark images
in his videos.
I'll give you an example of this
video where he appears as Nosferatu.
Bad Bunny. We have a picture
of Bad Bunny? Technical issues.
Who are we going to have next year?
P Diddy?
I remember in the 1990s,
they once had
a great big 50th anniversary
of Snoopy and Charlie Brown.
Snoopy and Charlie Brown.
Now we have the bunny.
Do you think Bad Bunny is a good
choice for the Super Bowl?
I'm not that, like, knowledgeable
about him, but it seems fine.
And I don't know why it's a big deal.
Seems like a great American artist.
- So, sure.
- He's not an American artist.
He's Puerto Rican.
That's part of America, dear.
Moving on. Our main story tonight
concerns presidential libraries,
voted number one nice little activity
by Retired Dads Quarterly.
Presidential libraries are incredible
repositories of documents, artifacts
and occasionally, displays like
this one, at the Reagan Library,
really laying out
that man's priorities.
You might know that
President Reagan once said,
"There's nothing as good for the inside
of a man as the outside of a horse."
The exhibit about Rancho del Cielo,
the ranch in the sky,
describes his feelings
about his beloved ranch.
Reagan once said,
"You look at the beauty of it and God
really did shed his grace on America."
And there's a gallery
about his "sidekick",
as he called her, Mrs. Reagan.
Yeah, apparently, it goes horse
then wife, the way God intended.
And look, my position on horses is
clear, I think, but Reagan's quote,
"There's nothing as good for the inside
of a man as the outside of a horse",
might be the dirtiest thing
I've ever heard.
He should've been put
on a watch list.
He should've been banned from petting
zoos and merry-go-rounds.
I sincerely hope they don't have horses
in hell, because they are not safe.
But a weird horse exhibit
is actually par for the course,
presidential libraries often have
eye-catching artifacts
displayed throughout, from
Gerald Ford's letter pardoning Nixon,
to the microphone FDR used
for his fireside chats.
And some even host exhibits that have
nothing to do with American history,
or indeed the president themselves,
like this one.
Come experience Xtreme Bugs
at the Clinton Presidential Center,
where spiders and ladybugs
are as big as cars.
Be transported into a new world that
puts you up close and personal
with big, larger-than-life bugs,
all in their natural habitat.
Hold on! "In their natural habitat?"
I'm no insect expert despite looking
like I spent my high school years
collecting bugs instead of friends,
but I'm pretty sure giant spiders'
natural habitat
is not a museum
dedicated to Bill Clinton.
It is, as we all know,
any New York restaurant
with a C from
the Department of Health.
Still, as you've undoubtedly noticed,
the subject of presidential libraries
has been in the news a lot lately,
primarily because
of a flurry of donations to Trump's.
Tonight, a 16 million settlement,
Paramount, parent company of CBS,
announcing it will pay
President Trump's legal fees
and give money to his
future presidential library.
President Trump has
signed an agreement with Meta
to settle a lawsuit that he filed
against the company and its CEO.
According to a spokesperson,
the settlement terms are 25 million
with 22 million of it going toward
Trump's future presidential library.
In the settlement,
ABC agreeing to donate 15 million
to Trump's presidential library.
Trump's presidential library foundation
seems to be the preferred vehicle
for what I'm apparently legally not
allowed to call "shakedowns"
or "extortion attempts",
so I won't.
It's actually one of many things
I'm not allowed to say,
like that the Chipotle guac's
secret ingredient is frog jizz,
that's why it costs so much,
or that I personally believe
dozens of men have died on the set
of "Mission Impossible" movies.
There is just no way Tom Cruise is
the first attempting those stunts.
And you know that Scientology
is covering it up.
If they can hide Shelly Miscavige
for 18 years,
they can definitely bury a few handfuls
of stunt men, no problem.
Anyway, all of those things
are things that I'm not allowed to say,
so let's all agree that I didn't.
But the thing is,
as is so often the case,
Trump is merely laying bare a system
that's been problematic all along.
Because while presidential libraries
enjoy the reputation
of being esteemed guardians of history,
the truth is,
they've always been both a little
more, and a little less, than that.
So given that, tonight, let's
talk about presidential libraries,
what they actually are,
who's in charge of them,
why Trump may supercharge
the problems that they can cause.
And let's start with the fact
that the very term "library"
is a bit of a misnomer.
In fact, here is Harry Truman,
a few years after his opened,
setting the record straight.
This library is not a library.
It's an archives building
with the idea of keeping the records
of the government in an orderly manner.
The objective is to obtain
microfilm reports
on all the presidential papers.
It'll take a little
while to get that done,
but when you do get it done,
this will be the center of the study
of the presidency of the United States.
Yeah, that is basically it.
And by the way,
do you remember
when presidents were boring?
It almost feels strange
to watch a clip of one
without the fear he's gonna
throw in a slur
or argue Joy Behar
should be imprisoned.
Back then, presidents kept their racism
and sexism away from the cameras
and just put them in their policies.
It was a simpler time.
But like Truman just said,
presidential libraries aren't libraries
in the traditional sense,
in that you can come
and check books out.
They're actually two things
fused together:
archives containing
the official records from a presidency
for researchers and scholars,
and a museum,
showcasing that presidency
for various visiting dads
and bored school kids who already went
to the planetarium last year.
The first presidential library
was established by FDR
who wanted a place "to house
the presidential papers and gifts"
"accumulated
during his administration."
Before then,
when a president's term ended,
he'd leave the White House
with all his records,
many of which
ended up destroyed.
George Washington's were apparently
"extensively mutilated by rats".
Most of William Henry Harrison's
"succumbed to flames when
his log cabin burned down."
And Chester Arthur's son had
most of his father's papers burned
in three garbage cans.
And if you automatically knew
Chester Arthur was the 21st president
and not the name
of a snack food character,
congratulations,
you are our exact audience.
The point is, after FDR,
presidents began
gifting their records to the federal
government to be housed in libraries.
And that is a good thing,
among other reasons,
it is why we have this incredible audio
of LBJ
calling the head of the company that
made his trousers, with a request.
The crotch, down where your nuts
hang, is always a little too tight.
So, when you make 'em up give me
a inch that I can let out there,
because they cut me.
It's just like riding a wire fence.
Let's see if you can't leave me about
an inch from where the zipper ends
Back to my bunghole.
That is just excellent.
We've played that clip before on this
show and we will play it again.
Not only does he burp
in the middle of the call
like a man whose nuts
haven't breathed in years,
but every time I hear it,
I'm forced to wonder,
just how big were LBJ's balls?
I mean, just in terms of fruit,
are we talking plums or pomelos?
Kiwis or mangoes? Clementines
or big honkin' navel oranges?
If I could go back in time and ask LBJ
one question, it would be,
"Did you put out the hit on JFK?"
But if I could ask two, I'd say,
"If we're measuring circumference,
do we need inches or do we need feet?"
Now, initially, the handover
of records was voluntary,
but after Nixon tried to ensure
access to audio tapes from his
presidency would be limited to himself,
and laid plans that
they'd be destroyed at some point,
Congress made it mandatory,
codifying into law
that presidential records
belong to the public
and are to be turned over
at the end of their term,
to be controlled by National Archives
and Records Administration, or NARA.
And it is then the library archivists'
jobs to catalogue everything,
which is no small feat.
Because "records" doesn't just mean
papers and emails.
It can mean all kinds of shit, as this
Clinton Library employee explains.
You can find fine art in a box.
You can open up a box
and find head of state gifts
that are 1.000 years old.
You can find just about anything
when you open up a box,
it's sort of like
every day's Christmas.
Many of the gifts were sent
to President Clinton by the public,
including a statue of American
basketball star Michael Jordan.
This is something that someone
thought the president would like to have
and sent it off to the White House.
Yeah, someone thought
President Clinton would like to have
that statue of Michael Jordan.
A sculptural rendering of his airness
soaring over, I want to say,
the charred remains of his enemies?
And, you know what,
congrats to that person,
their gift ended up
in a place of honor,
specifically, in an industrial sized
file cabinet being lightly groped
by a woman with the most "archival
librarian" energy I've ever seen,
present company excepted.
But, again, the archives are just
one part of a presidential library,
most of its physical structure
is a museum
dedicated to that president's
life and history.
If you've been to one, that is
probably what you walked through.
But it's worth understanding
how both halves,
the archives and the museum,
interact,
and how they came
to be set up in the first place.
The first thing to understand is that
these buildings aren't publicly funded.
In fact, here's Jimmy Carter,
at the dedication ceremony
for George H.W. Bush's library,
describing how it works.
As many of you may not know,
all the funds that are invested
in presidential libraries,
none of it comes
from the federal government.
We have to raise the money
and then turn over the library
to the federal government.
He's right. If a president wants
a library, and they all do,
they have to raise
the money themselves.
It's one of the many quirks
of being a president,
alongside the fact that,
if the first lady dies in office,
you have to remarry
the White House Easter Bunny.
That is true.
It is in the Constitution.
So, to pay for their libraries,
presidents have traditionally created
"private foundations that raise
money from a variety of sources,"
"build and equip the libraries,
and then eventually donate them"
"to the government,
either through deed or lease."
Now, once that happens,
by and large,
"federal government pays to run them
and federal employees operate them."
And that is not cheap, by the way.
The government spends around
100 million dollars a year operating,
maintaining
and improving these libraries,
whether that's repair work
to a building's facade,
or, in the case of the LBJ Museum
in Texas, something more intimate.
Though it is in an area
now closed to visitors,
the animatronic LBJ still works.
Everyone loves the animatronic LBJ.
Everyone can relate to it.
People enjoy humor.
In the next few days, though,
the half fascinating, half creepy LBJ
will be taken apart and moved.
It's just a matter
of taking his clothes off.
What are you doing?!
Don't do that in front of us!
No one needs to see
an animatronic LBJ
stripped down to his softball-sized
nuts and bunghole.
Rest in peace, LBJ,
you'd have crushed on OnlyFans.
But this weird
public-private partnership,
where the library gets built
by a president and his foundation,
then operated by the government,
means that the line between
"shrine" and "official archive"
can get unhelpfully blurry.
Especially because those foundations
are often run
by the presidents' family and friends,
who often then help
to personally curate the exhibits.
And what that means is,
on the museum side of things,
especially when a library first opens,
exhibits can be extremely onesided.
Take the Reagan Library,
which has been called
"a Graceland for conservatives".
It features everything from an actual
plane that served as Air Force One,
to a section of the Berlin Wall, to
an Irish pub the Reagans once visited,
which was "purchased
by the Reagan Foundation,"
"and recreated
as a place to sell snacks,"
"complete with the bottle,
glasses,"
"and part of the bar the Reagans once
touched, under reliquary-like glass."
I'm not surprised that the actor
president turned his library
into "what if Planet Hollywood
but with more Gorbachev",
but "Ronny R. and his sidekick
wife touched this piece of wood"
"while having a beer and ignoring
AIDS" feels a bit much to me.
When it comes to one of the biggest
scandals of Reagan's presidency,
Iran-Contra,
when the museum first opened,
and for years afterward,
it didn't mention it at all.
And that is not a one-off. On the day
that Clinton's library opened,
it became clear there were some
significant editorial choices made.
For all of President Clinton's fans
who braved the weather today,
he certainly has his critics.
And they complain the new library
gives little attention
to the impeachment scandal that
dominated Clinton's second term.
Inside the museum, just one alcove
deals with impeachment
and characterizes it
as a struggle for power.
Most of the building is filled
with pictures and memorabilia
from more accomplished
and happier times.
Yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it?
If you asked any rando on the street
to name something that defined
Clinton's presidency they'd say,
"Probably baseball. That guy loved
baseballs, to a genuine fault."
"If I remember, his love of baseball
almost derailed his presidency."
Now, that pattern continued
with George W. Bush's museum,
where a historian pointed out
that a display about the Iraq War
boldly claims, "No stockpiles of
weapons of mass destruction are found"
"although Iraq's WMD-related program
activities are still a threat."
Which is a big 'ol swing to take.
At that point,
you'd almost be better off
just having the whole Iraq War section
be a giant sign reading "Oops!"
At least that would be
historically honest.
But perhaps the most extreme case
of whitewashing was at Nixon's library,
which initially opened without a
partnership with the National Archives.
When the library first opened,
it taught visitors that the Watergate
was a coup orchestrated
by the media and Democratic elites,
that the enemies list was the product
of a rogue presidential staffer,
and that Nixon didn't do anything
his predecessors hadn't done,
except get caught.
And just set aside
how ahistorical that is,
why would you want that
to be your legacy?
"Yeah, I was a criminal,
but so was everyone else,"
"it's just that I was also
embarrassingly bad at it."
Now, the Nixon Library did eventually
get folded into the National Archives
and their Watergate exhibit
is now more accurate.
Though,
it's also worth pointing out:
the Nixon Foundation apparently
tried to pressure the National Archives
to fire the library director before
he could finish updating that exhibit.
And the fact presidents can exert
a heavy influence over exhibits
is so well-known that the former
director of the Herbert Hoover Library
had a pretty grim piece of advice
if you are planning to visit
any presidential library.
People generally go, though,
initially to the library
as soon as it's opened
and then don't return again.
I tell people, wait 25 years,
if you've got 25 years.
Yeah.
That is both a little depressing
and also might be the worst
advertising campaign I have ever heard.
"This'll get good in 25 years"
is not what you say to
promote a business,
if anything, it's what you say
to reassure brand new parents.
"Look, just give it 25 years,
then it does get kind of fun."
But he is right, presidential libraries
do tend to evolve over time.
FDR's has worked to update
their message on the Holocaust,
describing his slowness to admit
Jewish refugees until late in the war
and reckoning with his internment
of Japanese Americans.
And Truman's underwent a huge
update and now encourages visitors
to engage
in a debate over the question,
"If you were president Truman
in 1945,"
"would you have dropped
the bomb?"
Which is a fun little discussion
for a family to have together,
and likely to result
in an awkward drive home
after Dad admits he'd have
dropped more and bigger bombs.
So, that is the museum
half of the libraries.
But remember,
there's also the archive side.
And while it's supposed
to be separate,
ex-presidents can exert a surprising
amount of control there, too.
Because their foundations get to consult
on the library's first director
and can effectively veto
anyone that they don't like.
That person also gets to oversee
the archives side, which is a big deal.
Because by law, all of the documents
from a presidency
are supposed to be requestable
by the public
five years after their term ends.
But as a practical matter, that's
basically impossible for them to do.
Funding for the National Archives
has remained stagnant
for the last 30 years,
which, as this archivist explains,
has led to an enormous backlog.
When that five-year window hits,
almost immediately
we have a backlog of thousands
of FOIA requests
that we can't possibly respond to
within the 10 days under
the Freedom of Information Act.
Yeah, he's right, and he's actually
massively understating things there.
'Cause when it comes to Reagan,
Bush, and Clinton's records,
the government estimated in 2007
that they wouldn't be fully open
and accessible for 100 years.
At that point, no one's going to have
time to analyze Reagan's papers.
We'll all be too busy dealing with
the fallout of World War IV,
presumably launched
by President Beast.
Although don't worry,
the video of him launching
the nukes did do numbers,
so it's not all bad news.
And those massive backlogs
mean that the library director
has a huge amount of power,
when it comes to the order in which
documents get reviewed to be released,
as they can choose to frontload subjects
that make a president look good,
and delay the ones
that are less flattering.
And before any get released,
the former president gets notified
and has the chance to object.
Which is a lot of power.
Because if you told me,
"Everything on your laptop is gonna
be released over the next 100 years,"
"and you get
to decide the order",
I'm gonna release the scripts
from this show first,
and my erotic Wallace and Gromit
fan fiction
long after I am fucking dead.
So, look, it is pretty clear:
when it comes to their libraries,
presidents get to heavily
thumb the scale of history,
both in terms of the exhibits
you can see,
and the documents that you can't.
But there is one more
big issue here.
Because remember,
as Carter mentioned,
presidents are generally the ones
raising money for these buildings.
And it is not a small amount either.
Over time, libraries have gotten
significantly more expensive.
FDR's cost about 5 million
in today's dollars.
Clinton's cost 165 million,
George W. Bush's cost 327 million
and the upcoming Obama Presidential
Center in Chicago
is estimated at around 830 million.
And I do hope at least part
of that money has gone
to acquiring the rights to the single
best 10 seconds of TV I've ever seen.
Barack Obama, it will almost be
an honor to kill you.
Yep.
That is a psychic gorilla
who goes back in time
to try to kill a young Barack Obama.
It is a scene
from "Legends of Tomorrow"
and I would argue that
Obama's presidential library
would be incomplete without it.
And the thing about fundraising
for these libraries is,
there are basically
no rules around it.
Well, to be fair, there is one rule:
registered lobbyists have to disclose
donations over 200 dollars.
But that is the end of the rules.
And that throws the door
wide open for corruption.
Because while still in office,
presidents can solicit
unlimited library foundation donations
from absolutely anybody on Earth,
including foreign nationals,
individuals seeking presidential pardons
and corporations with federal contracts.
This clearly incentivizes a president
to fundraise while in office,
since that is when they have
the most political cachet.
And since most presidential
foundations enjoy tax exempt status,
it's also a pretty compelling offer
for donors.
All of which opens up
a host of problems,
up to and including
accusations of bribery.
This has been an issue
for decades now.
Bill Clinton caught a lot of heat
at the end of his presidency
after he did this.
Among his last acts, he pardoned
billionaire fugitive Marc Rich.
A man who never stood trial
is now cleared for crimes
that could've meant
300 years in prison.
That's Rich's ex-wife, Denise,
hugging and kissing the Clintons.
She's a New York socialite
who's donated more than
a million dollars to Democrats.
Thank you, Denise.
Thank you for everything you've done
to make it possible for Hillary and me
to serve.
Okay, "thanks to Denise" aside,
can we just talk for a second
about this fucking photo?
This man looks like
"The Godfather" concept art.
I've never been more
certain in my life
that someone was undeserving
of a presidential pardon
than in the three human seconds
that photo was on screen.
And the details in that case
are pretty damning.
Marc Rich had fled to Switzerland
17 years before,
after he was indicted on more
than 50 counts of wire fraud,
racketeering, trading with Iran
during an embargo
and evading more than
48 million in income taxes.
And let me reiterate: he fled.
This man was a fugitive!
He wasn't in the U.S.
fighting to clear his name.
He noped
the fuck out of the country.
But Clinton pardoned him,
which, as many pointed out at the time,
came hot on the heels of
a 450.000 donation from Denise
to, guess what,
the Clinton library foundation.
And look, I am not saying
that the runaway billionaire
funneled bribe money
through his ex-wife
to the Clintons in exchange
for immunity. I am not saying that.
What I am saying is,
if someone were to do that,
what do you think
that individual would look like?
And would they
look something like this?
I'm just asking questions here.
Now, I should say:
not every president has done this.
To his credit, Obama eschewed
directly soliciting library donations
while in office and voluntarily
disclosed donations that he received.
But he didn't have to do that.
And that is kind of the problem here.
Because all this brings us back
to Donald Trump,
who is now set to amplify every
problem that I've described so far.
Because presidential libraries
seem almost designed
to exploit his every personal failing,
from his tendency
to obfuscate his wrongdoing,
to his desire to build expensive
monuments to himself,
to a set of ethical guidelines
based more in norms than law.
Because the fact is,
as things stand right now,
someone could walk up to Trump
today with a 15 million check,
hand it to him while saying, "We love
the work that you are doing"
"and hope you'll consider
helping us out"
"with that little problem
that we were discussing earlier"
and as long as that check said,
"Pay to the order of: the Donald J.
Trump Presidential Library Foundation",
it'd be completely legal.
Though, don't worry,
what soulless, ethically bankrupt,
ass-kissing corporation would even
think of doing something like that?
Please stay the fuck
away from us.
You are not my real business daddy
and you never will be!
And the legal settlements that
we know about are bad enough,
but that's just the beginning
of the money involved here.
Funds left over from
the 239 million dollars
raised by the Trump-Vance
inaugural committee,
including millions
from tech companies and CEOs,
are also expected to be
redirected to Trump's library.
And that's not even getting into
the 400 million plane
given to Trump by Qatar,
which is also "slated to be transferred"
"to the Trump Library
shortly before he leaves office",
and that gift is being flown directly
through the library loophole.
The Constitution prohibits anyone
holding federal office
from accepting a personal gift
from a foreign head of state,
but sources say Attorney General
Pam Bondi has concluded
that this gift is, quote,
"Legally permissible,"
"because the plane is not being
given to an individual,"
"but rather to the U.S. Air Force and
then to Donald Trump's foundation."
Come on. We all know
what is going to happen here.
He's going to use
that plane while in office.
And then, instead of leaving it
for the next president to use,
he's gonna keep it for his library
and suddenly discover
he has a lot of "library-related"
business to do all over the world.
It's just completely inevitable,
kind of like how,
after Trump leaves office,
Pete Hegseth will get
his own Fox News show,
Karoline Leavitt will go
on "Dancing with the Stars"
and get voted off after two weeks,
and Stephen Miller will return
to the cocoon that he emerged from.
We all know these things
are going to happen.
While, technically, Trump doing that
could be perceived as legally dicey,
the main enforcement body
for all of this would be the IRS,
which Trump administration has been
gutting to a shell of its former self.
So, I'd say the odds of him
getting away with it look pretty high.
And it does seem notable that Trump
was given a 400 million plane by Qatar,
and then just this week,
out of absolutely nowhere,
he issued an EO declaring
any attack on Qatar
would be treated
as a threat to U.S. security.
And look, I am not saying
the U.S. military should be for sale,
but it sure feels like Qatar
just bought it awfully cheap.
In fact, I will say
the same thing to Trump
that I once said
about Kim Kardashian
turning up
for a Charmin toilet paper event:
they simply didn't pay you enough
to do as much
as you are doing for them right now.
The point is, our whole private-public
setup for presidential libraries
has resulted in a bunch
of shrine-like buildings
that presidents can raise money
for from basically any source,
with the vast majority of donations
undisclosed.
And as usual, Trump,
simply by being himself,
has very effectively shined a bright
light on all these cracks.
So, what should we do?
Well, for starters,
we should make donations to
presidential libraries more transparent
and soliciting them while in office
should be outlawed altogether.
Multiple bills have tried to do
some version of that over the years,
but they've all gone nowhere
and frankly,
I don't think that this guy is gonna
be signing one anytime soon.
As for the National Archives,
they should be getting funded
to an operational level so they
can reduce that 100-year backlog,
and actually do the important job
that they're supposed to.
Because who knows how many more
recordings at "LBJ bunghole level"
we could be missing out on?
But honestly,
maybe the main thing here
is to let go of the idea that these
giant shrines are remotely necessary,
or that they're accurate
representations of history,
and try to decouple their celebratory
function from their archival one.
And that link's actually been
wobbling for a while now.
A few years ago,
the federal government actually
handed all control
of the George W. Bush Museum
over to its private foundation.
So, the government still runs
the archives, the important part,
but when it comes to the museum,
there are no federal workers
lending legitimacy to its
whitewashed version of history.
Meanwhile,
Obama declined to build an archive
at his future presidential center,
instead opting to digitize
all his unclassified paper records.
That means that
his grand monument to himself
will be entirely privately run.
And while I know this sounds weird,
maybe that's a good thing!
But the key thing is, next time
you visit a presidential library,
and especially
one of the newer ones,
you should go in there knowing
they're not necessarily telling
the story of that president
from a historical lens,
but from a personal one.
And going forward, whenever
you hear reports that an organization,
news network, or foreign country is
giving money to a presidential library,
and I think you are going to be
hearing that over the next three years,
know that it's, at best, a personal
gift, and at worst, an active bribe.
And while clearly,
none of this is ideal,
I guess, as long as this
is how the system is operating,
then, if you can't beat them,
you should probably join them.
So, given that, please, follow me!
Because after researching this story,
we suddenly found ourselves
motivated to donate something
of real value
to any presidential library or
foundation interested in taking it.
Specifically,
what we'd like to offer is this.
It is, from our own guesstimates,
a life-size rendering of LBJ's balls.
And any presidential library
is now welcome to take these balls
as a symbol of the massive ego
it takes
to build one of these
libraries in the first place.
The only catch is,
in the grand tradition of these
buildings' engaging in quid pro quos,
we would expect
something in return.
Now, obviously, these testicles
make the most sense in LBJ's library,
and in return,
we'd be interested
in taking your animatronic
statue of him.
But we're also open to negotiation
with other foundations, too.
Just make us an offer,
whether it's a horse statue
from the Reagan Library,
or, if the Trump Foundation
is so inclined,
a full blanket pardon
for me, personally.
That is apparently something
I'm allowed to suggest!
The point is,
we are open to any and all trades,
so please do get in touch!
That is our show, thank you
so much for watching us.
We'll see you next week,
goodnight!
Call us! Call us about the balls!
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us. It has been a busy week!
Eric Adams dropped out
of New York's mayoral race,
the NFL "controversially" gave
the Super Bowl halftime show
to one of the hottest, most
commercially successful people alive,
and on Wednesday,
the government shut down,
disrupting federal programs and forcing
hundreds of thousands of employees
to go without paychecks,
something that Trump then celebrated
by going on a meme-posting spree,
including this video.
What the fuck is that?
I don't know what's worse there,
Trump in a hood playing the cowbell,
doubling down
on this racist sombrero shit,
giving JD Vance cheekbones he's never
had in his wettest of dreams,
or the tacit admission
that Russ Vought, of Project 2025,
is basically in charge
of everything right now.
It is all very bad. Now, just before
the government shut down,
Tuesday saw a rare gathering of nearly
800 of the military's top officials.
They'd been summoned on short notice
to hear Secretary Pete Hegseth
give a speech in which he complained
about so-called
"stupid rules of engagement",
wokeness, and to a surprising degree,
physical appearance.
Today, at my direction, the era
of unprofessional appearance is over.
No more beardos.
Frankly, it's tiring to look out
at combat formations
or really any formation
and see fat troops.
Likewise, it's completely unacceptable
to see fat generals and admirals
in the halls of the Pentagon
and leading commands
around the country and the world.
It's a bad look.
Oh, my God. I cannot think of a worse
reason to be dragged to a meeting
than to get a lecture on appearance
from someone
who looks like Mattel's first
"Killed a Pledge During Rush" Ken doll.
And that wasn't all,
because Hegseth was then followed
by the commander in chief, who gave
his own meandering address,
including this sleepy digression
about boats.
In the Second World War, there were
freighters and different types,
but we were doing a ship a day.
And now we don't do ships.
And I'm not a fan of some
of the ships you're doing.
I'm a very aesthetic person,
I don't like some of the ships
you're doing aesthetically.
They say, it's stealth.
I say, that's not stealth.
An ugly ship is not necessary
in order to say you're stealth.
You know, he is right.
We don't do ships anymore.
And it's not stealth to be ugly.
And during the Second World War,
there were freighters
and different types.
You can actually read
about those insights and more
in the helpful pamphlet
"Grand-dad Used to Sing:"
"How to Recognize Dementia in Loved
Ones and When to Say Goodbye."
But it wasn't all body-shaming,
boatshaming and weird tangents,
as Trump also repeatedly hinted
at the use of troops
in Democrat-run cities,
with lines like this.
What they've done to San Francisco,
Chicago, New York, Los Angeles,
they're very unsafe places.
And we're going to straighten
them out one by one.
And this is going to be a major part
for some of the people in this room.
That's a war, too.
It's a war from within.
Okay, set aside just how chilling
the phrase "war from within" is,
did he swallow a fistful of Xanax
before walking onto that stage?
'Cause he has the energy level of
a cat who just walked into a sunbeam.
That basically sounds
like civil war ASMR.
Obviously, threatening military action
against your own people is alarming.
Especially given we've seen troops
deployed to L.A. and D.C. this year
and Trump has now ordered similar
deployments to Portland and Memphis.
In fact, the day after that speech,
Hegseth went to Memphis,
and stood behind Stephen Miller,
as he bragged about
a ramped-up federal presence there,
in a speech that I'm sure
sounded tough in his head.
The gangbangers that you deal
with, they think that they're ruthless.
They have no idea
how ruthless we are.
They think they're tough? They
have no idea how tough we are.
They think that they're hardcore?
We are so much more hardcore
than they are!
What a fucking loser!
And I gotta say, at this point,
white supremacists just have
to be embarrassed, right?
This is your champion right here?
A man who looks like he still
has a soft spot on his skull?
But the thing is,
it is more than just talk.
Because yet again this week,
we saw nauseating footage
of ICE raids around the country.
With perhaps the worst
happening in Chicago,
where federal agents handcuffed
a city council member,
tossed a tear gas canister
onto a busy street near a school,
and raided a whole apartment building,
turning apartments upside down.
And the details of that raid
are grotesque.
Neighbors tell us
there were dozens of ICE agents.
Neighbors like Eboni Watson says
they ducked for cover
as they heard
several flash bangs go off.
They was terrified, the kids
was crying. People was screaming.
They looked very distraughted.
And I was out there crying
when I seen the little girl
come around the corner
'cause they was bringing the kids out
too, had them zip tied to each other.
That's all I kept asking, where's
the morality? Where's the human?
One of them literally laughed.
He was standing right here.
"Fuck them kids."
That is completely unacceptable
coming from a federal fucking agent
who has zip-tied children.
Honestly, the only person who might
be allowed to mutter "fuck them kids"
is the guy who has to clean the piss
out of the Chuck E. Cheese ball pit.
But absolutely nobody else.
But as grim as all of this has been,
the one glimmer of hope has been
the strength of the pushback from
local communities around the country.
There've been widespread protests
against ICE, and some of them funny,
from someone dancing
in a giant frog costume
outside an ICE detention center
in Portland,
to a protestor outside Chicago
holding up this excellent sign,
which read, "I fucked two of you
on Grindr, parentheses, pretty sure."
Which is very good. The only way
it could possibly be better
is if the "pretty sure" was only
because the guy couldn't remember
if it was Grindr or Scruff.
"I definitely fucked you and you."
"I just want to be accurate
regarding how we got there."
And in Rochester last month,
ICE cornered some men
working on a roof and were waiting
for them to come down to arrest them.
But a local pastor went on social
media to summon people to protest,
and just watch what happened next.
A chaotic scene on Westminster Road
Tuesday morning in Rochester
as federal agents were carrying out an
ICE enforcement-removal operation.
They're here putting on a roof
trying to make a dollar,
and paying taxes on that dollar,
and ICE was here bothering them.
So, I came to bother ICE.
Details from federal authorities
are limited,
but cameras captured a Border Patrol
vehicle at the scene with flat tires.
In response to the large crowd,
agents left Westminster
and the SUV was towed
a few blocks away.
Hey, hey, hey, goodbye!
Perfect.
Well done to everyone involved.
And I absolutely love
that that woman said,
"I came to bother ICE",
because that seems reasonable to me.
If ICE can show up and bother
some guys at their roofing job,
then bystanders should be able
to bother ICE
at their state sanctioned
kidnapping job. It is only fair.
And look, this administration
is clearly still hell-bent
on trying to intimidate
communities with shows of force.
Which is why it is so important
for them to be met with strong pushback
each and every time.
Because this administration
is obsessed with appearances.
And the thing is, they can dress up
their bureaucrats as the Grim Reaper.
They can taunt gangbangers about
being more "hardcore" than they are.
They can kick out all the beardos
and fat-shame our ships.
But what they cannot do
is cover up the ugliness of
what they are doing right now.
It deserves to be pushed back on and
exposed at every available opportunity.
Because if we do not do that,
then, much like two ICE agents
somewhere outside Chicago,
I'm pretty sure we are fucked.
And now, this.
And Now:
Conservatives Are Not Happy
About the 2026 Super Bowl
Halftime Performer.
Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl
is a very bad idea.
I should share
with Mark that when I texted Larry,
he wrote me back,
"Bugs Bunny? I don't know
if we should do that on our show."
No, it's Bad Bunny.
A reminder, Bad Bunny is an outspoken
critic of ICE and the president.
It's, you know, America's pastime.
It's football.
And we're gonna have the halftime
performance in Spanish?
Imagine if Bad Bunny
sang all of his Bad Bunny songs
in Arabic or Chinese or Russian.
You think maybe this story would get
more attention than it is today?
You know, they call him
the king of the Latin trap.
The trap is hiring somebody
who's partisan
and who has very dark images
in his videos.
I'll give you an example of this
video where he appears as Nosferatu.
Bad Bunny. We have a picture
of Bad Bunny? Technical issues.
Who are we going to have next year?
P Diddy?
I remember in the 1990s,
they once had
a great big 50th anniversary
of Snoopy and Charlie Brown.
Snoopy and Charlie Brown.
Now we have the bunny.
Do you think Bad Bunny is a good
choice for the Super Bowl?
I'm not that, like, knowledgeable
about him, but it seems fine.
And I don't know why it's a big deal.
Seems like a great American artist.
- So, sure.
- He's not an American artist.
He's Puerto Rican.
That's part of America, dear.
Moving on. Our main story tonight
concerns presidential libraries,
voted number one nice little activity
by Retired Dads Quarterly.
Presidential libraries are incredible
repositories of documents, artifacts
and occasionally, displays like
this one, at the Reagan Library,
really laying out
that man's priorities.
You might know that
President Reagan once said,
"There's nothing as good for the inside
of a man as the outside of a horse."
The exhibit about Rancho del Cielo,
the ranch in the sky,
describes his feelings
about his beloved ranch.
Reagan once said,
"You look at the beauty of it and God
really did shed his grace on America."
And there's a gallery
about his "sidekick",
as he called her, Mrs. Reagan.
Yeah, apparently, it goes horse
then wife, the way God intended.
And look, my position on horses is
clear, I think, but Reagan's quote,
"There's nothing as good for the inside
of a man as the outside of a horse",
might be the dirtiest thing
I've ever heard.
He should've been put
on a watch list.
He should've been banned from petting
zoos and merry-go-rounds.
I sincerely hope they don't have horses
in hell, because they are not safe.
But a weird horse exhibit
is actually par for the course,
presidential libraries often have
eye-catching artifacts
displayed throughout, from
Gerald Ford's letter pardoning Nixon,
to the microphone FDR used
for his fireside chats.
And some even host exhibits that have
nothing to do with American history,
or indeed the president themselves,
like this one.
Come experience Xtreme Bugs
at the Clinton Presidential Center,
where spiders and ladybugs
are as big as cars.
Be transported into a new world that
puts you up close and personal
with big, larger-than-life bugs,
all in their natural habitat.
Hold on! "In their natural habitat?"
I'm no insect expert despite looking
like I spent my high school years
collecting bugs instead of friends,
but I'm pretty sure giant spiders'
natural habitat
is not a museum
dedicated to Bill Clinton.
It is, as we all know,
any New York restaurant
with a C from
the Department of Health.
Still, as you've undoubtedly noticed,
the subject of presidential libraries
has been in the news a lot lately,
primarily because
of a flurry of donations to Trump's.
Tonight, a 16 million settlement,
Paramount, parent company of CBS,
announcing it will pay
President Trump's legal fees
and give money to his
future presidential library.
President Trump has
signed an agreement with Meta
to settle a lawsuit that he filed
against the company and its CEO.
According to a spokesperson,
the settlement terms are 25 million
with 22 million of it going toward
Trump's future presidential library.
In the settlement,
ABC agreeing to donate 15 million
to Trump's presidential library.
Trump's presidential library foundation
seems to be the preferred vehicle
for what I'm apparently legally not
allowed to call "shakedowns"
or "extortion attempts",
so I won't.
It's actually one of many things
I'm not allowed to say,
like that the Chipotle guac's
secret ingredient is frog jizz,
that's why it costs so much,
or that I personally believe
dozens of men have died on the set
of "Mission Impossible" movies.
There is just no way Tom Cruise is
the first attempting those stunts.
And you know that Scientology
is covering it up.
If they can hide Shelly Miscavige
for 18 years,
they can definitely bury a few handfuls
of stunt men, no problem.
Anyway, all of those things
are things that I'm not allowed to say,
so let's all agree that I didn't.
But the thing is,
as is so often the case,
Trump is merely laying bare a system
that's been problematic all along.
Because while presidential libraries
enjoy the reputation
of being esteemed guardians of history,
the truth is,
they've always been both a little
more, and a little less, than that.
So given that, tonight, let's
talk about presidential libraries,
what they actually are,
who's in charge of them,
why Trump may supercharge
the problems that they can cause.
And let's start with the fact
that the very term "library"
is a bit of a misnomer.
In fact, here is Harry Truman,
a few years after his opened,
setting the record straight.
This library is not a library.
It's an archives building
with the idea of keeping the records
of the government in an orderly manner.
The objective is to obtain
microfilm reports
on all the presidential papers.
It'll take a little
while to get that done,
but when you do get it done,
this will be the center of the study
of the presidency of the United States.
Yeah, that is basically it.
And by the way,
do you remember
when presidents were boring?
It almost feels strange
to watch a clip of one
without the fear he's gonna
throw in a slur
or argue Joy Behar
should be imprisoned.
Back then, presidents kept their racism
and sexism away from the cameras
and just put them in their policies.
It was a simpler time.
But like Truman just said,
presidential libraries aren't libraries
in the traditional sense,
in that you can come
and check books out.
They're actually two things
fused together:
archives containing
the official records from a presidency
for researchers and scholars,
and a museum,
showcasing that presidency
for various visiting dads
and bored school kids who already went
to the planetarium last year.
The first presidential library
was established by FDR
who wanted a place "to house
the presidential papers and gifts"
"accumulated
during his administration."
Before then,
when a president's term ended,
he'd leave the White House
with all his records,
many of which
ended up destroyed.
George Washington's were apparently
"extensively mutilated by rats".
Most of William Henry Harrison's
"succumbed to flames when
his log cabin burned down."
And Chester Arthur's son had
most of his father's papers burned
in three garbage cans.
And if you automatically knew
Chester Arthur was the 21st president
and not the name
of a snack food character,
congratulations,
you are our exact audience.
The point is, after FDR,
presidents began
gifting their records to the federal
government to be housed in libraries.
And that is a good thing,
among other reasons,
it is why we have this incredible audio
of LBJ
calling the head of the company that
made his trousers, with a request.
The crotch, down where your nuts
hang, is always a little too tight.
So, when you make 'em up give me
a inch that I can let out there,
because they cut me.
It's just like riding a wire fence.
Let's see if you can't leave me about
an inch from where the zipper ends
Back to my bunghole.
That is just excellent.
We've played that clip before on this
show and we will play it again.
Not only does he burp
in the middle of the call
like a man whose nuts
haven't breathed in years,
but every time I hear it,
I'm forced to wonder,
just how big were LBJ's balls?
I mean, just in terms of fruit,
are we talking plums or pomelos?
Kiwis or mangoes? Clementines
or big honkin' navel oranges?
If I could go back in time and ask LBJ
one question, it would be,
"Did you put out the hit on JFK?"
But if I could ask two, I'd say,
"If we're measuring circumference,
do we need inches or do we need feet?"
Now, initially, the handover
of records was voluntary,
but after Nixon tried to ensure
access to audio tapes from his
presidency would be limited to himself,
and laid plans that
they'd be destroyed at some point,
Congress made it mandatory,
codifying into law
that presidential records
belong to the public
and are to be turned over
at the end of their term,
to be controlled by National Archives
and Records Administration, or NARA.
And it is then the library archivists'
jobs to catalogue everything,
which is no small feat.
Because "records" doesn't just mean
papers and emails.
It can mean all kinds of shit, as this
Clinton Library employee explains.
You can find fine art in a box.
You can open up a box
and find head of state gifts
that are 1.000 years old.
You can find just about anything
when you open up a box,
it's sort of like
every day's Christmas.
Many of the gifts were sent
to President Clinton by the public,
including a statue of American
basketball star Michael Jordan.
This is something that someone
thought the president would like to have
and sent it off to the White House.
Yeah, someone thought
President Clinton would like to have
that statue of Michael Jordan.
A sculptural rendering of his airness
soaring over, I want to say,
the charred remains of his enemies?
And, you know what,
congrats to that person,
their gift ended up
in a place of honor,
specifically, in an industrial sized
file cabinet being lightly groped
by a woman with the most "archival
librarian" energy I've ever seen,
present company excepted.
But, again, the archives are just
one part of a presidential library,
most of its physical structure
is a museum
dedicated to that president's
life and history.
If you've been to one, that is
probably what you walked through.
But it's worth understanding
how both halves,
the archives and the museum,
interact,
and how they came
to be set up in the first place.
The first thing to understand is that
these buildings aren't publicly funded.
In fact, here's Jimmy Carter,
at the dedication ceremony
for George H.W. Bush's library,
describing how it works.
As many of you may not know,
all the funds that are invested
in presidential libraries,
none of it comes
from the federal government.
We have to raise the money
and then turn over the library
to the federal government.
He's right. If a president wants
a library, and they all do,
they have to raise
the money themselves.
It's one of the many quirks
of being a president,
alongside the fact that,
if the first lady dies in office,
you have to remarry
the White House Easter Bunny.
That is true.
It is in the Constitution.
So, to pay for their libraries,
presidents have traditionally created
"private foundations that raise
money from a variety of sources,"
"build and equip the libraries,
and then eventually donate them"
"to the government,
either through deed or lease."
Now, once that happens,
by and large,
"federal government pays to run them
and federal employees operate them."
And that is not cheap, by the way.
The government spends around
100 million dollars a year operating,
maintaining
and improving these libraries,
whether that's repair work
to a building's facade,
or, in the case of the LBJ Museum
in Texas, something more intimate.
Though it is in an area
now closed to visitors,
the animatronic LBJ still works.
Everyone loves the animatronic LBJ.
Everyone can relate to it.
People enjoy humor.
In the next few days, though,
the half fascinating, half creepy LBJ
will be taken apart and moved.
It's just a matter
of taking his clothes off.
What are you doing?!
Don't do that in front of us!
No one needs to see
an animatronic LBJ
stripped down to his softball-sized
nuts and bunghole.
Rest in peace, LBJ,
you'd have crushed on OnlyFans.
But this weird
public-private partnership,
where the library gets built
by a president and his foundation,
then operated by the government,
means that the line between
"shrine" and "official archive"
can get unhelpfully blurry.
Especially because those foundations
are often run
by the presidents' family and friends,
who often then help
to personally curate the exhibits.
And what that means is,
on the museum side of things,
especially when a library first opens,
exhibits can be extremely onesided.
Take the Reagan Library,
which has been called
"a Graceland for conservatives".
It features everything from an actual
plane that served as Air Force One,
to a section of the Berlin Wall, to
an Irish pub the Reagans once visited,
which was "purchased
by the Reagan Foundation,"
"and recreated
as a place to sell snacks,"
"complete with the bottle,
glasses,"
"and part of the bar the Reagans once
touched, under reliquary-like glass."
I'm not surprised that the actor
president turned his library
into "what if Planet Hollywood
but with more Gorbachev",
but "Ronny R. and his sidekick
wife touched this piece of wood"
"while having a beer and ignoring
AIDS" feels a bit much to me.
When it comes to one of the biggest
scandals of Reagan's presidency,
Iran-Contra,
when the museum first opened,
and for years afterward,
it didn't mention it at all.
And that is not a one-off. On the day
that Clinton's library opened,
it became clear there were some
significant editorial choices made.
For all of President Clinton's fans
who braved the weather today,
he certainly has his critics.
And they complain the new library
gives little attention
to the impeachment scandal that
dominated Clinton's second term.
Inside the museum, just one alcove
deals with impeachment
and characterizes it
as a struggle for power.
Most of the building is filled
with pictures and memorabilia
from more accomplished
and happier times.
Yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it?
If you asked any rando on the street
to name something that defined
Clinton's presidency they'd say,
"Probably baseball. That guy loved
baseballs, to a genuine fault."
"If I remember, his love of baseball
almost derailed his presidency."
Now, that pattern continued
with George W. Bush's museum,
where a historian pointed out
that a display about the Iraq War
boldly claims, "No stockpiles of
weapons of mass destruction are found"
"although Iraq's WMD-related program
activities are still a threat."
Which is a big 'ol swing to take.
At that point,
you'd almost be better off
just having the whole Iraq War section
be a giant sign reading "Oops!"
At least that would be
historically honest.
But perhaps the most extreme case
of whitewashing was at Nixon's library,
which initially opened without a
partnership with the National Archives.
When the library first opened,
it taught visitors that the Watergate
was a coup orchestrated
by the media and Democratic elites,
that the enemies list was the product
of a rogue presidential staffer,
and that Nixon didn't do anything
his predecessors hadn't done,
except get caught.
And just set aside
how ahistorical that is,
why would you want that
to be your legacy?
"Yeah, I was a criminal,
but so was everyone else,"
"it's just that I was also
embarrassingly bad at it."
Now, the Nixon Library did eventually
get folded into the National Archives
and their Watergate exhibit
is now more accurate.
Though,
it's also worth pointing out:
the Nixon Foundation apparently
tried to pressure the National Archives
to fire the library director before
he could finish updating that exhibit.
And the fact presidents can exert
a heavy influence over exhibits
is so well-known that the former
director of the Herbert Hoover Library
had a pretty grim piece of advice
if you are planning to visit
any presidential library.
People generally go, though,
initially to the library
as soon as it's opened
and then don't return again.
I tell people, wait 25 years,
if you've got 25 years.
Yeah.
That is both a little depressing
and also might be the worst
advertising campaign I have ever heard.
"This'll get good in 25 years"
is not what you say to
promote a business,
if anything, it's what you say
to reassure brand new parents.
"Look, just give it 25 years,
then it does get kind of fun."
But he is right, presidential libraries
do tend to evolve over time.
FDR's has worked to update
their message on the Holocaust,
describing his slowness to admit
Jewish refugees until late in the war
and reckoning with his internment
of Japanese Americans.
And Truman's underwent a huge
update and now encourages visitors
to engage
in a debate over the question,
"If you were president Truman
in 1945,"
"would you have dropped
the bomb?"
Which is a fun little discussion
for a family to have together,
and likely to result
in an awkward drive home
after Dad admits he'd have
dropped more and bigger bombs.
So, that is the museum
half of the libraries.
But remember,
there's also the archive side.
And while it's supposed
to be separate,
ex-presidents can exert a surprising
amount of control there, too.
Because their foundations get to consult
on the library's first director
and can effectively veto
anyone that they don't like.
That person also gets to oversee
the archives side, which is a big deal.
Because by law, all of the documents
from a presidency
are supposed to be requestable
by the public
five years after their term ends.
But as a practical matter, that's
basically impossible for them to do.
Funding for the National Archives
has remained stagnant
for the last 30 years,
which, as this archivist explains,
has led to an enormous backlog.
When that five-year window hits,
almost immediately
we have a backlog of thousands
of FOIA requests
that we can't possibly respond to
within the 10 days under
the Freedom of Information Act.
Yeah, he's right, and he's actually
massively understating things there.
'Cause when it comes to Reagan,
Bush, and Clinton's records,
the government estimated in 2007
that they wouldn't be fully open
and accessible for 100 years.
At that point, no one's going to have
time to analyze Reagan's papers.
We'll all be too busy dealing with
the fallout of World War IV,
presumably launched
by President Beast.
Although don't worry,
the video of him launching
the nukes did do numbers,
so it's not all bad news.
And those massive backlogs
mean that the library director
has a huge amount of power,
when it comes to the order in which
documents get reviewed to be released,
as they can choose to frontload subjects
that make a president look good,
and delay the ones
that are less flattering.
And before any get released,
the former president gets notified
and has the chance to object.
Which is a lot of power.
Because if you told me,
"Everything on your laptop is gonna
be released over the next 100 years,"
"and you get
to decide the order",
I'm gonna release the scripts
from this show first,
and my erotic Wallace and Gromit
fan fiction
long after I am fucking dead.
So, look, it is pretty clear:
when it comes to their libraries,
presidents get to heavily
thumb the scale of history,
both in terms of the exhibits
you can see,
and the documents that you can't.
But there is one more
big issue here.
Because remember,
as Carter mentioned,
presidents are generally the ones
raising money for these buildings.
And it is not a small amount either.
Over time, libraries have gotten
significantly more expensive.
FDR's cost about 5 million
in today's dollars.
Clinton's cost 165 million,
George W. Bush's cost 327 million
and the upcoming Obama Presidential
Center in Chicago
is estimated at around 830 million.
And I do hope at least part
of that money has gone
to acquiring the rights to the single
best 10 seconds of TV I've ever seen.
Barack Obama, it will almost be
an honor to kill you.
Yep.
That is a psychic gorilla
who goes back in time
to try to kill a young Barack Obama.
It is a scene
from "Legends of Tomorrow"
and I would argue that
Obama's presidential library
would be incomplete without it.
And the thing about fundraising
for these libraries is,
there are basically
no rules around it.
Well, to be fair, there is one rule:
registered lobbyists have to disclose
donations over 200 dollars.
But that is the end of the rules.
And that throws the door
wide open for corruption.
Because while still in office,
presidents can solicit
unlimited library foundation donations
from absolutely anybody on Earth,
including foreign nationals,
individuals seeking presidential pardons
and corporations with federal contracts.
This clearly incentivizes a president
to fundraise while in office,
since that is when they have
the most political cachet.
And since most presidential
foundations enjoy tax exempt status,
it's also a pretty compelling offer
for donors.
All of which opens up
a host of problems,
up to and including
accusations of bribery.
This has been an issue
for decades now.
Bill Clinton caught a lot of heat
at the end of his presidency
after he did this.
Among his last acts, he pardoned
billionaire fugitive Marc Rich.
A man who never stood trial
is now cleared for crimes
that could've meant
300 years in prison.
That's Rich's ex-wife, Denise,
hugging and kissing the Clintons.
She's a New York socialite
who's donated more than
a million dollars to Democrats.
Thank you, Denise.
Thank you for everything you've done
to make it possible for Hillary and me
to serve.
Okay, "thanks to Denise" aside,
can we just talk for a second
about this fucking photo?
This man looks like
"The Godfather" concept art.
I've never been more
certain in my life
that someone was undeserving
of a presidential pardon
than in the three human seconds
that photo was on screen.
And the details in that case
are pretty damning.
Marc Rich had fled to Switzerland
17 years before,
after he was indicted on more
than 50 counts of wire fraud,
racketeering, trading with Iran
during an embargo
and evading more than
48 million in income taxes.
And let me reiterate: he fled.
This man was a fugitive!
He wasn't in the U.S.
fighting to clear his name.
He noped
the fuck out of the country.
But Clinton pardoned him,
which, as many pointed out at the time,
came hot on the heels of
a 450.000 donation from Denise
to, guess what,
the Clinton library foundation.
And look, I am not saying
that the runaway billionaire
funneled bribe money
through his ex-wife
to the Clintons in exchange
for immunity. I am not saying that.
What I am saying is,
if someone were to do that,
what do you think
that individual would look like?
And would they
look something like this?
I'm just asking questions here.
Now, I should say:
not every president has done this.
To his credit, Obama eschewed
directly soliciting library donations
while in office and voluntarily
disclosed donations that he received.
But he didn't have to do that.
And that is kind of the problem here.
Because all this brings us back
to Donald Trump,
who is now set to amplify every
problem that I've described so far.
Because presidential libraries
seem almost designed
to exploit his every personal failing,
from his tendency
to obfuscate his wrongdoing,
to his desire to build expensive
monuments to himself,
to a set of ethical guidelines
based more in norms than law.
Because the fact is,
as things stand right now,
someone could walk up to Trump
today with a 15 million check,
hand it to him while saying, "We love
the work that you are doing"
"and hope you'll consider
helping us out"
"with that little problem
that we were discussing earlier"
and as long as that check said,
"Pay to the order of: the Donald J.
Trump Presidential Library Foundation",
it'd be completely legal.
Though, don't worry,
what soulless, ethically bankrupt,
ass-kissing corporation would even
think of doing something like that?
Please stay the fuck
away from us.
You are not my real business daddy
and you never will be!
And the legal settlements that
we know about are bad enough,
but that's just the beginning
of the money involved here.
Funds left over from
the 239 million dollars
raised by the Trump-Vance
inaugural committee,
including millions
from tech companies and CEOs,
are also expected to be
redirected to Trump's library.
And that's not even getting into
the 400 million plane
given to Trump by Qatar,
which is also "slated to be transferred"
"to the Trump Library
shortly before he leaves office",
and that gift is being flown directly
through the library loophole.
The Constitution prohibits anyone
holding federal office
from accepting a personal gift
from a foreign head of state,
but sources say Attorney General
Pam Bondi has concluded
that this gift is, quote,
"Legally permissible,"
"because the plane is not being
given to an individual,"
"but rather to the U.S. Air Force and
then to Donald Trump's foundation."
Come on. We all know
what is going to happen here.
He's going to use
that plane while in office.
And then, instead of leaving it
for the next president to use,
he's gonna keep it for his library
and suddenly discover
he has a lot of "library-related"
business to do all over the world.
It's just completely inevitable,
kind of like how,
after Trump leaves office,
Pete Hegseth will get
his own Fox News show,
Karoline Leavitt will go
on "Dancing with the Stars"
and get voted off after two weeks,
and Stephen Miller will return
to the cocoon that he emerged from.
We all know these things
are going to happen.
While, technically, Trump doing that
could be perceived as legally dicey,
the main enforcement body
for all of this would be the IRS,
which Trump administration has been
gutting to a shell of its former self.
So, I'd say the odds of him
getting away with it look pretty high.
And it does seem notable that Trump
was given a 400 million plane by Qatar,
and then just this week,
out of absolutely nowhere,
he issued an EO declaring
any attack on Qatar
would be treated
as a threat to U.S. security.
And look, I am not saying
the U.S. military should be for sale,
but it sure feels like Qatar
just bought it awfully cheap.
In fact, I will say
the same thing to Trump
that I once said
about Kim Kardashian
turning up
for a Charmin toilet paper event:
they simply didn't pay you enough
to do as much
as you are doing for them right now.
The point is, our whole private-public
setup for presidential libraries
has resulted in a bunch
of shrine-like buildings
that presidents can raise money
for from basically any source,
with the vast majority of donations
undisclosed.
And as usual, Trump,
simply by being himself,
has very effectively shined a bright
light on all these cracks.
So, what should we do?
Well, for starters,
we should make donations to
presidential libraries more transparent
and soliciting them while in office
should be outlawed altogether.
Multiple bills have tried to do
some version of that over the years,
but they've all gone nowhere
and frankly,
I don't think that this guy is gonna
be signing one anytime soon.
As for the National Archives,
they should be getting funded
to an operational level so they
can reduce that 100-year backlog,
and actually do the important job
that they're supposed to.
Because who knows how many more
recordings at "LBJ bunghole level"
we could be missing out on?
But honestly,
maybe the main thing here
is to let go of the idea that these
giant shrines are remotely necessary,
or that they're accurate
representations of history,
and try to decouple their celebratory
function from their archival one.
And that link's actually been
wobbling for a while now.
A few years ago,
the federal government actually
handed all control
of the George W. Bush Museum
over to its private foundation.
So, the government still runs
the archives, the important part,
but when it comes to the museum,
there are no federal workers
lending legitimacy to its
whitewashed version of history.
Meanwhile,
Obama declined to build an archive
at his future presidential center,
instead opting to digitize
all his unclassified paper records.
That means that
his grand monument to himself
will be entirely privately run.
And while I know this sounds weird,
maybe that's a good thing!
But the key thing is, next time
you visit a presidential library,
and especially
one of the newer ones,
you should go in there knowing
they're not necessarily telling
the story of that president
from a historical lens,
but from a personal one.
And going forward, whenever
you hear reports that an organization,
news network, or foreign country is
giving money to a presidential library,
and I think you are going to be
hearing that over the next three years,
know that it's, at best, a personal
gift, and at worst, an active bribe.
And while clearly,
none of this is ideal,
I guess, as long as this
is how the system is operating,
then, if you can't beat them,
you should probably join them.
So, given that, please, follow me!
Because after researching this story,
we suddenly found ourselves
motivated to donate something
of real value
to any presidential library or
foundation interested in taking it.
Specifically,
what we'd like to offer is this.
It is, from our own guesstimates,
a life-size rendering of LBJ's balls.
And any presidential library
is now welcome to take these balls
as a symbol of the massive ego
it takes
to build one of these
libraries in the first place.
The only catch is,
in the grand tradition of these
buildings' engaging in quid pro quos,
we would expect
something in return.
Now, obviously, these testicles
make the most sense in LBJ's library,
and in return,
we'd be interested
in taking your animatronic
statue of him.
But we're also open to negotiation
with other foundations, too.
Just make us an offer,
whether it's a horse statue
from the Reagan Library,
or, if the Trump Foundation
is so inclined,
a full blanket pardon
for me, personally.
That is apparently something
I'm allowed to suggest!
The point is,
we are open to any and all trades,
so please do get in touch!
That is our show, thank you
so much for watching us.
We'll see you next week,
goodnight!
Call us! Call us about the balls!