Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s13e05 Episode Script
JD Vance
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight".
I'm John Oliver. Thank you so much for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
Chile got a new far-right president,
and Trump endorsed Jake Paul even
though he's not running for office.
But we're gonna start with Iran.
It's been two weeks since
we launched strikes there,
and it's still unclear how long
this is going to continue.
On Monday, Trump claimed
the war was "very complete",
before adding, "pretty much".
And that qualifier
turned out to be important.
Mr. President, you've said the war
is, quote, "very complete",
but your defense secretary says,
"This is just the beginning."
So which is it, and how long should
I think you could say both.
It's the beginning
of building a new country.
We could call it a tremendous
success, right now,
as we leave here, I could call it.
Or we could go further,
and we're gonna go further.
Yeah, not a great response there.
That noncommittal floundering
makes him sound less like
a president laying out a strategy
and more like what happens
when you ask your situationship
if you should put him down
as your plus one
to a wedding in six months.
"I dunno, we could go further."
"I could call it, but we're
gonna go further, right?"
At every point, the president
seemed utterly disconnected
from the stakes of this war,
right down to greeting the remains
of fallen American troops
while wearing
his most formal baseball cap.
He's also been conveniently confused
about civilian casualties.
Take the horrifying strike on an
elementary school
that killed at least 175 people,
most of them children.
Observers quickly came to believe that
the U.S. was responsible,
including, it now seems,
our own military.
Yet Trump's repeatedly played dumb
whenever asked about it.
A Tomahawk missile likely destroyed
that Iranian girls' school.
Will the U.S. accept any responsibility
for that strike?
I haven't seen it.
And I will say that the Tomahawk,
which is one of the most
powerful weapons around,
is sold and used by other countries.
You know that.
And whether it's Iran, who also
has some Tomahawks,
they wish they had more,
but whether it's Iran
or somebody else,
a Tomahawk is very generic.
You just suggested that Iran somehow
got its hands on a Tomahawk
and bombed its own elementary
school on the first day of the war.
But you're the only person
in your government saying this.
Even your own defense secretary
wouldn't say that when he was asked,
standing over your shoulder on
your plane on Saturday.
Why are you the only person
saying this?
Because I just don't know
enough about it.
Yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it?
What's he really supposed to do?
Ask the people who work for him?
Listen to the daily briefings he gets?
Of course not!
It is hard to say
whether Trump is being actively
deceptive there, or just plain dumb.
In his words, I think
you could say both!
Meanwhile, the conflict continues
to spread throughout the region,
with Israel now bombing Lebanon,
killing nearly 800 so far,
and displacing over 800,000.
And Iran's effectively closed
the Strait of Hormuz,
through which about 20%
of the world's oil usually transits.
At least 16 ships have been attacked
there since the war began,
sending oil prices soaring.
Polls have consistently shown
the majority of America is against
this conflict.
And that may be why the White House
is selling it hard,
tweeting multiple gross videos
showing footage of bombs exploding
intercut with things like baseball
players hitting a ball,
captioned,
"Pure American dominance,"
and football hits in a post confusingly
titled, "Touchdown".
And if you're thinking, "That is all
in terrible taste, but, at least,"
"they didn't set missile strikes to
Nelly's 'Here Comes the Boom'",
I have some terrible news for you.
So cool, bro.
I always wanted a government
that made war propaganda
like eighth grade boys making
a lacrosse team hype video.
And look, with this White House,
that's kind of to be expected.
What's surprising is,
Iran's been trolling in return.
State-aligned media there
even shared an AI Lego video
that opened with a scene
making it clear
they think Trump started this war
as a distraction.
Look, I think
I get Iran's point there.
This war is just a smokescreen
to distract from Trump's friendship
with notorious sex criminal
Llrey Epstein.
And by the way, who is it
with Epstein in the corner there?
Is that Dick Van Dyke?
Dick, no! Not you!
That video also features the Strait
of Hormuz being closed
and businessmen crying
about oil prices spiking,
as well as a Lego depiction of the
aftermath of the school bombing.
Which is surreal. It is odd for
a human rights atrocity
to be rendered in Lego, but I guess
that's where we are in this conflict,
especially given the White House
continues to churn out
shitposts like this one.
Here comes the hit from the USA.
Boom, pins down. What a strike!
That's right. Who do you think
you are? I am!
Okay. Look, this isn't the point.
The point should be
that everyone in this White House
clearly needs parental controls
on screen time.
But also, you send a ball
right down the middle like that,
you're gonna get a split.
You gotta come
in at a slight angle,
otherwise there's no way
you're going 10 for 10.
I don't do much bowling myself.
Too whimsical.
I'm more of a frown
and play chess man.
But even I know that's not a ball
that's gonna give you what you want.
One reason the White House
might be doing all this
is to distract
from negative press coverage.
CNN, for instance,
published this article
about the failure to plan for
the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
And on Friday morning,
Pete Hegseth addressed that directly.
From CNN, reports that the Trump
administration underestimated
the Iran war's impact
on the Strait of Hormuz.
Patently ridiculous, of course.
For decades,
Iran has threatened shipping
in the Strait of Hormuz.
This is always what they do,
hold the strait hostage.
CNN doesn't think
we thought of that.
It's a fundamentally unserious report.
The sooner David Ellison
takes over that network, the better.
That is not good.
"I can't wait"
"until the billionaire sympathetic to
this administration takes over the news"
is a little like your mom saying,
"When you were conceived,"
"your dad came harder than ever before.
He jizzed like a geyser."
Even if you thought
that was the case,
your ability to make it
through the day
really depends on never
hearing those words.
But that wasn't all. Unhappy
at the coverage this war has gotten,
Hegseth decided to offer
the press some helpful tips.
Allow me to make a few suggestions.
People look up at the TV and they
see banners, they see headlines.
"Mideast War Intensifies",
splashing on the screen
the last couple of days,
alongside visuals of civilian
or energy targets that Iran has hit,
because that's what they do.
What should
the banner read instead?
How about,
"Iran Increasingly Desperate"?
Another example of a fake headline
that I saw yesterday,
"War Widening."
Here's a real headline for you,
for an actual patriotic press.
How about, "Iran Shrinking,
Going Underground"?
So even if his version of events
were true there, which it's not,
that is a terrible headline.
"Iran Shrinking, Going Underground"?
What does that even mean?
A headline's supposed to give you
a clear idea of a story in a few words.
That makes it seem like Iran is
literally getting smaller and sinking,
like some kind
of Middle Eastern Atlantis.
I get why Hegseth is trying to
force-feed headlines to the press
and why the White House
is pumping out fun bowling animations,
though I will point out,
in bowling,
no matter how many times you
knock those pins down,
they do return
to their original positions,
which feels
pretty on the nose here.
Look, clearly,
no one behind this war
wants to deal with how
complicated it's turned out to be.
Trump is saying that it'll be over
"when I feel it in my bones",
whatever the fuck that means.
And that's a pretty thoughtless way
to approach a conflict
that's already killed so many.
It's not just disrespectful
to the Iranian people
and to U.S. service members affected,
it's disrespectful to the rest of us
to assume childish memes
and sugar-coated headlines
will change what we can all see
with our own eyes.
Because at this point,
we don't deserve deflections.
We deserve explanations,
accountability,
and, if it is not too much trouble,
the full release
of the Llrey Epstein files.
And now, this.
And Now:
Jim Cramer Went to Harvard.
When I was doing
my senior thesis at Harvard,
to do some mindless namedropping.
And I consider myself
an average American
who took three years
of economics at Harvard.
I'm a proud supporter of Harvard.
For law school,
I went to Harvard.
It's been a long time since I studied
anti-trust at Harvard Law
under the greatest
anti-trust scholar of all time.
When I got to Harvard,
we had every single Nobel.
I took three years
of economics at Harvard.
That's why I went to Harvard and
Harvard Law, to get stupid!
No, I didn't go to Harvard Law
School for nothing.
I actually did well at Harvard.
I went to Harvard.
I took seven courses
on communism at Harvard.
Here's something I learned when I
went to take economics at Harvard.
Class at Harvard.
Took that stupid corporate law
course at Harvard and got an A in it.
I actually had the highest grade
of my generals in my major at Harvard.
When I was at Harvard,
dropped that.
Had to mention Harvard
because I'm a jerk.
Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns JD Vance.
Sworn in at just 40 years old,
he's our first millennial vicepresident,
so we can confidently say
he's the first VP to have definitely
jacked it to "Space Jam".
I know to some,
Vance might appear to be
just another abrasive MAGA asshole
with a load-bearing beard.
But to many on the right,
he's a towering intellect.
The president of the Heritage
Foundation said Vance is going to be
"one of the leaders-if not
the leader-of our movement."
And Tucker Carlson
once called him
"the smartest and deepest"
senator he's ever met.
Which is kind of like Ryan Lochte
calling Cookie Monster
"his go-to guy
for investment advice."
I don't trust
any of the individuals involved
to be reliable judges
of any of the subjects involved.
And his rise to become
Trump's right-hand man
is especially striking,
given, as recently as 2016,
he was casting himself as
a "never Trump" Republican,
saying he might write
in his dog for president,
or if Trump had
a really good chance of winning,
hold his nose
and vote for Hillary Clinton.
Privately, he even mused that Trump
could become "America's Hitler".
And yet, just a few years later,
he was campaigning for Senate
alongside Trump, and adopting
a very different tone,
something that did not go unnoticed.
You know what? He's a guy that
said some bad shit about me.
Come on up, JD.
The president is right. I wasn't
always nice, but the simple fact is,
he's the best president
of my lifetime.
And he revealed the corruption
in this country like nobody else.
I guess that is true.
Trump definitely revealed corruption
in this country like nobody else,
in the same way no one taught us
more about what a Ponzi scheme is
than Bernie Madoff.
It's true, just not in the way
I think you're implying.
And Vance has turned out
to be perfect for Trump,
as in many ways, he's become
like a son
Trump doesn't even have
to pretend to love.
And as VP, he has served dutifully,
often receding into the background,
but willing to be an attack dog
when needed,
like when he demanded Zelensky
say "thank you" to Trump
in the Oval Office.
He's also relentlessly
defended his boss's moves,
even when they directly
contradict his prior beliefs,
like his anti-interventionist
approach to foreign policy.
When people criticized last year's
US strikes in the waters off Venezuela,
calling them a war crime,
he replied on Twitter,
"I don't give a shit
what you call it."
And when Trump decided
to first strike Iran last year,
Vance defended him,
and didn't even try to come up
with a good rationalization.
I certainly empathize with Americans
who are exhausted
after 25 years of foreign
entanglements in the Middle East.
I understand the concern, but
the difference is that back then,
we had dumb presidents,
and now we have a president
who actually knows how to accomplish
America's national security objectives.
It wasn't okay before, because the
presidents were stupid-heads
who ate dumb for breakfast,
but now,
we have a big strong real estate
developer and steak salesman
to give us the national security
expertise we so badly need,
so it's completely fine.
And look, obviously some of that's
just part of being vice president.
You have to roll over for your boss.
But it's worth remembering,
Vance has an inside track to
the Oval Office in the future.
Not only because polls show him
leading the Republican field for 2028,
but also because if this guy doesn't
make it through his term,
either because the 25th Amendment
got invoked,
or his internal organs decided,
"You know what, dude, you can't
keep doing this to us, we're out",
JD Vance will become president.
So, before things reach that point,
it feels like tonight,
it may be worth looking at JD Vance,
what he stands for,
and who he might be
without Donald Trump.
And I'll skip over his early life,
because it's been well-chronicled
in his bestselling memoir,
"Hillbilly Elegy,"
voted 2016's number one
Christmas gift
by "Oh Fuck! Emergency Airport
Purchases" magazine.
If you haven't read it,
long story short,
he was raised in Ohio by a mother
who battled an opioid addiction,
and his loud-mouthed grandmother,
before a stint in the military in Iraq
and attending Yale Law School.
If you want to know more,
you can read the book,
or just watch the movie adaptation,
featuring this scene,
where his grandmother catches
Vance smoking weed
and decides to raise him herself.
I don't give a rat fart
what you're smoking, kid.
If you think you're hiding it,
honey, you're dumb as a bag of hair.
- Pack up.
- For what?
- What are you doing?
- I'm taking him.
- Where?
- To live with me.
And if you got a problem with that,
you can talk to the barrel of my gun.
Listen.
This is a pro-Glenn Close show.
Always has been, always will be.
No. I do not like
what I am seeing there.
The only good thing
that came out of that film
is the fact that when Glenn Close was
nominated for best supporting actress
and attended
the Academy Awards,
she was approached by Lil Rel
for a music trivia game,
and this happened.
Do you know how to do da butt?
Quest, turn it up.
Come on, let's see it. Let me
see you do da butt. Let's see it.
Yeah. That was eight-time
Oscar nominee Glenn Close,
doing "da butt" on camera.
So, "Hillbilly Elegy"
was a terrible film,
but let's not say
it didn't give us anything.
Vance's book hit stores during Trump's
first run for the White House,
making him a hot commodity
for news shows
looking for someone to explain the
grievances of the white working class.
And at the time, he struck what seemed
to be a fairly moderate tone.
I think that this election
is really having a negative effect,
especially on the white
working class, right?
Because I think a lot of these
grievances are legitimate,
but what it's doing
is it's giving people an excuse
to point the finger at someone else,
at Mexican immigrants,
or Chinese trade, or the Democratic
elites, or whatever else.
And sometimes these
villains are legitimate.
It's fair to say that the policy
elites of the Democratic Party
haven't been totally concerned
about the white working class.
But at the same time,
fundamentally, what's going on
and what Donald Trump has done
is change the focus
of the white working class
from a sort of engaged
and constructive politics
to a politics of pointing the finger.
So, watching that now feels weird
for a number of reasons.
First, I never thought I'd long
for JD Vance's beard.
It turns out the thing none of us
needed from him was more face.
Without a beard,
he looks like Radio Shack's assistant
store manager of the year 1998.
He looks like he'd play Cartman
in a live action "South Park" movie.
But also, it is strange to see
such a nuanced tone
from a guy
who's since become such a troll.
It'd be like finding old videos
of your dog eating with a fork
Yesterday, I watched you take a shit
and then eat it mouth-first.
How on Earth did
we get from this to that?
And while that may sound like
a fairly even-handed critique,
since then, Vance has clearly
picked a side
between blaming
the elites of the Democratic Party
and finger-pointing Republicans.
And some of that may have
to do with his mentor, Peter Thiel,
the co-founder
of PayPal and Palantir,
and a man who looks like he got
stuck trying to animorph
between Mark Zuckerberg
and Elon Musk.
Vance has said of Thiel that,
"If there's something interesting
going on, and I want to bounce ideas"
"off of a fascinating and knowledgeable
person, I'll give him a call."
Which is worrying, given Thiel
holds some troubling views.
In 2009, he wrote
that he no longer believed
that freedom
and democracy were compatible,
and more recently, called the quest
for diversity, "very evil",
as well as giving multiple lectures
around the idea
that critics of technology or AI
are "legionnaires of the Antichrist".
Thiel is a huge influence on Vance,
who's attributed pretty much his
entire career to Thiel's mentorship.
They met when Thiel spoke at Yale
when Vance was a student.
And Thiel later wound up hiring him
and eventually investing
in his venture capital firm.
He then backed Vance's 2022 Senate
campaign with, at that point,
"the largest amount given to a single
candidate in congressional history."
That campaign, by the way,
gave us this political ad
with a truly iconic opening line,
written by Vance himself,
that somehow gets worse
from there.
Are you a racist?
Do you hate Mexicans?
The media calls us racist for
wanting to build Trump's wall.
They censor us,
but it doesn't change the truth.
Joe Biden's open border
is killing Ohioans,
with more illegal drugs and Democrat
voters pouring into this country.
This issue is personal.
I nearly lost my mother to the poison
coming across our border.
No child should
grow up an orphan.
I'm JD Vance,
and I approve this message.
Because whatever they call us,
we will put America first.
That whole ad has a terrible vibe.
I don't think anything could fix it.
Not even the fact that you
could sing the beginning
to the opening of "Bohemian
Rhapsody," and it scans perfectly.
"Are you a racist?
Do you hate Mexicans?"
Two questions, by the way,
he never ends up answering there.
It was during that campaign
that Vance made that appearance
with Trump, that you saw earlier.
And I wish I could tell you
what happened to him
between 2016 and that moment.
Sadly, I am not a mind-reader or
the therapist he so desperately needs.
Vance will claim it's because
he believed Trump turned out to be
a great president in his first term.
Others might say
he's a power-hungry ladder-climber
who saw that the MAGA right
was the only way up.
But I'd argue his shift was both
opportunistic and genuine,
because Vance has seemed to
have journeyed farther and farther
into some
pretty far-right thought.
Chris Rufo,
the conservative activist,
has jokingly described Vance's
evolution as taking him
"from the pages of National Review to
the fever swamp of right-wing Twitter."
And Vance himself has said
he's "plugged into a lot
of weird, right-wing subcultures",
which isn't something you want
to hear from your Tinder date,
let alone the fucking
vice president.
In fact, in many ways,
he's become the archetype
of the hyper-online conservative troll,
right down to the whole
"kidding/not-kidding",
"trigger the libs" shtick.
Just watch him brag
about doing exactly that
at an event a few years ago.
I got myself into
a little hot water last week
because I made what seemed to me
a plainly obvious observation
that Alex Jones,
the "InfoWars" guy,
is a better source of information
than Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC gal.
Now, some people said,
"Well, JD, you're just trolling."
Well, yeah of course,
I was just trolling.
But that doesn't mean that what
I said was in any way untrue.
Okay, so with all due respect,
which, to be perfectly clear, is none,
saying that Alex "A Billion
Dollars in Defamation Damages" Jones
is a better source of information
than Rachel Maddow is just laughable.
The man's entire brand
was called "InfoWars!"
Also, calling Rachel Maddow
the "MSNBC gal"
is off base for so many reasons,
including that she does not remotely
give off the breezy energy
that you associate
with that word.
Julia Roberts, that's a gal. Reese
Witherspoon, definitely a gal.
Paul Rudd, such a gal.
Rachel Maddow, though?
Not so much.
And Vance went on to expand
on what he meant by that.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the most important truths
often come from people
who are crazy 60% of the time,
but they're right 40% of time.
I'm very close friends
with Peter Thiel.
I think Peter Thiel is one
of the most important sources
of non-conventional truth
in our society.
Peter Thiel believes some things
that are considered crazy
by opinion makers.
We have to get away from this weird
tension that we feel in our chest
when somebody says,
"This person believes something crazy,
therefore you must denounce them."
Believing crazy things is not the mark
of whether somebody is rejected.
Believing important truths
should be the mark of whether
we accept somebody.
And if they believe some crazy
things on the side, that's fine.
We need to be okay
with non-conventional people.
Okay, so, here's the thing.
We generally are okay
with non-conventional people.
I'd argue some of our best people
are non-conventional:
Cyndi Lauper, Lady Gaga,
Barbra Streisand.
She cloned her dog, and has a tiny
mall in the basement of her house.
But if Babs came out
and said Sandy Hook was staged,
you'd be justified in retiring
your DVD copy of "Yentl".
And look, in some ways,
that is a very convenient argument
for hanging out with odious people.
"Relax, I don't agree with everything
they say, just the 'important truths.'"
But it's worth knowing
just how closely aligned Vance is
with some pretty extreme thinkers.
He's close friends with
the conservative writer Rod Dreher,
who's said, among other things, that
"LGBT activism is the tip of the spear
at our throats in the culture war."
Vance also wrote a glowing blurb
for a book
co-written by the far-right
activist Jack Posobiec,
who promoted the Pizzagate
hoax-a book, by the way,
called "Unhumans", a term
that it uses for people on the left,
who it says
"undo civilization itself."
He's also expressed
admiration for Curtis Yarvin,
a self-proclaimed "neoreactionary"
who's not only said things
like, we should "put the church Blacks
in charge of the ghetto Blacks,"
he's also argued for a policy
he called "RAGE",
retire all government employees,
to seize and consolidate power.
That thought clearly made
its way into Vance's head,
and then straight back out
of his mouth during this interview.
There's this guy Curtis Yarvin, who's
written about some of these things.
I think that what Trump should do,
like if I was giving him
one piece of advice,
fire every
single mid-level bureaucrat,
every civil servant
in the administrative state,
replace them with our people.
And when the courts,
'cause you will get taken to court,
and then when the courts stop you,
stand before the country,
like Andrew Jackson did,
and say,
"The chief justice has made his
ruling, now let him enforce it."
Yeah, not ideal. And while many
people do erroneously think
Andrew Jackson said that,
as part of the run-up, incidentally,
to the Trail of Tears,
there's no evidence that he did.
And if we're gonna completely make
up Andrew Jackson quotes,
how about this one: "The chief
justice has made his ruling,"
"now let him enforce it."
"Also, I really hope in the future
my fans are cool."
"If my historical legacy
is two fish-lipped weird beards"
"broing out about me on a podcast,
do me a favor,"
"dig me up and kill me again."
And it's worth noting that,
in Vance's vast amount of time online,
he's ended up promoting some
flagrantly racist bullshit.
It tends to get forgotten,
but Trump's whole "they're eating the
dogs, they're eating the cats" meltdown
in the presidential debate came after
Vance elevated a false rumor
that Haitian immigrants in Springfield,
Ohio, were eating people's pets.
And after it all blew up,
and it became clear that
the whole thing was total nonsense,
Vance doubled down
in a pretty revealing way.
When you have a lot of people
saying, "My pets are being abducted"
or, "Geese at the city pond are abducted
and slaughtered right in front of us",
this is crazy stuff.
And again, whether those exact rumors
turn out to be mostly true,
somewhat true,
whatever the case may be, Kaitlan,
this town has been ravaged
by 20,000 migrants coming in.
Healthcare costs are up,
housing costs are up,
communicable diseases like HIV and TB
have skyrocketed in this Ohio town.
This is what Kamala Harris' border
policies have done.
And I think it's interesting, Kaitlan,
that the media didn't care
about the carnage wrought
by these policies
until we turned it
into a meme about cats.
First, just a quick shoutout to this
look on Kaitlan Collins' face.
'Cause her eyes saying what
we are all thinking there,
which is, "Is this guy
for fucking real right now?"
Second, you didn't "turn it
into a meme about cats."
You shared misinformation that turned
a whole town upside-down.
And it wasn't even the fun kind
of misinformation,
like when, that same summer,
everyone got convinced
JD Vance had fucked a couch,
a theory that went so viral,
it led to us calling
Vance's team and asking,
"Has the senator
ever had sex with a couch?"
To which, by the way,
they hung up on us.
We then emailed them the same
question, as well as asking,
"What about sex with a latex glove
stuffed between two couch cushions?"
"Has Senator Vance ever had sex with
other furniture or household items?"
and, "Anything else
you'd like to add at this time?"
And they still
haven't responded to us.
Which isn't exactly
a resounding "no," is it?
And it's not like it is hard to deny
that you fucked a couch.
In fact, if you email
Has-John-Oliver-Fucked-A-Couch
at-Has-John-Oliver-Fucked-A-Couch
dot-com
and ask if I have fucked one,
I promise, you'll be emailed back,
with an answer of, "No way!"
Anyway, that exchange
is basically JD Vance in a nutshell.
He told a racist lie he found
on social media, doubled down,
then tried to play
the "you elites don't get it" card
to huff his way out
of the whole thing.
And at this point,
it's probably worth talking
about where JD Vance's political
evolution has taken him.
Because it's pretty grim.
On immigration, he's argued that,
while he bears no personal
animus toward immigrants,
they're the cause of many problems
Americans face.
He's claimed "we're bankrupting
a lot of hospitals by forcing them"
"to provide care for people who don't
have the right to be in our country."
He's said that "illegal aliens competing
with Americans for scarce homes"
"is one of the most significant drivers
of home prices in the country."
Two assertions, by the way, that have
been soundly rejected by experts.
And when he's talking about
immigrants to conservative audiences,
the mask can slip all the way off.
There is a logic to what
the Democrats are trying to do.
It's disgusting,
but there's a logic to it.
They want illegal aliens
to steal everybody's job,
and now they want illegal aliens
to steal everybody's vote.
It is totally reasonable and acceptable
for American citizens
to look at their next-door
neighbors and say,
"I want to live next to people who
I have something in common with."
"I don't want to live next
to four families of strangers."
The thing on immigration
is that no one can avoid
that it has made our societies
poorer, less safe,
less prosperous,
and less advanced.
Okay, that is just route one bigotry.
Also, it's a bit of a tell
to say you want to be able
to "look" at your neighbors
and have something in common
with them.
That only really means one thing.
And for what it's worth here,
I don't think most people's biggest
priority in neighbors
is having something
in common with them.
It's just hoping and praying that
they don't have a creepy trampoline kid
who stares in your windows all day.
Can you just bounce the other way?
Can you do
an another-way bounce?
But remarks like those are part
of a pattern of Vance
expressing anxiety that immigrants
could replace Americans,
with lines like, "You can't have so
many people coming to the country"
"at a time when our own families
aren't replicating themselves."
And that gets to another
of his major obsessions,
which is Americans
having more children.
To hear him tell it,
it's an existential crisis.
He's complained
about the "childless left"
and said the
"rejection of the American family"
"is perhaps the most pernicious
and evil thing the left has done."
Which is both untrue,
and just ridiculous.
The most evil thing the left has
ever done would be, hands down,
these fucking candles.
But this is a big deal to Vance.
Over the years, he's repeatedly focused
on prominent Democrats who didn't,
at that point,
have kids-among them AOC
and Pete Buttigieg,
to draw
some sweeping conclusions.
But there's just
these basic cadences of life
that are really powerful and valuable
when you have kids in your life.
And the fact that so many people,
especially in the leadership class,
just don't have that in their lives,
I worry that it makes people
more sociopathic
and ultimately our whole country
a little bit less mentally stable.
"Having kids makes you
mentally stable"
is something only someone who
is not the default parent would say.
Because try working a full-time job,
always tracking when
the diapers are about to run out,
what size shoes your kids wear, what
they won't eat for lunch at daycare,
which toy's their favorite, when
their doctors' appointments are,
when picture day is, which songs you
have to sing to get them to sleep,
how many child birthday parties
you have to attend this weekend,
and which ones specifically
requested gifts,
and also if you leave the room,
your child will scream bloody murder
because you're
the only one they want.
I'm not saying kids can't give you
a lot of things, like joy, purpose,
and hand, foot,
and mouth disease,
but mental stability
is not one of them.
And when pressed on those
remarks a few years later,
Vance's answer wasn't great.
Your position on those family values
have gotten a lot of scrutiny lately.
Sure.
You've talked about
childless cat ladies.
You've called childless people
sociopathic, psychotic, deranged.
And I know that you've said that
those comments were sarcastic.
But it's hard to hear those
words entirely as a joke.
What do you actually think
of childless women in society?
Well, as I said when
I made those comments,
and look,
they were dumb comments.
I think most people probably who've
watched this have said something dumb,
have said something that
they wish they had put differently.
You've said it
in several different venues.
In a very short period of time.
Well, you heard it here first, folks.
If you're mean, dumb, and wrong,
but in rapid succession,
it's actually fine!
And as for "everyone says dumb stuff,"
not like that, they don't!
The normal dumb stuff people
regret is usually things like,
"Armie Hammer
is the next DeNiro"
or, "Sure, I'll have
a third Gordita Crunch",
but not,
"Childless women are sociopaths."
And if Vance really does want to make
it easier for people to raise kids,
there are things he could support,
but he hasn't done that.
And some, he's actively opposed.
For instance,
he's railed against
universal daycare policies,
calling it "a class war
against normal people"
and that normal Americans
"want a family policy"
"that doesn't shunt their kids
into crap daycare."
And one of his solutions for high
daycare costs was pretty infuriating.
One of the ways that you might be
able to relieve a bit of pressure
on people who are paying
so much for daycare is,
maybe grandma or grandpa wants
to help out a little bit more.
Or maybe there's an aunt or uncle
that wants to help out a bit more.
If that happens,
you relieve some of the pressure
on all the resources
that we're spending on daycare.
Holy shit, that is brilliant!
Have family help!
How did no one think of this?!
Just call the grandparents,
who are definitely close by
and alive,
or maybe an aunt and uncle
who don't have jobs
or children of their own
to deal with.
We can now close every daycare
in the country
because America's most eyelined
boy genius
just cracked the fucking code here.
Pack a bunch of family members
into your house to help out,
not too many, though, or JD Vance
will get nervous if he lives next door!
And while he has gestured vaguely
toward federal money
to incentivize family to help out,
I'll point out, that hasn't happened.
The only concrete action he took
during his two years in the Senate,
when it comes to childcare policy,
was introduce the failed
Fairness for Stay-At-Home Parents Act,
focused on helping parents who decided
to leave the workforce altogether.
And if you are getting the sense
that what he really wants is to turn
the clock back to the 1950s,
you're getting warmer,
especially given he's also expressed
reservations about no-fault divorce.
And this is one of the great tricks
that I think the sexual revolution
pulled on the American populace,
which is this idea
that, like, well, okay, these
They were maybe even violent,
but certainly they were unhappy,
and so getting rid of them
and making it easier for people
to shift spouses
like they change their underwear,
that's going to make people
happier in the long term.
And maybe it worked out for the moms
and dads, though I'm skeptical.
But it really didn't work out for
the kids of those marriages.
Yeah, he said we shouldn't have
made it so easy
for people
to leave violent marriages.
Which is just wild for multiple
reasons, including:
you know what happened before
you could easily get a divorce?
Some women
would kill their husbands.
By making divorce easy and accessible,
what we have definitely reduced
is the amount of women in fabulous
hats who claimed,
"My husband fell ill suddenly."
That is not just
a victory for feminism,
it is a lifesaver
for shitty husbands everywhere.
But it gets even worse. Because
Vance is also hardline anti-abortion,
as he explained in a radio interview
when he ran for Senate.
Should a woman be forced
to carry a child to term
after she has been the victim
of incest or rape?
Look, my view on this
has been very clear,
and I think the question betrays
a certain presumption that's wrong.
It's not whether a woman should
be forced to bring a child to term,
it's whether a child should be
allowed to live,
even though the circumstances
of that child's birth
are somehow inconvenient
or a problem to the society.
The question really to me
is about the baby.
We want women
to have opportunities,
we want women to have choices,
but above all,
we want women and young boys
in the womb to have the right to life.
Okay, every part of that is awful,
and not just calling becoming
pregnant by rape an "inconvenience"
or taking women out of the pregnancy
equation altogether,
but also the phrase,
"Young boys in the womb."
What the fuck is wrong with you?
If you can't discuss the realities
of pregnancy
without sounding like
a high school football coach
subbing a health class,
don't comment on them at all.
So, that is, at least in part,
who JD Vance is.
And I'd argue it is repellent.
But the dangerous thing is,
he's proven himself able to hide
the worst parts of himself
at moments when the most people
are watching him.
Take the VP debate, where,
for 90 minutes,
he managed to come off as measured,
reasonable and compassionate.
Several times during that debate,
Tim Walz actually said,
"I agree with you."
Once over, many analysts seemed
surprised by what they'd just seen.
Let's face it, Vance looked very
reasonable. He looked rational.
He seemed at many moments
to be reasonable.
And that was clearly
a change in tone.
I was getting texts from Democrats,
panicked, quite frankly,
who were saying, "He's moderating
himself on a lot of these issues."
"He's the most
likable he has ever been."
Yeah, it's true. Even though,
for what it's worth,
it's not like that is
the highest bar to clear, is it?
It's basically saying, "The Mucinex
mascot is more fuckable than ever."
That's not saying
as much as it frankly should.
The point here is, when
the next election rolls around,
if he can put that act back on
when everyone is looking,
we may be in trouble.
All of which is why it is so important
to remember who JD Vance actually is.
Because he'll present himself as
an anti-elitist man of the people,
but much of his career's been
bankrolled by tech billionaires.
He'll go to bat for Alex Jones,
arguing we should show grace
to those who are "40% right",
but he'll happily co-sign on childless
people being sociopaths,
and the left being unhumans.
He'll offer empathy
and understanding
when it comes
to "non-conventional" thinkers,
but has no problem deriding
immigrants as a net negative on society
and it's not hard to see
what the difference
between those two groups are.
The point is, I know Vance is easy
to write off as a charisma-less asshole,
but scratch even one inch under
the surface, peel back the beard,
and you'll find something far worse:
his batshit views
and his bare fucking face.
And one last thing.
JD Vance also stuck his dick
in between the cushions of a sofa
and thrust himself back and forth
until climax.
And if I may quote the man himself,
yeah, of course I was
just trolling by saying that.
But that doesn't mean that what
I said was in any way untrue.
And now, this.
And Now: Kelly Clarkson Does Not
Like Horror Movies.
Let's talk about the new movie.
It's "Maxine". It's scary, right?
- It's a horror, yeah.
- Are you into horror?
- No.
- Me neither.
I have to be completely honest
with people on my couch
when they say they're in
a horror film.
- You're never gonna watch it.
- I will never watch your film.
Horror movies,
like, I will pee my pants.
How are you with horror films
usually? I don't watch them.
- Do you usually like watching them?
- No, I don't.
My first one really that I watched
I never went on a waterbed
'cause of Freddy Krueger.
The waterbed scene in Freddy Kruger,
it's always in my mind.
Freddy Krueger was
the scariest thing I ever saw.
- Freddy Krueger was my guy.
- My God, we're so different.
I don't watch horror, no thanks.
I don't do scary.
I don't watch them. I don't
watch horror. I'm like, peace out.
- You do like horror.
- I love horror.
- Me, no.
- Kelly, why?
This is random, but I saw
something in my childhood
and it was actually at church.
And it was this demon on top
of this person, they were frozen.
I don't want to go to Hell
or see a demon ever in my life.
And it ruined me. I don't watch
anything scary. It was church!
That's our show, thanks so much
for watching. We'll see you next week.
Good night!
I'm John Oliver. Thank you so much for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
Chile got a new far-right president,
and Trump endorsed Jake Paul even
though he's not running for office.
But we're gonna start with Iran.
It's been two weeks since
we launched strikes there,
and it's still unclear how long
this is going to continue.
On Monday, Trump claimed
the war was "very complete",
before adding, "pretty much".
And that qualifier
turned out to be important.
Mr. President, you've said the war
is, quote, "very complete",
but your defense secretary says,
"This is just the beginning."
So which is it, and how long should
I think you could say both.
It's the beginning
of building a new country.
We could call it a tremendous
success, right now,
as we leave here, I could call it.
Or we could go further,
and we're gonna go further.
Yeah, not a great response there.
That noncommittal floundering
makes him sound less like
a president laying out a strategy
and more like what happens
when you ask your situationship
if you should put him down
as your plus one
to a wedding in six months.
"I dunno, we could go further."
"I could call it, but we're
gonna go further, right?"
At every point, the president
seemed utterly disconnected
from the stakes of this war,
right down to greeting the remains
of fallen American troops
while wearing
his most formal baseball cap.
He's also been conveniently confused
about civilian casualties.
Take the horrifying strike on an
elementary school
that killed at least 175 people,
most of them children.
Observers quickly came to believe that
the U.S. was responsible,
including, it now seems,
our own military.
Yet Trump's repeatedly played dumb
whenever asked about it.
A Tomahawk missile likely destroyed
that Iranian girls' school.
Will the U.S. accept any responsibility
for that strike?
I haven't seen it.
And I will say that the Tomahawk,
which is one of the most
powerful weapons around,
is sold and used by other countries.
You know that.
And whether it's Iran, who also
has some Tomahawks,
they wish they had more,
but whether it's Iran
or somebody else,
a Tomahawk is very generic.
You just suggested that Iran somehow
got its hands on a Tomahawk
and bombed its own elementary
school on the first day of the war.
But you're the only person
in your government saying this.
Even your own defense secretary
wouldn't say that when he was asked,
standing over your shoulder on
your plane on Saturday.
Why are you the only person
saying this?
Because I just don't know
enough about it.
Yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it?
What's he really supposed to do?
Ask the people who work for him?
Listen to the daily briefings he gets?
Of course not!
It is hard to say
whether Trump is being actively
deceptive there, or just plain dumb.
In his words, I think
you could say both!
Meanwhile, the conflict continues
to spread throughout the region,
with Israel now bombing Lebanon,
killing nearly 800 so far,
and displacing over 800,000.
And Iran's effectively closed
the Strait of Hormuz,
through which about 20%
of the world's oil usually transits.
At least 16 ships have been attacked
there since the war began,
sending oil prices soaring.
Polls have consistently shown
the majority of America is against
this conflict.
And that may be why the White House
is selling it hard,
tweeting multiple gross videos
showing footage of bombs exploding
intercut with things like baseball
players hitting a ball,
captioned,
"Pure American dominance,"
and football hits in a post confusingly
titled, "Touchdown".
And if you're thinking, "That is all
in terrible taste, but, at least,"
"they didn't set missile strikes to
Nelly's 'Here Comes the Boom'",
I have some terrible news for you.
So cool, bro.
I always wanted a government
that made war propaganda
like eighth grade boys making
a lacrosse team hype video.
And look, with this White House,
that's kind of to be expected.
What's surprising is,
Iran's been trolling in return.
State-aligned media there
even shared an AI Lego video
that opened with a scene
making it clear
they think Trump started this war
as a distraction.
Look, I think
I get Iran's point there.
This war is just a smokescreen
to distract from Trump's friendship
with notorious sex criminal
Llrey Epstein.
And by the way, who is it
with Epstein in the corner there?
Is that Dick Van Dyke?
Dick, no! Not you!
That video also features the Strait
of Hormuz being closed
and businessmen crying
about oil prices spiking,
as well as a Lego depiction of the
aftermath of the school bombing.
Which is surreal. It is odd for
a human rights atrocity
to be rendered in Lego, but I guess
that's where we are in this conflict,
especially given the White House
continues to churn out
shitposts like this one.
Here comes the hit from the USA.
Boom, pins down. What a strike!
That's right. Who do you think
you are? I am!
Okay. Look, this isn't the point.
The point should be
that everyone in this White House
clearly needs parental controls
on screen time.
But also, you send a ball
right down the middle like that,
you're gonna get a split.
You gotta come
in at a slight angle,
otherwise there's no way
you're going 10 for 10.
I don't do much bowling myself.
Too whimsical.
I'm more of a frown
and play chess man.
But even I know that's not a ball
that's gonna give you what you want.
One reason the White House
might be doing all this
is to distract
from negative press coverage.
CNN, for instance,
published this article
about the failure to plan for
the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
And on Friday morning,
Pete Hegseth addressed that directly.
From CNN, reports that the Trump
administration underestimated
the Iran war's impact
on the Strait of Hormuz.
Patently ridiculous, of course.
For decades,
Iran has threatened shipping
in the Strait of Hormuz.
This is always what they do,
hold the strait hostage.
CNN doesn't think
we thought of that.
It's a fundamentally unserious report.
The sooner David Ellison
takes over that network, the better.
That is not good.
"I can't wait"
"until the billionaire sympathetic to
this administration takes over the news"
is a little like your mom saying,
"When you were conceived,"
"your dad came harder than ever before.
He jizzed like a geyser."
Even if you thought
that was the case,
your ability to make it
through the day
really depends on never
hearing those words.
But that wasn't all. Unhappy
at the coverage this war has gotten,
Hegseth decided to offer
the press some helpful tips.
Allow me to make a few suggestions.
People look up at the TV and they
see banners, they see headlines.
"Mideast War Intensifies",
splashing on the screen
the last couple of days,
alongside visuals of civilian
or energy targets that Iran has hit,
because that's what they do.
What should
the banner read instead?
How about,
"Iran Increasingly Desperate"?
Another example of a fake headline
that I saw yesterday,
"War Widening."
Here's a real headline for you,
for an actual patriotic press.
How about, "Iran Shrinking,
Going Underground"?
So even if his version of events
were true there, which it's not,
that is a terrible headline.
"Iran Shrinking, Going Underground"?
What does that even mean?
A headline's supposed to give you
a clear idea of a story in a few words.
That makes it seem like Iran is
literally getting smaller and sinking,
like some kind
of Middle Eastern Atlantis.
I get why Hegseth is trying to
force-feed headlines to the press
and why the White House
is pumping out fun bowling animations,
though I will point out,
in bowling,
no matter how many times you
knock those pins down,
they do return
to their original positions,
which feels
pretty on the nose here.
Look, clearly,
no one behind this war
wants to deal with how
complicated it's turned out to be.
Trump is saying that it'll be over
"when I feel it in my bones",
whatever the fuck that means.
And that's a pretty thoughtless way
to approach a conflict
that's already killed so many.
It's not just disrespectful
to the Iranian people
and to U.S. service members affected,
it's disrespectful to the rest of us
to assume childish memes
and sugar-coated headlines
will change what we can all see
with our own eyes.
Because at this point,
we don't deserve deflections.
We deserve explanations,
accountability,
and, if it is not too much trouble,
the full release
of the Llrey Epstein files.
And now, this.
And Now:
Jim Cramer Went to Harvard.
When I was doing
my senior thesis at Harvard,
to do some mindless namedropping.
And I consider myself
an average American
who took three years
of economics at Harvard.
I'm a proud supporter of Harvard.
For law school,
I went to Harvard.
It's been a long time since I studied
anti-trust at Harvard Law
under the greatest
anti-trust scholar of all time.
When I got to Harvard,
we had every single Nobel.
I took three years
of economics at Harvard.
That's why I went to Harvard and
Harvard Law, to get stupid!
No, I didn't go to Harvard Law
School for nothing.
I actually did well at Harvard.
I went to Harvard.
I took seven courses
on communism at Harvard.
Here's something I learned when I
went to take economics at Harvard.
Class at Harvard.
Took that stupid corporate law
course at Harvard and got an A in it.
I actually had the highest grade
of my generals in my major at Harvard.
When I was at Harvard,
dropped that.
Had to mention Harvard
because I'm a jerk.
Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns JD Vance.
Sworn in at just 40 years old,
he's our first millennial vicepresident,
so we can confidently say
he's the first VP to have definitely
jacked it to "Space Jam".
I know to some,
Vance might appear to be
just another abrasive MAGA asshole
with a load-bearing beard.
But to many on the right,
he's a towering intellect.
The president of the Heritage
Foundation said Vance is going to be
"one of the leaders-if not
the leader-of our movement."
And Tucker Carlson
once called him
"the smartest and deepest"
senator he's ever met.
Which is kind of like Ryan Lochte
calling Cookie Monster
"his go-to guy
for investment advice."
I don't trust
any of the individuals involved
to be reliable judges
of any of the subjects involved.
And his rise to become
Trump's right-hand man
is especially striking,
given, as recently as 2016,
he was casting himself as
a "never Trump" Republican,
saying he might write
in his dog for president,
or if Trump had
a really good chance of winning,
hold his nose
and vote for Hillary Clinton.
Privately, he even mused that Trump
could become "America's Hitler".
And yet, just a few years later,
he was campaigning for Senate
alongside Trump, and adopting
a very different tone,
something that did not go unnoticed.
You know what? He's a guy that
said some bad shit about me.
Come on up, JD.
The president is right. I wasn't
always nice, but the simple fact is,
he's the best president
of my lifetime.
And he revealed the corruption
in this country like nobody else.
I guess that is true.
Trump definitely revealed corruption
in this country like nobody else,
in the same way no one taught us
more about what a Ponzi scheme is
than Bernie Madoff.
It's true, just not in the way
I think you're implying.
And Vance has turned out
to be perfect for Trump,
as in many ways, he's become
like a son
Trump doesn't even have
to pretend to love.
And as VP, he has served dutifully,
often receding into the background,
but willing to be an attack dog
when needed,
like when he demanded Zelensky
say "thank you" to Trump
in the Oval Office.
He's also relentlessly
defended his boss's moves,
even when they directly
contradict his prior beliefs,
like his anti-interventionist
approach to foreign policy.
When people criticized last year's
US strikes in the waters off Venezuela,
calling them a war crime,
he replied on Twitter,
"I don't give a shit
what you call it."
And when Trump decided
to first strike Iran last year,
Vance defended him,
and didn't even try to come up
with a good rationalization.
I certainly empathize with Americans
who are exhausted
after 25 years of foreign
entanglements in the Middle East.
I understand the concern, but
the difference is that back then,
we had dumb presidents,
and now we have a president
who actually knows how to accomplish
America's national security objectives.
It wasn't okay before, because the
presidents were stupid-heads
who ate dumb for breakfast,
but now,
we have a big strong real estate
developer and steak salesman
to give us the national security
expertise we so badly need,
so it's completely fine.
And look, obviously some of that's
just part of being vice president.
You have to roll over for your boss.
But it's worth remembering,
Vance has an inside track to
the Oval Office in the future.
Not only because polls show him
leading the Republican field for 2028,
but also because if this guy doesn't
make it through his term,
either because the 25th Amendment
got invoked,
or his internal organs decided,
"You know what, dude, you can't
keep doing this to us, we're out",
JD Vance will become president.
So, before things reach that point,
it feels like tonight,
it may be worth looking at JD Vance,
what he stands for,
and who he might be
without Donald Trump.
And I'll skip over his early life,
because it's been well-chronicled
in his bestselling memoir,
"Hillbilly Elegy,"
voted 2016's number one
Christmas gift
by "Oh Fuck! Emergency Airport
Purchases" magazine.
If you haven't read it,
long story short,
he was raised in Ohio by a mother
who battled an opioid addiction,
and his loud-mouthed grandmother,
before a stint in the military in Iraq
and attending Yale Law School.
If you want to know more,
you can read the book,
or just watch the movie adaptation,
featuring this scene,
where his grandmother catches
Vance smoking weed
and decides to raise him herself.
I don't give a rat fart
what you're smoking, kid.
If you think you're hiding it,
honey, you're dumb as a bag of hair.
- Pack up.
- For what?
- What are you doing?
- I'm taking him.
- Where?
- To live with me.
And if you got a problem with that,
you can talk to the barrel of my gun.
Listen.
This is a pro-Glenn Close show.
Always has been, always will be.
No. I do not like
what I am seeing there.
The only good thing
that came out of that film
is the fact that when Glenn Close was
nominated for best supporting actress
and attended
the Academy Awards,
she was approached by Lil Rel
for a music trivia game,
and this happened.
Do you know how to do da butt?
Quest, turn it up.
Come on, let's see it. Let me
see you do da butt. Let's see it.
Yeah. That was eight-time
Oscar nominee Glenn Close,
doing "da butt" on camera.
So, "Hillbilly Elegy"
was a terrible film,
but let's not say
it didn't give us anything.
Vance's book hit stores during Trump's
first run for the White House,
making him a hot commodity
for news shows
looking for someone to explain the
grievances of the white working class.
And at the time, he struck what seemed
to be a fairly moderate tone.
I think that this election
is really having a negative effect,
especially on the white
working class, right?
Because I think a lot of these
grievances are legitimate,
but what it's doing
is it's giving people an excuse
to point the finger at someone else,
at Mexican immigrants,
or Chinese trade, or the Democratic
elites, or whatever else.
And sometimes these
villains are legitimate.
It's fair to say that the policy
elites of the Democratic Party
haven't been totally concerned
about the white working class.
But at the same time,
fundamentally, what's going on
and what Donald Trump has done
is change the focus
of the white working class
from a sort of engaged
and constructive politics
to a politics of pointing the finger.
So, watching that now feels weird
for a number of reasons.
First, I never thought I'd long
for JD Vance's beard.
It turns out the thing none of us
needed from him was more face.
Without a beard,
he looks like Radio Shack's assistant
store manager of the year 1998.
He looks like he'd play Cartman
in a live action "South Park" movie.
But also, it is strange to see
such a nuanced tone
from a guy
who's since become such a troll.
It'd be like finding old videos
of your dog eating with a fork
Yesterday, I watched you take a shit
and then eat it mouth-first.
How on Earth did
we get from this to that?
And while that may sound like
a fairly even-handed critique,
since then, Vance has clearly
picked a side
between blaming
the elites of the Democratic Party
and finger-pointing Republicans.
And some of that may have
to do with his mentor, Peter Thiel,
the co-founder
of PayPal and Palantir,
and a man who looks like he got
stuck trying to animorph
between Mark Zuckerberg
and Elon Musk.
Vance has said of Thiel that,
"If there's something interesting
going on, and I want to bounce ideas"
"off of a fascinating and knowledgeable
person, I'll give him a call."
Which is worrying, given Thiel
holds some troubling views.
In 2009, he wrote
that he no longer believed
that freedom
and democracy were compatible,
and more recently, called the quest
for diversity, "very evil",
as well as giving multiple lectures
around the idea
that critics of technology or AI
are "legionnaires of the Antichrist".
Thiel is a huge influence on Vance,
who's attributed pretty much his
entire career to Thiel's mentorship.
They met when Thiel spoke at Yale
when Vance was a student.
And Thiel later wound up hiring him
and eventually investing
in his venture capital firm.
He then backed Vance's 2022 Senate
campaign with, at that point,
"the largest amount given to a single
candidate in congressional history."
That campaign, by the way,
gave us this political ad
with a truly iconic opening line,
written by Vance himself,
that somehow gets worse
from there.
Are you a racist?
Do you hate Mexicans?
The media calls us racist for
wanting to build Trump's wall.
They censor us,
but it doesn't change the truth.
Joe Biden's open border
is killing Ohioans,
with more illegal drugs and Democrat
voters pouring into this country.
This issue is personal.
I nearly lost my mother to the poison
coming across our border.
No child should
grow up an orphan.
I'm JD Vance,
and I approve this message.
Because whatever they call us,
we will put America first.
That whole ad has a terrible vibe.
I don't think anything could fix it.
Not even the fact that you
could sing the beginning
to the opening of "Bohemian
Rhapsody," and it scans perfectly.
"Are you a racist?
Do you hate Mexicans?"
Two questions, by the way,
he never ends up answering there.
It was during that campaign
that Vance made that appearance
with Trump, that you saw earlier.
And I wish I could tell you
what happened to him
between 2016 and that moment.
Sadly, I am not a mind-reader or
the therapist he so desperately needs.
Vance will claim it's because
he believed Trump turned out to be
a great president in his first term.
Others might say
he's a power-hungry ladder-climber
who saw that the MAGA right
was the only way up.
But I'd argue his shift was both
opportunistic and genuine,
because Vance has seemed to
have journeyed farther and farther
into some
pretty far-right thought.
Chris Rufo,
the conservative activist,
has jokingly described Vance's
evolution as taking him
"from the pages of National Review to
the fever swamp of right-wing Twitter."
And Vance himself has said
he's "plugged into a lot
of weird, right-wing subcultures",
which isn't something you want
to hear from your Tinder date,
let alone the fucking
vice president.
In fact, in many ways,
he's become the archetype
of the hyper-online conservative troll,
right down to the whole
"kidding/not-kidding",
"trigger the libs" shtick.
Just watch him brag
about doing exactly that
at an event a few years ago.
I got myself into
a little hot water last week
because I made what seemed to me
a plainly obvious observation
that Alex Jones,
the "InfoWars" guy,
is a better source of information
than Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC gal.
Now, some people said,
"Well, JD, you're just trolling."
Well, yeah of course,
I was just trolling.
But that doesn't mean that what
I said was in any way untrue.
Okay, so with all due respect,
which, to be perfectly clear, is none,
saying that Alex "A Billion
Dollars in Defamation Damages" Jones
is a better source of information
than Rachel Maddow is just laughable.
The man's entire brand
was called "InfoWars!"
Also, calling Rachel Maddow
the "MSNBC gal"
is off base for so many reasons,
including that she does not remotely
give off the breezy energy
that you associate
with that word.
Julia Roberts, that's a gal. Reese
Witherspoon, definitely a gal.
Paul Rudd, such a gal.
Rachel Maddow, though?
Not so much.
And Vance went on to expand
on what he meant by that.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the most important truths
often come from people
who are crazy 60% of the time,
but they're right 40% of time.
I'm very close friends
with Peter Thiel.
I think Peter Thiel is one
of the most important sources
of non-conventional truth
in our society.
Peter Thiel believes some things
that are considered crazy
by opinion makers.
We have to get away from this weird
tension that we feel in our chest
when somebody says,
"This person believes something crazy,
therefore you must denounce them."
Believing crazy things is not the mark
of whether somebody is rejected.
Believing important truths
should be the mark of whether
we accept somebody.
And if they believe some crazy
things on the side, that's fine.
We need to be okay
with non-conventional people.
Okay, so, here's the thing.
We generally are okay
with non-conventional people.
I'd argue some of our best people
are non-conventional:
Cyndi Lauper, Lady Gaga,
Barbra Streisand.
She cloned her dog, and has a tiny
mall in the basement of her house.
But if Babs came out
and said Sandy Hook was staged,
you'd be justified in retiring
your DVD copy of "Yentl".
And look, in some ways,
that is a very convenient argument
for hanging out with odious people.
"Relax, I don't agree with everything
they say, just the 'important truths.'"
But it's worth knowing
just how closely aligned Vance is
with some pretty extreme thinkers.
He's close friends with
the conservative writer Rod Dreher,
who's said, among other things, that
"LGBT activism is the tip of the spear
at our throats in the culture war."
Vance also wrote a glowing blurb
for a book
co-written by the far-right
activist Jack Posobiec,
who promoted the Pizzagate
hoax-a book, by the way,
called "Unhumans", a term
that it uses for people on the left,
who it says
"undo civilization itself."
He's also expressed
admiration for Curtis Yarvin,
a self-proclaimed "neoreactionary"
who's not only said things
like, we should "put the church Blacks
in charge of the ghetto Blacks,"
he's also argued for a policy
he called "RAGE",
retire all government employees,
to seize and consolidate power.
That thought clearly made
its way into Vance's head,
and then straight back out
of his mouth during this interview.
There's this guy Curtis Yarvin, who's
written about some of these things.
I think that what Trump should do,
like if I was giving him
one piece of advice,
fire every
single mid-level bureaucrat,
every civil servant
in the administrative state,
replace them with our people.
And when the courts,
'cause you will get taken to court,
and then when the courts stop you,
stand before the country,
like Andrew Jackson did,
and say,
"The chief justice has made his
ruling, now let him enforce it."
Yeah, not ideal. And while many
people do erroneously think
Andrew Jackson said that,
as part of the run-up, incidentally,
to the Trail of Tears,
there's no evidence that he did.
And if we're gonna completely make
up Andrew Jackson quotes,
how about this one: "The chief
justice has made his ruling,"
"now let him enforce it."
"Also, I really hope in the future
my fans are cool."
"If my historical legacy
is two fish-lipped weird beards"
"broing out about me on a podcast,
do me a favor,"
"dig me up and kill me again."
And it's worth noting that,
in Vance's vast amount of time online,
he's ended up promoting some
flagrantly racist bullshit.
It tends to get forgotten,
but Trump's whole "they're eating the
dogs, they're eating the cats" meltdown
in the presidential debate came after
Vance elevated a false rumor
that Haitian immigrants in Springfield,
Ohio, were eating people's pets.
And after it all blew up,
and it became clear that
the whole thing was total nonsense,
Vance doubled down
in a pretty revealing way.
When you have a lot of people
saying, "My pets are being abducted"
or, "Geese at the city pond are abducted
and slaughtered right in front of us",
this is crazy stuff.
And again, whether those exact rumors
turn out to be mostly true,
somewhat true,
whatever the case may be, Kaitlan,
this town has been ravaged
by 20,000 migrants coming in.
Healthcare costs are up,
housing costs are up,
communicable diseases like HIV and TB
have skyrocketed in this Ohio town.
This is what Kamala Harris' border
policies have done.
And I think it's interesting, Kaitlan,
that the media didn't care
about the carnage wrought
by these policies
until we turned it
into a meme about cats.
First, just a quick shoutout to this
look on Kaitlan Collins' face.
'Cause her eyes saying what
we are all thinking there,
which is, "Is this guy
for fucking real right now?"
Second, you didn't "turn it
into a meme about cats."
You shared misinformation that turned
a whole town upside-down.
And it wasn't even the fun kind
of misinformation,
like when, that same summer,
everyone got convinced
JD Vance had fucked a couch,
a theory that went so viral,
it led to us calling
Vance's team and asking,
"Has the senator
ever had sex with a couch?"
To which, by the way,
they hung up on us.
We then emailed them the same
question, as well as asking,
"What about sex with a latex glove
stuffed between two couch cushions?"
"Has Senator Vance ever had sex with
other furniture or household items?"
and, "Anything else
you'd like to add at this time?"
And they still
haven't responded to us.
Which isn't exactly
a resounding "no," is it?
And it's not like it is hard to deny
that you fucked a couch.
In fact, if you email
Has-John-Oliver-Fucked-A-Couch
at-Has-John-Oliver-Fucked-A-Couch
dot-com
and ask if I have fucked one,
I promise, you'll be emailed back,
with an answer of, "No way!"
Anyway, that exchange
is basically JD Vance in a nutshell.
He told a racist lie he found
on social media, doubled down,
then tried to play
the "you elites don't get it" card
to huff his way out
of the whole thing.
And at this point,
it's probably worth talking
about where JD Vance's political
evolution has taken him.
Because it's pretty grim.
On immigration, he's argued that,
while he bears no personal
animus toward immigrants,
they're the cause of many problems
Americans face.
He's claimed "we're bankrupting
a lot of hospitals by forcing them"
"to provide care for people who don't
have the right to be in our country."
He's said that "illegal aliens competing
with Americans for scarce homes"
"is one of the most significant drivers
of home prices in the country."
Two assertions, by the way, that have
been soundly rejected by experts.
And when he's talking about
immigrants to conservative audiences,
the mask can slip all the way off.
There is a logic to what
the Democrats are trying to do.
It's disgusting,
but there's a logic to it.
They want illegal aliens
to steal everybody's job,
and now they want illegal aliens
to steal everybody's vote.
It is totally reasonable and acceptable
for American citizens
to look at their next-door
neighbors and say,
"I want to live next to people who
I have something in common with."
"I don't want to live next
to four families of strangers."
The thing on immigration
is that no one can avoid
that it has made our societies
poorer, less safe,
less prosperous,
and less advanced.
Okay, that is just route one bigotry.
Also, it's a bit of a tell
to say you want to be able
to "look" at your neighbors
and have something in common
with them.
That only really means one thing.
And for what it's worth here,
I don't think most people's biggest
priority in neighbors
is having something
in common with them.
It's just hoping and praying that
they don't have a creepy trampoline kid
who stares in your windows all day.
Can you just bounce the other way?
Can you do
an another-way bounce?
But remarks like those are part
of a pattern of Vance
expressing anxiety that immigrants
could replace Americans,
with lines like, "You can't have so
many people coming to the country"
"at a time when our own families
aren't replicating themselves."
And that gets to another
of his major obsessions,
which is Americans
having more children.
To hear him tell it,
it's an existential crisis.
He's complained
about the "childless left"
and said the
"rejection of the American family"
"is perhaps the most pernicious
and evil thing the left has done."
Which is both untrue,
and just ridiculous.
The most evil thing the left has
ever done would be, hands down,
these fucking candles.
But this is a big deal to Vance.
Over the years, he's repeatedly focused
on prominent Democrats who didn't,
at that point,
have kids-among them AOC
and Pete Buttigieg,
to draw
some sweeping conclusions.
But there's just
these basic cadences of life
that are really powerful and valuable
when you have kids in your life.
And the fact that so many people,
especially in the leadership class,
just don't have that in their lives,
I worry that it makes people
more sociopathic
and ultimately our whole country
a little bit less mentally stable.
"Having kids makes you
mentally stable"
is something only someone who
is not the default parent would say.
Because try working a full-time job,
always tracking when
the diapers are about to run out,
what size shoes your kids wear, what
they won't eat for lunch at daycare,
which toy's their favorite, when
their doctors' appointments are,
when picture day is, which songs you
have to sing to get them to sleep,
how many child birthday parties
you have to attend this weekend,
and which ones specifically
requested gifts,
and also if you leave the room,
your child will scream bloody murder
because you're
the only one they want.
I'm not saying kids can't give you
a lot of things, like joy, purpose,
and hand, foot,
and mouth disease,
but mental stability
is not one of them.
And when pressed on those
remarks a few years later,
Vance's answer wasn't great.
Your position on those family values
have gotten a lot of scrutiny lately.
Sure.
You've talked about
childless cat ladies.
You've called childless people
sociopathic, psychotic, deranged.
And I know that you've said that
those comments were sarcastic.
But it's hard to hear those
words entirely as a joke.
What do you actually think
of childless women in society?
Well, as I said when
I made those comments,
and look,
they were dumb comments.
I think most people probably who've
watched this have said something dumb,
have said something that
they wish they had put differently.
You've said it
in several different venues.
In a very short period of time.
Well, you heard it here first, folks.
If you're mean, dumb, and wrong,
but in rapid succession,
it's actually fine!
And as for "everyone says dumb stuff,"
not like that, they don't!
The normal dumb stuff people
regret is usually things like,
"Armie Hammer
is the next DeNiro"
or, "Sure, I'll have
a third Gordita Crunch",
but not,
"Childless women are sociopaths."
And if Vance really does want to make
it easier for people to raise kids,
there are things he could support,
but he hasn't done that.
And some, he's actively opposed.
For instance,
he's railed against
universal daycare policies,
calling it "a class war
against normal people"
and that normal Americans
"want a family policy"
"that doesn't shunt their kids
into crap daycare."
And one of his solutions for high
daycare costs was pretty infuriating.
One of the ways that you might be
able to relieve a bit of pressure
on people who are paying
so much for daycare is,
maybe grandma or grandpa wants
to help out a little bit more.
Or maybe there's an aunt or uncle
that wants to help out a bit more.
If that happens,
you relieve some of the pressure
on all the resources
that we're spending on daycare.
Holy shit, that is brilliant!
Have family help!
How did no one think of this?!
Just call the grandparents,
who are definitely close by
and alive,
or maybe an aunt and uncle
who don't have jobs
or children of their own
to deal with.
We can now close every daycare
in the country
because America's most eyelined
boy genius
just cracked the fucking code here.
Pack a bunch of family members
into your house to help out,
not too many, though, or JD Vance
will get nervous if he lives next door!
And while he has gestured vaguely
toward federal money
to incentivize family to help out,
I'll point out, that hasn't happened.
The only concrete action he took
during his two years in the Senate,
when it comes to childcare policy,
was introduce the failed
Fairness for Stay-At-Home Parents Act,
focused on helping parents who decided
to leave the workforce altogether.
And if you are getting the sense
that what he really wants is to turn
the clock back to the 1950s,
you're getting warmer,
especially given he's also expressed
reservations about no-fault divorce.
And this is one of the great tricks
that I think the sexual revolution
pulled on the American populace,
which is this idea
that, like, well, okay, these
They were maybe even violent,
but certainly they were unhappy,
and so getting rid of them
and making it easier for people
to shift spouses
like they change their underwear,
that's going to make people
happier in the long term.
And maybe it worked out for the moms
and dads, though I'm skeptical.
But it really didn't work out for
the kids of those marriages.
Yeah, he said we shouldn't have
made it so easy
for people
to leave violent marriages.
Which is just wild for multiple
reasons, including:
you know what happened before
you could easily get a divorce?
Some women
would kill their husbands.
By making divorce easy and accessible,
what we have definitely reduced
is the amount of women in fabulous
hats who claimed,
"My husband fell ill suddenly."
That is not just
a victory for feminism,
it is a lifesaver
for shitty husbands everywhere.
But it gets even worse. Because
Vance is also hardline anti-abortion,
as he explained in a radio interview
when he ran for Senate.
Should a woman be forced
to carry a child to term
after she has been the victim
of incest or rape?
Look, my view on this
has been very clear,
and I think the question betrays
a certain presumption that's wrong.
It's not whether a woman should
be forced to bring a child to term,
it's whether a child should be
allowed to live,
even though the circumstances
of that child's birth
are somehow inconvenient
or a problem to the society.
The question really to me
is about the baby.
We want women
to have opportunities,
we want women to have choices,
but above all,
we want women and young boys
in the womb to have the right to life.
Okay, every part of that is awful,
and not just calling becoming
pregnant by rape an "inconvenience"
or taking women out of the pregnancy
equation altogether,
but also the phrase,
"Young boys in the womb."
What the fuck is wrong with you?
If you can't discuss the realities
of pregnancy
without sounding like
a high school football coach
subbing a health class,
don't comment on them at all.
So, that is, at least in part,
who JD Vance is.
And I'd argue it is repellent.
But the dangerous thing is,
he's proven himself able to hide
the worst parts of himself
at moments when the most people
are watching him.
Take the VP debate, where,
for 90 minutes,
he managed to come off as measured,
reasonable and compassionate.
Several times during that debate,
Tim Walz actually said,
"I agree with you."
Once over, many analysts seemed
surprised by what they'd just seen.
Let's face it, Vance looked very
reasonable. He looked rational.
He seemed at many moments
to be reasonable.
And that was clearly
a change in tone.
I was getting texts from Democrats,
panicked, quite frankly,
who were saying, "He's moderating
himself on a lot of these issues."
"He's the most
likable he has ever been."
Yeah, it's true. Even though,
for what it's worth,
it's not like that is
the highest bar to clear, is it?
It's basically saying, "The Mucinex
mascot is more fuckable than ever."
That's not saying
as much as it frankly should.
The point here is, when
the next election rolls around,
if he can put that act back on
when everyone is looking,
we may be in trouble.
All of which is why it is so important
to remember who JD Vance actually is.
Because he'll present himself as
an anti-elitist man of the people,
but much of his career's been
bankrolled by tech billionaires.
He'll go to bat for Alex Jones,
arguing we should show grace
to those who are "40% right",
but he'll happily co-sign on childless
people being sociopaths,
and the left being unhumans.
He'll offer empathy
and understanding
when it comes
to "non-conventional" thinkers,
but has no problem deriding
immigrants as a net negative on society
and it's not hard to see
what the difference
between those two groups are.
The point is, I know Vance is easy
to write off as a charisma-less asshole,
but scratch even one inch under
the surface, peel back the beard,
and you'll find something far worse:
his batshit views
and his bare fucking face.
And one last thing.
JD Vance also stuck his dick
in between the cushions of a sofa
and thrust himself back and forth
until climax.
And if I may quote the man himself,
yeah, of course I was
just trolling by saying that.
But that doesn't mean that what
I said was in any way untrue.
And now, this.
And Now: Kelly Clarkson Does Not
Like Horror Movies.
Let's talk about the new movie.
It's "Maxine". It's scary, right?
- It's a horror, yeah.
- Are you into horror?
- No.
- Me neither.
I have to be completely honest
with people on my couch
when they say they're in
a horror film.
- You're never gonna watch it.
- I will never watch your film.
Horror movies,
like, I will pee my pants.
How are you with horror films
usually? I don't watch them.
- Do you usually like watching them?
- No, I don't.
My first one really that I watched
I never went on a waterbed
'cause of Freddy Krueger.
The waterbed scene in Freddy Kruger,
it's always in my mind.
Freddy Krueger was
the scariest thing I ever saw.
- Freddy Krueger was my guy.
- My God, we're so different.
I don't watch horror, no thanks.
I don't do scary.
I don't watch them. I don't
watch horror. I'm like, peace out.
- You do like horror.
- I love horror.
- Me, no.
- Kelly, why?
This is random, but I saw
something in my childhood
and it was actually at church.
And it was this demon on top
of this person, they were frozen.
I don't want to go to Hell
or see a demon ever in my life.
And it ruined me. I don't watch
anything scary. It was church!
That's our show, thanks so much
for watching. We'll see you next week.
Good night!