Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s13e07 Episode Script
Hungary
1
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
There were No Kings protests
around the U.S. and the world,
whatever this was happened,
and the White House tweeted,
"America will never
give up the moon again",
which is definitely
something I was worried about.
Meanwhile, the Iran war
entered its second month,
though Trump tries not to use
the word "war",
for reasons he probably
shouldn't be saying out loud.
I won't use the word "war", 'cause
they say if you use the word "war",
that's maybe not a good thing to do.
They don't like the word "war".
Because you're supposed
to get approval,
so I'll use the word "military
operation", which is really what it is.
What? He really just talks
like a six-year-old
speaking stream of consciousness
to a stranger.
And my mom says I'm not allowed
to talk about my penis
with other people,
even though everybody has one.
Well, not her and not my sister.
But my dad and I both have penises,
but I can't say that when there
are too many people around.
Even though everyone knows,
'cause they have their own penises.
Unless they don't. But I do.
But look, whatever you call this
conflict, it has been chaos.
Last Saturday, Trump threatened
to attack Iran's power grid
if the Strait of Hormuz wasn't opened,
writing he'd be "starting with
the biggest" power plant first,
which would be a war crime,
if this was a war,
but luckily we now know it isn't.
Then on Monday, he said he'd delay
those strikes for five days
after "very good and productive
conversations" with Iran,
discussions
they've denied took place.
He's since extended the deadline
until April 6th,
even as Iran's continued to bomb U.S.
bases and allies across the region.
Almost
2.000 Iranians have been killed,
as have at least
13 U.S. service members,
and Trump's reportedly weighing
whether to move an additional
10.000 troops to the region.
It feels like we're in an unnecessary
war with no endgame,
though the president's supporters
will insist
that if you just look at things in
the right way, it all makes sense.
Here's why we went into Iran.
We had no choice.
The president didn't start a war.
He was trying to stop a war.
I get it! Sometimes you have
to start a war to stop a war.
The same way you have
to spend money to make money,
or fake it 'til you make it,
you know, any of those things
that people say when
they're in way over their head.
And look, there'll clearly be more
to say about Iran going forward,
but now, we're going to dive straight
in with our main story this week,
which concerns Hungary:
a country with over a thousand
years of rich history,
a proud culture, and absolutely no
chance of you finding it on this map.
No chance whatsoever.
No shade to Hungary, by the way,
that is all on you.
Hungary's given a lot to
the world, from Bela Lugosi,
to the Rubik's cube, to, of course,
the game Hungry Hungary hippos.
Yeah, that second "hungry"
has an A in it. Always did!
Wild, huh? It's also brought us one
of the internet's greatest-ever memes.
András, a retired electric engineer,
was asked to be a model
for stock photos 10 years ago.
The internet discovered them
and decided that his smile
hides a deep sorrow.
He became "Hide the Pain Harold".
A flurry of memes followed,
and András found that his face was
the laughingstock of the internet.
If I wanted to draw a lesson
from what happened to me,
I would say, life throws
all kinds of challenges at you.
You have to take it as it comes,
try out as many things as possible,
and who knows,
you might even become a meme.
Okay, Harold, but I'm not sure
"you might become a meme"
is quite as aspirational as you think.
Though to be fair, putting on
a brave smile despite inner regret
is kinda this guy's whole thing.
He brings that "hide the pain"
energy to all his stock photos,
whether he's answering the phone,
whisking eggs, painting a wall,
reading a patient's X-ray
or riding an exercise bike.
Even when he's Santa and his face
is covered by a hat and beard,
Harold's eyes
still manage to hide the pain.
Look at that and tell me that Santa
didn't just accidentally run over an
elf and hastily hide the body.
Now, the reason I want to talk
about Hungary
is it's set for elections
on April 12th.
Voters there will choose a new
National Assembly, their parliament,
which in turn will mean
either a new prime minister
or the reelection of their
current one, Viktor Orbán.
He's been in office since 2010,
with an absolute majority
in Hungary's government for
the entire 16 years of his tenure.
He's actually the longest-serving
current head of government in the EU.
And if you want a quick taste
of what kind of leader Orbán's been,
take this testimonial video
that he posted,
featuring a real "who's who" of people
I've called assholes on this show,
including Netanyahu, Marine Le Pen,
Javier Milei,
and a fourth person that I'll let you
discover for yourself.
Security cannot be taken for
granted. It must be won
and I think Viktor Orbán
has all those qualities.
He has the tenacity, the courage and
the wisdom to protect his country.
It is thanks to leaders like Viktor
that the camp of patriots,
defenders of nations, and sovereign
people is winning in Europe.
I fervently support Prime Minister
Orbán and the Fidesz Party.
And I want to congratulate him
and also to encourage all Hungarians
to continue to move forward
to protect your great culture
and your amazing country.
Yep, it's none other than Academy
Award-watching actor Rob Schneider!
That is a pretty weird cameo there.
It's like if the "Avengers" movie
starred three Avengers
and also Rob Schneider.
But it's not just those celebrities
and also Rob Schneider.
Orbán has a close relationship with
many conservatives in this country.
He's not only been
invited to speak at CPAC,
CPAC itself has been holding
a satellite conference in Hungary
for the past few years,
where numerous U.S. conservatives
have shown up,
arguing that America really should be
taking a lesson from Orbán's work.
There are many conservative members
of Congress who, like me,
want to see Hungary
as a beacon in the West.
Hungary's immigration policy should
serve as a model to the United States.
One place where Hungary
clearly has led Europe
is in reasserting
its national identity,
specifically with regard
to rejecting mass migration.
Little did I know I would walk
into Budapest
and basically see all of the policies
that we dream for in Arizona.
Okay, well,
first, based on that blouse,
I don't think Kari Lake
came from Arizona
as much as from 1987.
But also, if you love
Budapest so much,
please know that you can
and should go live there!
The point is,
Republicans love Viktor Orbán.
He's even been officially endorsed
in this upcoming election by Trump,
who once praised him like this.
I was very honored…
there's a man, Viktor Orbán.
Did anyone ever hear of him?
He's probably one of the strongest
leaders anywhere in the world.
And he's the leader of… Right?
He's the leader of Turkey.
Nope. No, he isn't.
Close, though. You are thinking
of the right planet.
Though, in Trump's defense,
Hungary and Turkey
are both in the same region,
both ruled by an authoritarian,
and both words that a caveman
would say while ordering a sandwich.
So, you can see
why his brain went there.
And the lovefest between Orbán
and American conservatives
is a two-way street.
In fact, just last Saturday, he spoke
at the latest CPAC Hungary,
and outlined exactly
how he sees himself fitting
into a global conservative movement.
Since President Trump's win,
the Western world
has become a better place.
Gender propaganda and woke
ideology have been pushed back.
People can proudly embrace
Christianity
as the foundation and sustaining
force of our civilization.
What's happening now
is the largest political realignment
in Western civilization in 100 years.
The epicenter of this change
is the United States
and its European forward base
is Hungary.
There is a lot there,
but citing the West's "largest
political realignment in 100 years"
is pretty striking, given, you know,
what started happening
in Europe around 100 years ago.
That's right: "Winnie-the- Pooh"
was first published.
I don't know what
you were thinking about.
But you should know, things in
Hungary aren't actually going great.
On Orbán's watch, it's become one of
the poorest countries in the EU.
So, it's frankly no surprise
that in recent years,
there've been protests against
Orbán's government, like this one.
They're chanting,
"frickin' dirty Fidesz."
Viktor Orbán's party.
What's up with the zebra?
What does the zebra symbolize?
According to the rumors,
Orbán has an estate in the countryside
where zebras were spotted.
The sign back there that's kind
of the center of this says,
"Hungary is a dictatorship."
And then, I'm being told,
"O1G" means "Orbán is a sperm."
"Orbán is a sperm."
Yeah, Orbán is a sperm!
Which I assume is an insult,
and doesn't just mean that he tastes
slightly better when you eat pineapple.
Also, that rumor about zebras
being spotted is amazing if true,
as all the zebras I've ever
seen have been striped. Boom!
Got him!
I got that guy so good!
This show is your only source
for animal puns
and jokes about drinking semen
in, frankly, too rapid succession.
Orbán's Fidesz party has actually
been trailing by double digits
in most polls ahead of this election,
but they may still well win anyway,
for reasons that we'll get into later.
So, given Hungary's election
is just around the corner
and just how invested in Orbán
conservatives here clearly are,
we thought tonight, it might be
worth taking a look at Viktor Orbán.
And let's start with a little history.
And I'll skip past the stuff
we all learned in school about
Hungary, like how it, say it with me…
Was part of the Soviet bloc
for much of the 20th century,
where it operated under
a communist dictatorship.
Exactly.
We're all on the same page,
thanks to America's famously thorough
and globally curious education system.
But when the communist bloc
began to crumble,
Orbán was in the right place
at the right time.
Here he is in 1989 as a 26-year-old,
calling for the withdrawal
of Soviet troops
and free Hungarian elections.
And while I am no fan
of Orbán's later work,
I will admit,
he was a late '80's snack.
He's like Mel Gibson there,
he's got the hair, the intensity
and the looming sense that things
will eventually take a dark turn.
Now, after the fall
of Soviet communism,
Orbán took part in talks that
eventually led to Hungary's democracy.
And at the time, he and Fidesz were
a relatively liberal youth movement.
In fact, early on, only people under
35 could even join the party.
Just look at one of their
early '90s campaign ads.
Here and something different.
A blank slate.
A new democracy.
A new Hungary.
Vote for Fidesz.
Király. That ad has got
everything '90s kids loved:
maps, an orange, dominos,
and a bunch of guys
who look like they're running for
president of a college radio station.
There was Viktor Orbán,
Hungarian Anthony Michael Hall,
a steakhouse waiter
on his smoke break,
and, of course,
Virgin John Mayer.
Back then, Fidesz campaigned
on "adopting Western European
economic and political standards,"
"and limiting the role of the state"
"and the influence
of religion on public life."
But after Orbán was elected
to parliament in 1990,
he started moving the party
to the right.
He eventually became Europe's
youngest prime minister in 1998,
only to lose after just one term.
And in his years out of power,
he continued moving to the right,
amping up nationalist,
populist rhetoric
and starting to wrap himself
in religion,
and as he tells it now, he developed
a pretty stark philosophy.
In order to win, it is not enough to
know what you are fighting for.
You also have to know
how you should fight.
My answer is,
play by your own rules.
Now, on the surface,
"play by your own rules"
is a pretty banal sentiment.
It's the "live laugh love" for people
who haven't been divorced yet.
But Hungary soon found out what
he meant by that in a political sense.
Because in 2010,
after the global financial crisis
and a scandal
in Hungary's ruling party,
Orbán was swept back into power with
a two-thirds supermajority
and began tampering with the rules
to make sure he never lost again.
As he put it, "We have to win once,
but then win big."
Essentially meaning,
if he ever gained power,
he'd use it
to fortify his position indefinitely.
And "we only have to win once"
is one of the more ominous
things to hear from a leader.
It's right up there along with,
"Trust me, you're gonna love
the Kool-Aid",
"Open the gates, Papa gotta get
a closer look at that big ol' horse"
and "No smoking? What is this, a blimp
for dorks? Pass me my lighter!"
Sure enough, once back in power,
Orbán moved swiftly to solidify control.
In his first year in office,
his government rushed through
hundreds of new laws
and ushered through
a brand-new constitution
that was drafted behind closed doors
and debated in parliament
for only nine days.
There were also big changes
to Hungary's election system,
including gerrymandering maps to stack
the odds heavily in Orbán's favor.
As a result, in 2014, his party
won 45% of the vote,
but 91% of the districts.
In fact, thanks to that
and other tweaks,
independent observers have deemed
Hungarian elections since then
"free but not fair."
Which is an interesting combination.
You are free to vote for anyone
you want, whether it's Orbán
or whoever
inevitably loses to him.
While changes like those
could theoretically
have faced legal challenges,
Orbán's also co-opted
Hungary's court system,
packing it with loyalists,
and passing a constitutional amendment
that removed court's power to evaluate
any new constitutional amendments.
And when you take all of that together,
as this scholar points out,
it was basically a coup,
but a very 21st century one.
We tend to think of a coup as happening
with tanks in the streets,
and the military takeover and
the announcement on radio
that, you know,
all civil liberties have died.
That's not what autocracy
looks like anymore.
You don't get phalanxes of tanks.
You get phalanxes of lawyers.
That is chilling.
Because if there is one thing that
is scarier than a tank, it is a lawyer.
Believe me, we have a bunch
of them for this show
and they're constantly yelling things
like, "John, you can't do this,"
or, "John, you can't show that" or,
"John, you can't say with no evidence"
"that Millie Bobbie Brown
helped plan the 9/11 attacks,"
"that's defamation
and we will get sued."
So, reluctantly, I don't say it.
Though I will say she hasn't denied it.
We admittedly haven't asked,
but her silence says something.
But it's not just Orbán's control
of government.
Part of the way he's won over
the Hungarian public
is through his control of the media.
After returning to power,
his government created a new agency
to impose heavy fines for coverage
considered unbalanced or offensive,
as well as founding a new state media
organization called MTVA,
overseeing all public media across
TV, radio, and the internet.
Listen to one anonymous employee
there explain
just how much editorial
control Orbán has.
Every single thing connected to
domestic politics is restricted.
You can't write anything bad
about the government.
For example,
if something is politically sensitive,
I get instructions.
In some cases, I have the whole
ready-made article,
so I don't need to do anything,
no editing, just control-C,
copy and paste
the whole article, really.
It's unimaginable,
to be honest.
Yeah, those conditions clearly aren't
ideal for a news outlet.
There is a reason they typically
don't give out the Pulitzer
for "Excellence in Control-V".
A study of one public TV nightly
news show found
that over six months,
there wasn't a single instance
of governing party politicians
appearing on screen in a negative light,
literally zero seconds
of negative coverage.
Which just should not be possible.
Politicians attract negative coverage
about everything they do,
whether it's about
their offensive fashion faux pas,
or their court-ordered
liability for sexual abuse,
to pick two equivalent examples.
And Orbán's reach
goes well beyond state media,
as his allies bought up tons
of private, independent outlets
and then centralized many of them
under a single foundation.
According to the investigative
journalism outlet Atlatszo,
since 2010,
allies of the prime minister
have been buying up numerous
Hungarian media outlets.
Men like former Hollywood
producer Andy Vajna
and old school friend Lorinc Mészáros
are among a group of 14 Orbán allies
who've collectively bought 11 radio
stations, 20 television channels
and close to 500 online
and print organizations.
A far-right leader's friends and allies
just buying up
all the media outlets in the country
and turning them
into conservative sycophants…
Can you imagine that?
I sure can't!
That's definitely not something
I've had recurring nightmares
about for the past month!
And the result of all this has been
Orbán's party currently controls
roughly 80% of the media market.
And this level of influence, over
laws, courts, elections, and the media,
has allowed Orbán to reshape
Hungary virtually unchecked.
On international level, that's meant
being a constant thorn in the EU's side,
especially when it comes
to dealing with Russia.
Orbán's consistently had
the friendliest ties to
the Kremlin in the European Union.
In fact, he's long weaponized
Hungary's veto power at the EU
to block Russia-related sanctions,
tie up financial aid to Ukraine
and repeatedly
stall urgent EU decisions.
And it says something that,
even a decade ago,
this is how the then-president
of the European Commission
greeted Orbán at a summit.
The dictator is coming.
Dictator!
It's pretty good.
And while I do not condone violence,
there are a few scenarios where
I think it's fine to slap someone:
when you're trying to revive them,
when you are Cher
and you really need Nic Cage
to snap out of it, and of course,
whenever you have the chance to hit
an authoritarian in the face.
Meanwhile, domestically,
Orbán's reshaped Hungary
into what's basically a theme park
of reactionary talking points.
He's "railed against Europe
becoming a 'mixed-race' society"
and opposes allowing
asylum seekers into Hungary
despite EU and international laws.
During the migrant and refugee crisis
a decade ago, Hungary was accused
of unlawful detention and violence
against asylum seekers,
and he made a big show back then
of being openly hostile toward them,
even going so far as to build
an electrified border fence,
which, inevitably, got this
rave review from Tucker Carlson.
Hungary began building the fence
in June of 2015.
By September, it was done.
Well, they're serious
about their border.
It's not a high-tech border wall,
it's a double fence
with a road in the middle.
But the difference is, they're willing
to protect it. They're not kidding.
It's their border, they control it,
because they're a country.
It's also really pretty.
Pretty? Look, there are three things
you can rely on in this life,
death, taxes, and if you build
a fence to keep out immigrants,
Tucker Carlson
is gonna wanna fuck it.
Although, if he really wants to kiss
some electrified barbed wire,
who am I to stop him?
Love is love.
But even as migration
to Europe has declined,
Orbán has continued
to fearmonger about how,
if it weren't for him, Hungary might be
forced to accept millions of refugees,
who he has falsely characterized
as "disease-ridden threats
to public health",
"extremists planning terrorist acts"
and "agents of a plot to replace native
Europeans with foreigners",
all while reaching for
a now- familiar scapegoat,
suggesting George Soros was
masterminding a nefarious plan
to overrun Hungary with refugees,
and posting billboards
and full-page media ads
with the caption:
"Don't let Soros have the last laugh."
And it wasn't just billboards.
Orbán's government also passed a law
officially called "Stop Soros" that
made it illegal to help asylum seekers,
even just with their paperwork,
and led a campaign
to shut down the Hungarian
university that Soros founded.
Though what is a little strange about
Orbán's anti-Soros vendetta
is that back in 1989, he actually
received a Soros-funded scholarship
to study at Oxford University, where
I presume he majored in irony.
But immigrants and Soros
aren't Orbán's only punching bags.
His government's also gone after
Hungary's LGBTQ community,
something that
he bragged about at CPAC.
To sum up, the mother is a woman,
the father is a man,
and leave our kids alone, full stop,
end of discussion.
We decided we don't need more
genders, we need more rangers.
Less drag queens
and more Chuck Norris.
What?
That doesn't make any sense.
The number of genders has nothing
to do with the number of rangers.
And the number of drag queens
has nothing to do
with the number of Chuck Norrises.
Especially because the most
Chuck Norrises you can have is one
and that number
went down to zero last week.
And if this is how you are
finding that out, surprise!
But it's not just rhetoric.
Orbán's government officially
redefined "family",
which meant an effective ban
on adoption by same-sex couples
and banned trans people from
changing their gender on their IDs.
In 2021,
Hungary even passed a law
banning depicting or promoting
LGBT+ content in schools and media.
And if that sounds
at all familiar to you,
it may be because,
just nine months after that,
Florida's Ron DeSantis
signed his version of it,
focused on classroom instruction,
the so-called "Don't Say Gay" law.
But perhaps the policy that sums up
Orbán's obsessions the best,
from Christian conservatism
to panic over migrants,
is his relentless focus
on Hungary's low birth rate.
He's tried to increase it
by introducing incentives,
like tax exemptions
and interest-free loans
of about 30.000 dollars
for parents,
which then get cancelled
if they have three children.
And that's a pretty good deal,
but does make giving kids "the talk"
a little more complicated.
Well, when a man and a woman
love each other very much,
but also get a sick low-interest
loan from the Hungarian government,
that's how babies are made.
Orbán's framed the need
for Hungarians to procreate
as an existential crisis,
because to hear him tell it
in this ad that
his government posted,
the alternative is for the country
to be overrun by migrants.
There is a simple piece of folk wisdom:
you can make fish soup from fish,
but you cannot make fish
from fish soup.
Once you let migrants in and they
mix with the local population,
and if they have more children
than the native population,
it is only a matter of time,
a matter of mathematics,
before they take over your country.
Okay, obviously that's yet more
Great Replacement fearmongering.
But as for, "You can make
fish soup from fish,"
"but you can't make fish from fish
soup," is that folk wisdom?
Or is that just how soup works?
I'm just saying, if your nana pointed
at a bowl of soup and said,
"You can't make fish out of that",
you'd be looking at retirement
home brochures that afternoon.
Also, for what it's worth,
that metaphor cuts both ways.
Because I've found, with fish soup,
as with countries,
when you add more ingredients,
it tends to taste better.
Otherwise, what you have
is hot fish water.
But Orbán is serious about this.
He's spent about 5% of Hungary's GDP
on programs incentivizing
families to have kids.
But it hasn't worked.
Hungary's fertility rate
recently dipped to the lowest
in a decade,
and their population
is still shrinking.
And that might be because people
just don't feel optimistic
about raising kids
in Orbán's Hungary,
a place where two-thirds
of the citizens
describe the national education system
as "bad",
or where even the conservative
Heritage Foundation
has put his government at the bottom
of the EU
in its rankings
of government integrity.
And that is the thing
about Viktor Orbán.
For all the fearmongering he's done,
all the fences he's built
and all the laws he's passed
to protect Hungary
from the threat of migrants,
gays and George Soros,
he's fundamentally failed when it comes
to the basics of good governance.
Funding for schools and hospitals
there has gotten so dire,
he had to sign an executive order
to ensure medical facilities
were stocked with toilet paper.
Although to hear
his health secretary tell it,
any complaints that people had about
that were completely unreasonable.
In an operation as big
as the Hungarian hospital system,
which is
three million square meters
and has tens of thousands
of people visiting every day,
I consider it
a mathematical impossibility
that there should be toilet paper in
all hospital bathrooms, at all times.
To this day, I maintain that this
is a mathematical impossibility.
Look, I have heard some
bad talking points in the past,
but "it's mathematically impossible for
our hospitals to have toilet paper"
is right up there.
I'm really only surprised that
he didn't go on to suggest
hospitals just hang a sign
in every bathroom
reminding people that using
their socks is always an option.
It's not a great sign for Orbán that
some of his heaviest-handed tactics
now do seem to be backfiring.
Take this story from last summer.
Viktor Orbán's government banned
LGBTQ public gatherings in March,
including this one.
But that ban only seems to have
galvanized countless Hungarians.
They took part in the parade
despite the risk of being identified
by the authorities
using facial recognition software.
I object to any restriction of rights.
Everyone should be free
to choose a partner.
And I condemn any restrictions
that crush freedom of assembly
and other freedoms,
and that's why I'm here.
I thought the government
would make it impossible
for this to happen and that
there wouldn't be many people.
It's fantastic that it's a much
bigger crowd than ever before.
Yeah, that is amazing, and a pretty
colossal backfire from Orbán.
After all, if the Rob Schneider movie
"The Chosen One" taught us anything,
it's the harder you try
to oppress people through fear,
the more they'll rise up against you.
Now, full disclosure: I don't know if
that's really the moral of that film.
Like everyone else on Earth,
I haven't seen it.
But what are you gonna do,
watch it yourself to fact-check me?
No fucking way!
So, let's just say that's the message
of the film and move on, shall we?
So, what happens next?
Well, despite the increasing
opposition to Orbán in Hungary,
the truth is, in this election,
the playing field
is still tilted strongly in his favor.
Even if he somehow ends up losing
the game that he's carefully rigged,
it's worth knowing: his main opponent,
Péter Magyar,
isn't exactly the reformer
you would dream of here.
He's a former member of Fidesz
who's railed against Orbán's corruption
but still shares plenty
of his right-leaning views.
And even some Hungarians who say
they plan to vote for him
don't seem thrilled about it.
I think more and more people
want change.
Mr. Magyar, he used
to be a member of Fidesz.
Yeah.
Do you worry that he might be
too similar?
Four years later, we will see.
To be honest,
if there would be
a good left- wing party,
I would vote for them,
but there is not.
So, I will vote for Magyar Péter.
So, he's not completely on your level
when it comes to everything.
He's not my taste, exactly.
Yeah, he's clearly not thrilled
about voting for Magyar,
but he's willing to push
that discomfort down
and put on a happy face anyway.
If only there were a Hungarian meme
to capture that sentiment perfectly.
I guess we'll never know.
But the thing is,
regardless of what happens on April
12th, Orbán's stranglehold on power
should be alarming
for us here in the States,
because he has been an inspiration
to American conservatives,
to the point that JD Vance is
apparently planning to visit Hungary
to show support for Orbán
ahead of their election.
And that is because, for them,
Orbán is not a cautionary tale.
He's a blueprint.
To put it another way:
if Orbán is a sperm, think of Trump
as the baby the sperm eventually…
Forget that, that's a disgusting
image, let's reset and try again.
Look, it's not just me
sounding the alarm here.
People like this Hungarian politician
tried to warn us for a while.
You must be familiar with the fact
that there are many U.S. conservatives
coming here to learn
from Orbán's style of governance.
Why do you think that is?
I don't know why that is,
but I know that it's dangerous.
You should take care of your
democracy, because fortunately enough,
you have your checks
and balances.
If somebody is able to switch them
off, you would also slide down.
This is what happened to Hungary,
and I really hope that your system,
the 200-year- old American
democracy, which I admire,
is strong enough
to withstand any such threat.
Yeah, he's right. The fact is,
we are lucky to have the checks
and balances that we do,
but we would do well to watch
for warning signs
of what happened in Hungary
starting to happen here.
Small things, like, I don't know,
stacking the courts,
or shameless gerrymandering,
or fearmongering about immigrants,
or presidential allies
buying up the media.
You know,
anything you might spot like that.
And look,
it is not a perfect one-to-one.
Orbán's takeover was organized
and methodical,
while Trump has the attention
span of a coked-up hummingbird
with a head injury.
But they're not worlds apart, either.
If the right is looking
to Orbán as a model,
the rest of us could do a lot worse
than to look to those Hungarians
in the streets for inspiration.
Because to everyone who's ever
fought for American democracy,
failing to resist authoritarianism
would be a huge slap in the face.
And unfortunately, not the
undeniably fun kind. And now, this.
And Now: Some Disgusting New Ballpark
Food for Baseball's Opening Day.
The Miami Marlins
are serving up the Machete.
It's a two-foot-wide tortilla
with melted mozzarella, Oaxaca cheese,
carne asada, salsa verde,
and cilantro.
Schwarbomb Sundae, funnel
cake-fried strawberry uncrustable,
covered in fruity cereal
and served with ice cream.
This is our Double Diamond
Waffle Fry with cheese sauce,
lardons of bacon, mushroom,
beef short ribs braised in red wine,
fontina cheese
and some crispy onions.
The Behemoth Backflip, two pounds
of meat and onions and egg,
and holy moly.
I don't know how you're gonna
eat it, but I challenge you.
Crab mac and cheese hot dog.
It's a monster burger topped
with entire Vienna sausages.
Nachos on a stick. Barbeque brisket
on a mac and cheese waffle.
A chow mein burrito.
Hempler's Jalapeno Cheddar Bowl.
It's got Hempler's jalapeno
cheddar sausage bites
with sauteed peppers and onions
on dirty Cajun rice.
It's topped with Cajun
cream sauce.
You can't tell me if you get that
you're gonna be able to stay
in your seat for nine innings.
You're gonna make it two innings
and you're gonna be like,
"I'll see you in an hour."
Moving on. Before we go,
a quick word about branding.
In Trump's second term,
he's continued his famous love
of slapping his name
and face on things.
Just this week, we learned he'd be
the first-ever sitting president
to put his signature
on our currency,
and that is just the latest thing
he's awkwardly added himself to,
from the "Donald J. Trump United
States Institute of Peace",
which is bold, to the Kennedy Center,
which is now called
"The Donald J. Trump
and the John F. Kennedy"
"Memorial Center
for the Performing Arts," to even this.
The annual national parks pass
is getting a new look.
As you can see,
the America the Beautiful card
features a photo of President Trump
near an image of George Washington.
Well, that is not ideal!
You don't expect a national parks pass
to feature spooky live-action
Statler and Waldorf here.
And look,
I get what they're going for
by showcasing America's first
and final presidents together,
but Trump making himself and famed
cherry-tree enemy George Washington
the faces of our national parks is
weird for a number of reasons.
First, Trump seems to hate them,
he's made steep cuts
to the parks service,
which has now lost 24%
of its permanent employees.
But also,
the passes have previously focused
on the natural beauty of the parks,
like this one,
featuring an image
of a redwood forest,
this one, featuring
a frog with bedroom eyes,
and this one,
featuring a roseate spoonbill,
a bird that always looks like a regular
duck attending the Met Gala.
The point is, the parks passes
were about the parks.
And there's actually
a lawsuit right now
arguing that Trump's face
can't be on there,
as "federal law requires the main
America the Beautiful pass"
"to feature the winning photo"
"of the National Parks Foundation's"
annual public lands photo contest."
That is an argument
seemingly backed up
by the announcement of last year's
winner, which says,
"This photo by Akshay Joshi"
"will be featured on the 2026
America the Beautiful annual pass"
and does not go on to say,
"Unless, that is, the president feels
like replacing it with a shot of him"
"getting a prostate exam
from George Washington."
The winning photo is on
the more expensive pass
for international visitors.
But the cheaper one for U.S. residents
now has Trump slapped on it.
And while that winning photo
is clearly better,
if you'll just
permit a quick digression here,
if you look at the runners-up
from last year's contest,
I'd argue they both got robbed.
Because second place went to this
iconic big bird bonking little bird.
And third place
was this absolute masterpiece:
a bear moments after
the photographer said,
"Now let's take a silly one."
But obviously, any of these
three would be a better choice
for a pass than this image
that looks like you asked AI,
"What would Ebenezer
Scrooge look like today?"
And it's not just me who thinks that.
People buying these passes
have sometimes been
unpleasantly surprised,
like this motorcyclist, who filmed
buying a pass at an entrance booth
and then showed
his real-time reaction.
Last year when I bought a park pass,
it was, like, a cool picture
of a lizard or something on it.
I bought this one, and I'm all like,
"This is gonna be
my park pass for the year."
"I wonder what cool picture is on it."
And it's fucking George Washington
and a fucking lizard.
No love or hate towards anyone
specifically,
but I just thought
this was funny.
I would have preferred a cool scenic
nature-animal or something,
but this is funny too.
Excellent.
And kudos to that guy
for rolling with what had
to be a disappointment.
You think you're going to see a cool
lizard only to get Trump instead?
That sucks in any context.
If your friend said,
"Come to the garage, I trapped
a cool lizard under a bucket",
but it turned out to be
Donald Trump instead?
Ah, man!
I was really looking
forward to that lizard.
And it seems there are plenty
of park regulars
annoyed at having to carry
around his face in their pocket.
'Cause some have even come up with
ways to cover it up, like this woman.
Really just want to embrace what people
are already expressing everywhere,
that they want to see nature
on their national parks pass.
Jenny created stickers
out of some of her paintings.
There's a grizzly bear sitting here
looking at Denali.
The stickers are the dimensions
of the America the Beautiful pass.
The back has different
segments that come off,
so it's broken up into segments
so they could leave.
And they're designed to be peeled off
in different ways.
So that when it's adhered
to the front of the pass,
you could flip that up and show
the diamond underneath.
Yeah, pretty clever! Sometimes
you've got to get imaginative
when you're trying to cover something
up or make it more palatable.
For her, it was stickers. And for
the producers of "Snakes on a Plane",
it was having Samuel L. Jackson
retake his lines
for a clean version like this.
I have had it
with these monkey-fighting snakes
on this Monday to Friday plane!
Yeah, it's pretty
monkey-fighting smart!
Possibly in response to people putting
stickers on their passes like that,
the Department of Interior
suddenly updated their rules,
"explicitly flagging stickers
and other coverings"
"as alterations that could
invalidate the pass."
Though, interestingly, stickers
have never caused an issue before,
with one park worker saying,
"I've personally accepted passes
that people put stickers on"
"because they just like stickers
and it's never been a problem."
Which seems fair to me.
Other designers are now selling
non-sticker-based solutions,
like this sleeve that,
what do you know,
turns out to fit just
perfectly over the card.
These sleeves are apparently selling
pretty well on Etsy and getting reviews
like, "This is perfect to obscure
that face I do not need to see."
There is something inspiring
about seeing people find a way to enjoy
their experience at national parks
without having to look at the guy
who's actively trying to ruin them.
And if you want to, you can still buy
any of the things I've shown you.
But if, for whatever reason, you want
to adorn your pass even further,
perhaps we can help here.
Because we've designed some stickers
that you can download for free,
that can cover up either
Trump's face, or the entire image.
First, we contacted the photographer
who took that excellent bear photo,
and they've very kindly let us
turn it into a sticker,
which honestly works
pretty well on that pass.
Now, if you want to respect
this year's presidential theme,
but would like a different president
to do that,
we've made stickers of all
our wax presidents' faces,
and I've gotta say, Jimmy Carter's
in particular looks great on there.
If you want some wildlife, you can
print out a sticker of Mr. Nutterbutter
or, if you, like that motorcyclist,
would prefer a cool lizard,
why not try a sticker of one
of our earliest mascots,
the Russian space gecko? Again, they
each fit pretty nicely on the pass.
Finally, if you'd prefer
a vista to cover the whole image,
how about this one from when
we sent our mascot Marshmallow,
the polar bear with the broken penis,
to Alaska
to bet on an ice-melting contest.
Or, of course, this gorgeous rendering
of what two wild animals get up to
when you simply
allow nature to thrive.
I would argue it's the perfect image
to hold your rights
to visit all America's national
parks for the next 12 months.
All of these stickers to cover
Trump's face are available for you
at John-Oliver-Gives-Trump-Head
dot-com.
Actually, wait, hold on. No.
I do not like the way that sounds.
It feels wrong to me. 'Cause we're
giving out multiple heads, aren't we?
So, it should be John-Oliver-Gives-
Trump-Heads-dot-com.
That is much better. That is our show,
thank you so much for watching.
We're off for the next couple of weeks,
back on April 19th. Good night!
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
There were No Kings protests
around the U.S. and the world,
whatever this was happened,
and the White House tweeted,
"America will never
give up the moon again",
which is definitely
something I was worried about.
Meanwhile, the Iran war
entered its second month,
though Trump tries not to use
the word "war",
for reasons he probably
shouldn't be saying out loud.
I won't use the word "war", 'cause
they say if you use the word "war",
that's maybe not a good thing to do.
They don't like the word "war".
Because you're supposed
to get approval,
so I'll use the word "military
operation", which is really what it is.
What? He really just talks
like a six-year-old
speaking stream of consciousness
to a stranger.
And my mom says I'm not allowed
to talk about my penis
with other people,
even though everybody has one.
Well, not her and not my sister.
But my dad and I both have penises,
but I can't say that when there
are too many people around.
Even though everyone knows,
'cause they have their own penises.
Unless they don't. But I do.
But look, whatever you call this
conflict, it has been chaos.
Last Saturday, Trump threatened
to attack Iran's power grid
if the Strait of Hormuz wasn't opened,
writing he'd be "starting with
the biggest" power plant first,
which would be a war crime,
if this was a war,
but luckily we now know it isn't.
Then on Monday, he said he'd delay
those strikes for five days
after "very good and productive
conversations" with Iran,
discussions
they've denied took place.
He's since extended the deadline
until April 6th,
even as Iran's continued to bomb U.S.
bases and allies across the region.
Almost
2.000 Iranians have been killed,
as have at least
13 U.S. service members,
and Trump's reportedly weighing
whether to move an additional
10.000 troops to the region.
It feels like we're in an unnecessary
war with no endgame,
though the president's supporters
will insist
that if you just look at things in
the right way, it all makes sense.
Here's why we went into Iran.
We had no choice.
The president didn't start a war.
He was trying to stop a war.
I get it! Sometimes you have
to start a war to stop a war.
The same way you have
to spend money to make money,
or fake it 'til you make it,
you know, any of those things
that people say when
they're in way over their head.
And look, there'll clearly be more
to say about Iran going forward,
but now, we're going to dive straight
in with our main story this week,
which concerns Hungary:
a country with over a thousand
years of rich history,
a proud culture, and absolutely no
chance of you finding it on this map.
No chance whatsoever.
No shade to Hungary, by the way,
that is all on you.
Hungary's given a lot to
the world, from Bela Lugosi,
to the Rubik's cube, to, of course,
the game Hungry Hungary hippos.
Yeah, that second "hungry"
has an A in it. Always did!
Wild, huh? It's also brought us one
of the internet's greatest-ever memes.
András, a retired electric engineer,
was asked to be a model
for stock photos 10 years ago.
The internet discovered them
and decided that his smile
hides a deep sorrow.
He became "Hide the Pain Harold".
A flurry of memes followed,
and András found that his face was
the laughingstock of the internet.
If I wanted to draw a lesson
from what happened to me,
I would say, life throws
all kinds of challenges at you.
You have to take it as it comes,
try out as many things as possible,
and who knows,
you might even become a meme.
Okay, Harold, but I'm not sure
"you might become a meme"
is quite as aspirational as you think.
Though to be fair, putting on
a brave smile despite inner regret
is kinda this guy's whole thing.
He brings that "hide the pain"
energy to all his stock photos,
whether he's answering the phone,
whisking eggs, painting a wall,
reading a patient's X-ray
or riding an exercise bike.
Even when he's Santa and his face
is covered by a hat and beard,
Harold's eyes
still manage to hide the pain.
Look at that and tell me that Santa
didn't just accidentally run over an
elf and hastily hide the body.
Now, the reason I want to talk
about Hungary
is it's set for elections
on April 12th.
Voters there will choose a new
National Assembly, their parliament,
which in turn will mean
either a new prime minister
or the reelection of their
current one, Viktor Orbán.
He's been in office since 2010,
with an absolute majority
in Hungary's government for
the entire 16 years of his tenure.
He's actually the longest-serving
current head of government in the EU.
And if you want a quick taste
of what kind of leader Orbán's been,
take this testimonial video
that he posted,
featuring a real "who's who" of people
I've called assholes on this show,
including Netanyahu, Marine Le Pen,
Javier Milei,
and a fourth person that I'll let you
discover for yourself.
Security cannot be taken for
granted. It must be won
and I think Viktor Orbán
has all those qualities.
He has the tenacity, the courage and
the wisdom to protect his country.
It is thanks to leaders like Viktor
that the camp of patriots,
defenders of nations, and sovereign
people is winning in Europe.
I fervently support Prime Minister
Orbán and the Fidesz Party.
And I want to congratulate him
and also to encourage all Hungarians
to continue to move forward
to protect your great culture
and your amazing country.
Yep, it's none other than Academy
Award-watching actor Rob Schneider!
That is a pretty weird cameo there.
It's like if the "Avengers" movie
starred three Avengers
and also Rob Schneider.
But it's not just those celebrities
and also Rob Schneider.
Orbán has a close relationship with
many conservatives in this country.
He's not only been
invited to speak at CPAC,
CPAC itself has been holding
a satellite conference in Hungary
for the past few years,
where numerous U.S. conservatives
have shown up,
arguing that America really should be
taking a lesson from Orbán's work.
There are many conservative members
of Congress who, like me,
want to see Hungary
as a beacon in the West.
Hungary's immigration policy should
serve as a model to the United States.
One place where Hungary
clearly has led Europe
is in reasserting
its national identity,
specifically with regard
to rejecting mass migration.
Little did I know I would walk
into Budapest
and basically see all of the policies
that we dream for in Arizona.
Okay, well,
first, based on that blouse,
I don't think Kari Lake
came from Arizona
as much as from 1987.
But also, if you love
Budapest so much,
please know that you can
and should go live there!
The point is,
Republicans love Viktor Orbán.
He's even been officially endorsed
in this upcoming election by Trump,
who once praised him like this.
I was very honored…
there's a man, Viktor Orbán.
Did anyone ever hear of him?
He's probably one of the strongest
leaders anywhere in the world.
And he's the leader of… Right?
He's the leader of Turkey.
Nope. No, he isn't.
Close, though. You are thinking
of the right planet.
Though, in Trump's defense,
Hungary and Turkey
are both in the same region,
both ruled by an authoritarian,
and both words that a caveman
would say while ordering a sandwich.
So, you can see
why his brain went there.
And the lovefest between Orbán
and American conservatives
is a two-way street.
In fact, just last Saturday, he spoke
at the latest CPAC Hungary,
and outlined exactly
how he sees himself fitting
into a global conservative movement.
Since President Trump's win,
the Western world
has become a better place.
Gender propaganda and woke
ideology have been pushed back.
People can proudly embrace
Christianity
as the foundation and sustaining
force of our civilization.
What's happening now
is the largest political realignment
in Western civilization in 100 years.
The epicenter of this change
is the United States
and its European forward base
is Hungary.
There is a lot there,
but citing the West's "largest
political realignment in 100 years"
is pretty striking, given, you know,
what started happening
in Europe around 100 years ago.
That's right: "Winnie-the- Pooh"
was first published.
I don't know what
you were thinking about.
But you should know, things in
Hungary aren't actually going great.
On Orbán's watch, it's become one of
the poorest countries in the EU.
So, it's frankly no surprise
that in recent years,
there've been protests against
Orbán's government, like this one.
They're chanting,
"frickin' dirty Fidesz."
Viktor Orbán's party.
What's up with the zebra?
What does the zebra symbolize?
According to the rumors,
Orbán has an estate in the countryside
where zebras were spotted.
The sign back there that's kind
of the center of this says,
"Hungary is a dictatorship."
And then, I'm being told,
"O1G" means "Orbán is a sperm."
"Orbán is a sperm."
Yeah, Orbán is a sperm!
Which I assume is an insult,
and doesn't just mean that he tastes
slightly better when you eat pineapple.
Also, that rumor about zebras
being spotted is amazing if true,
as all the zebras I've ever
seen have been striped. Boom!
Got him!
I got that guy so good!
This show is your only source
for animal puns
and jokes about drinking semen
in, frankly, too rapid succession.
Orbán's Fidesz party has actually
been trailing by double digits
in most polls ahead of this election,
but they may still well win anyway,
for reasons that we'll get into later.
So, given Hungary's election
is just around the corner
and just how invested in Orbán
conservatives here clearly are,
we thought tonight, it might be
worth taking a look at Viktor Orbán.
And let's start with a little history.
And I'll skip past the stuff
we all learned in school about
Hungary, like how it, say it with me…
Was part of the Soviet bloc
for much of the 20th century,
where it operated under
a communist dictatorship.
Exactly.
We're all on the same page,
thanks to America's famously thorough
and globally curious education system.
But when the communist bloc
began to crumble,
Orbán was in the right place
at the right time.
Here he is in 1989 as a 26-year-old,
calling for the withdrawal
of Soviet troops
and free Hungarian elections.
And while I am no fan
of Orbán's later work,
I will admit,
he was a late '80's snack.
He's like Mel Gibson there,
he's got the hair, the intensity
and the looming sense that things
will eventually take a dark turn.
Now, after the fall
of Soviet communism,
Orbán took part in talks that
eventually led to Hungary's democracy.
And at the time, he and Fidesz were
a relatively liberal youth movement.
In fact, early on, only people under
35 could even join the party.
Just look at one of their
early '90s campaign ads.
Here and something different.
A blank slate.
A new democracy.
A new Hungary.
Vote for Fidesz.
Király. That ad has got
everything '90s kids loved:
maps, an orange, dominos,
and a bunch of guys
who look like they're running for
president of a college radio station.
There was Viktor Orbán,
Hungarian Anthony Michael Hall,
a steakhouse waiter
on his smoke break,
and, of course,
Virgin John Mayer.
Back then, Fidesz campaigned
on "adopting Western European
economic and political standards,"
"and limiting the role of the state"
"and the influence
of religion on public life."
But after Orbán was elected
to parliament in 1990,
he started moving the party
to the right.
He eventually became Europe's
youngest prime minister in 1998,
only to lose after just one term.
And in his years out of power,
he continued moving to the right,
amping up nationalist,
populist rhetoric
and starting to wrap himself
in religion,
and as he tells it now, he developed
a pretty stark philosophy.
In order to win, it is not enough to
know what you are fighting for.
You also have to know
how you should fight.
My answer is,
play by your own rules.
Now, on the surface,
"play by your own rules"
is a pretty banal sentiment.
It's the "live laugh love" for people
who haven't been divorced yet.
But Hungary soon found out what
he meant by that in a political sense.
Because in 2010,
after the global financial crisis
and a scandal
in Hungary's ruling party,
Orbán was swept back into power with
a two-thirds supermajority
and began tampering with the rules
to make sure he never lost again.
As he put it, "We have to win once,
but then win big."
Essentially meaning,
if he ever gained power,
he'd use it
to fortify his position indefinitely.
And "we only have to win once"
is one of the more ominous
things to hear from a leader.
It's right up there along with,
"Trust me, you're gonna love
the Kool-Aid",
"Open the gates, Papa gotta get
a closer look at that big ol' horse"
and "No smoking? What is this, a blimp
for dorks? Pass me my lighter!"
Sure enough, once back in power,
Orbán moved swiftly to solidify control.
In his first year in office,
his government rushed through
hundreds of new laws
and ushered through
a brand-new constitution
that was drafted behind closed doors
and debated in parliament
for only nine days.
There were also big changes
to Hungary's election system,
including gerrymandering maps to stack
the odds heavily in Orbán's favor.
As a result, in 2014, his party
won 45% of the vote,
but 91% of the districts.
In fact, thanks to that
and other tweaks,
independent observers have deemed
Hungarian elections since then
"free but not fair."
Which is an interesting combination.
You are free to vote for anyone
you want, whether it's Orbán
or whoever
inevitably loses to him.
While changes like those
could theoretically
have faced legal challenges,
Orbán's also co-opted
Hungary's court system,
packing it with loyalists,
and passing a constitutional amendment
that removed court's power to evaluate
any new constitutional amendments.
And when you take all of that together,
as this scholar points out,
it was basically a coup,
but a very 21st century one.
We tend to think of a coup as happening
with tanks in the streets,
and the military takeover and
the announcement on radio
that, you know,
all civil liberties have died.
That's not what autocracy
looks like anymore.
You don't get phalanxes of tanks.
You get phalanxes of lawyers.
That is chilling.
Because if there is one thing that
is scarier than a tank, it is a lawyer.
Believe me, we have a bunch
of them for this show
and they're constantly yelling things
like, "John, you can't do this,"
or, "John, you can't show that" or,
"John, you can't say with no evidence"
"that Millie Bobbie Brown
helped plan the 9/11 attacks,"
"that's defamation
and we will get sued."
So, reluctantly, I don't say it.
Though I will say she hasn't denied it.
We admittedly haven't asked,
but her silence says something.
But it's not just Orbán's control
of government.
Part of the way he's won over
the Hungarian public
is through his control of the media.
After returning to power,
his government created a new agency
to impose heavy fines for coverage
considered unbalanced or offensive,
as well as founding a new state media
organization called MTVA,
overseeing all public media across
TV, radio, and the internet.
Listen to one anonymous employee
there explain
just how much editorial
control Orbán has.
Every single thing connected to
domestic politics is restricted.
You can't write anything bad
about the government.
For example,
if something is politically sensitive,
I get instructions.
In some cases, I have the whole
ready-made article,
so I don't need to do anything,
no editing, just control-C,
copy and paste
the whole article, really.
It's unimaginable,
to be honest.
Yeah, those conditions clearly aren't
ideal for a news outlet.
There is a reason they typically
don't give out the Pulitzer
for "Excellence in Control-V".
A study of one public TV nightly
news show found
that over six months,
there wasn't a single instance
of governing party politicians
appearing on screen in a negative light,
literally zero seconds
of negative coverage.
Which just should not be possible.
Politicians attract negative coverage
about everything they do,
whether it's about
their offensive fashion faux pas,
or their court-ordered
liability for sexual abuse,
to pick two equivalent examples.
And Orbán's reach
goes well beyond state media,
as his allies bought up tons
of private, independent outlets
and then centralized many of them
under a single foundation.
According to the investigative
journalism outlet Atlatszo,
since 2010,
allies of the prime minister
have been buying up numerous
Hungarian media outlets.
Men like former Hollywood
producer Andy Vajna
and old school friend Lorinc Mészáros
are among a group of 14 Orbán allies
who've collectively bought 11 radio
stations, 20 television channels
and close to 500 online
and print organizations.
A far-right leader's friends and allies
just buying up
all the media outlets in the country
and turning them
into conservative sycophants…
Can you imagine that?
I sure can't!
That's definitely not something
I've had recurring nightmares
about for the past month!
And the result of all this has been
Orbán's party currently controls
roughly 80% of the media market.
And this level of influence, over
laws, courts, elections, and the media,
has allowed Orbán to reshape
Hungary virtually unchecked.
On international level, that's meant
being a constant thorn in the EU's side,
especially when it comes
to dealing with Russia.
Orbán's consistently had
the friendliest ties to
the Kremlin in the European Union.
In fact, he's long weaponized
Hungary's veto power at the EU
to block Russia-related sanctions,
tie up financial aid to Ukraine
and repeatedly
stall urgent EU decisions.
And it says something that,
even a decade ago,
this is how the then-president
of the European Commission
greeted Orbán at a summit.
The dictator is coming.
Dictator!
It's pretty good.
And while I do not condone violence,
there are a few scenarios where
I think it's fine to slap someone:
when you're trying to revive them,
when you are Cher
and you really need Nic Cage
to snap out of it, and of course,
whenever you have the chance to hit
an authoritarian in the face.
Meanwhile, domestically,
Orbán's reshaped Hungary
into what's basically a theme park
of reactionary talking points.
He's "railed against Europe
becoming a 'mixed-race' society"
and opposes allowing
asylum seekers into Hungary
despite EU and international laws.
During the migrant and refugee crisis
a decade ago, Hungary was accused
of unlawful detention and violence
against asylum seekers,
and he made a big show back then
of being openly hostile toward them,
even going so far as to build
an electrified border fence,
which, inevitably, got this
rave review from Tucker Carlson.
Hungary began building the fence
in June of 2015.
By September, it was done.
Well, they're serious
about their border.
It's not a high-tech border wall,
it's a double fence
with a road in the middle.
But the difference is, they're willing
to protect it. They're not kidding.
It's their border, they control it,
because they're a country.
It's also really pretty.
Pretty? Look, there are three things
you can rely on in this life,
death, taxes, and if you build
a fence to keep out immigrants,
Tucker Carlson
is gonna wanna fuck it.
Although, if he really wants to kiss
some electrified barbed wire,
who am I to stop him?
Love is love.
But even as migration
to Europe has declined,
Orbán has continued
to fearmonger about how,
if it weren't for him, Hungary might be
forced to accept millions of refugees,
who he has falsely characterized
as "disease-ridden threats
to public health",
"extremists planning terrorist acts"
and "agents of a plot to replace native
Europeans with foreigners",
all while reaching for
a now- familiar scapegoat,
suggesting George Soros was
masterminding a nefarious plan
to overrun Hungary with refugees,
and posting billboards
and full-page media ads
with the caption:
"Don't let Soros have the last laugh."
And it wasn't just billboards.
Orbán's government also passed a law
officially called "Stop Soros" that
made it illegal to help asylum seekers,
even just with their paperwork,
and led a campaign
to shut down the Hungarian
university that Soros founded.
Though what is a little strange about
Orbán's anti-Soros vendetta
is that back in 1989, he actually
received a Soros-funded scholarship
to study at Oxford University, where
I presume he majored in irony.
But immigrants and Soros
aren't Orbán's only punching bags.
His government's also gone after
Hungary's LGBTQ community,
something that
he bragged about at CPAC.
To sum up, the mother is a woman,
the father is a man,
and leave our kids alone, full stop,
end of discussion.
We decided we don't need more
genders, we need more rangers.
Less drag queens
and more Chuck Norris.
What?
That doesn't make any sense.
The number of genders has nothing
to do with the number of rangers.
And the number of drag queens
has nothing to do
with the number of Chuck Norrises.
Especially because the most
Chuck Norrises you can have is one
and that number
went down to zero last week.
And if this is how you are
finding that out, surprise!
But it's not just rhetoric.
Orbán's government officially
redefined "family",
which meant an effective ban
on adoption by same-sex couples
and banned trans people from
changing their gender on their IDs.
In 2021,
Hungary even passed a law
banning depicting or promoting
LGBT+ content in schools and media.
And if that sounds
at all familiar to you,
it may be because,
just nine months after that,
Florida's Ron DeSantis
signed his version of it,
focused on classroom instruction,
the so-called "Don't Say Gay" law.
But perhaps the policy that sums up
Orbán's obsessions the best,
from Christian conservatism
to panic over migrants,
is his relentless focus
on Hungary's low birth rate.
He's tried to increase it
by introducing incentives,
like tax exemptions
and interest-free loans
of about 30.000 dollars
for parents,
which then get cancelled
if they have three children.
And that's a pretty good deal,
but does make giving kids "the talk"
a little more complicated.
Well, when a man and a woman
love each other very much,
but also get a sick low-interest
loan from the Hungarian government,
that's how babies are made.
Orbán's framed the need
for Hungarians to procreate
as an existential crisis,
because to hear him tell it
in this ad that
his government posted,
the alternative is for the country
to be overrun by migrants.
There is a simple piece of folk wisdom:
you can make fish soup from fish,
but you cannot make fish
from fish soup.
Once you let migrants in and they
mix with the local population,
and if they have more children
than the native population,
it is only a matter of time,
a matter of mathematics,
before they take over your country.
Okay, obviously that's yet more
Great Replacement fearmongering.
But as for, "You can make
fish soup from fish,"
"but you can't make fish from fish
soup," is that folk wisdom?
Or is that just how soup works?
I'm just saying, if your nana pointed
at a bowl of soup and said,
"You can't make fish out of that",
you'd be looking at retirement
home brochures that afternoon.
Also, for what it's worth,
that metaphor cuts both ways.
Because I've found, with fish soup,
as with countries,
when you add more ingredients,
it tends to taste better.
Otherwise, what you have
is hot fish water.
But Orbán is serious about this.
He's spent about 5% of Hungary's GDP
on programs incentivizing
families to have kids.
But it hasn't worked.
Hungary's fertility rate
recently dipped to the lowest
in a decade,
and their population
is still shrinking.
And that might be because people
just don't feel optimistic
about raising kids
in Orbán's Hungary,
a place where two-thirds
of the citizens
describe the national education system
as "bad",
or where even the conservative
Heritage Foundation
has put his government at the bottom
of the EU
in its rankings
of government integrity.
And that is the thing
about Viktor Orbán.
For all the fearmongering he's done,
all the fences he's built
and all the laws he's passed
to protect Hungary
from the threat of migrants,
gays and George Soros,
he's fundamentally failed when it comes
to the basics of good governance.
Funding for schools and hospitals
there has gotten so dire,
he had to sign an executive order
to ensure medical facilities
were stocked with toilet paper.
Although to hear
his health secretary tell it,
any complaints that people had about
that were completely unreasonable.
In an operation as big
as the Hungarian hospital system,
which is
three million square meters
and has tens of thousands
of people visiting every day,
I consider it
a mathematical impossibility
that there should be toilet paper in
all hospital bathrooms, at all times.
To this day, I maintain that this
is a mathematical impossibility.
Look, I have heard some
bad talking points in the past,
but "it's mathematically impossible for
our hospitals to have toilet paper"
is right up there.
I'm really only surprised that
he didn't go on to suggest
hospitals just hang a sign
in every bathroom
reminding people that using
their socks is always an option.
It's not a great sign for Orbán that
some of his heaviest-handed tactics
now do seem to be backfiring.
Take this story from last summer.
Viktor Orbán's government banned
LGBTQ public gatherings in March,
including this one.
But that ban only seems to have
galvanized countless Hungarians.
They took part in the parade
despite the risk of being identified
by the authorities
using facial recognition software.
I object to any restriction of rights.
Everyone should be free
to choose a partner.
And I condemn any restrictions
that crush freedom of assembly
and other freedoms,
and that's why I'm here.
I thought the government
would make it impossible
for this to happen and that
there wouldn't be many people.
It's fantastic that it's a much
bigger crowd than ever before.
Yeah, that is amazing, and a pretty
colossal backfire from Orbán.
After all, if the Rob Schneider movie
"The Chosen One" taught us anything,
it's the harder you try
to oppress people through fear,
the more they'll rise up against you.
Now, full disclosure: I don't know if
that's really the moral of that film.
Like everyone else on Earth,
I haven't seen it.
But what are you gonna do,
watch it yourself to fact-check me?
No fucking way!
So, let's just say that's the message
of the film and move on, shall we?
So, what happens next?
Well, despite the increasing
opposition to Orbán in Hungary,
the truth is, in this election,
the playing field
is still tilted strongly in his favor.
Even if he somehow ends up losing
the game that he's carefully rigged,
it's worth knowing: his main opponent,
Péter Magyar,
isn't exactly the reformer
you would dream of here.
He's a former member of Fidesz
who's railed against Orbán's corruption
but still shares plenty
of his right-leaning views.
And even some Hungarians who say
they plan to vote for him
don't seem thrilled about it.
I think more and more people
want change.
Mr. Magyar, he used
to be a member of Fidesz.
Yeah.
Do you worry that he might be
too similar?
Four years later, we will see.
To be honest,
if there would be
a good left- wing party,
I would vote for them,
but there is not.
So, I will vote for Magyar Péter.
So, he's not completely on your level
when it comes to everything.
He's not my taste, exactly.
Yeah, he's clearly not thrilled
about voting for Magyar,
but he's willing to push
that discomfort down
and put on a happy face anyway.
If only there were a Hungarian meme
to capture that sentiment perfectly.
I guess we'll never know.
But the thing is,
regardless of what happens on April
12th, Orbán's stranglehold on power
should be alarming
for us here in the States,
because he has been an inspiration
to American conservatives,
to the point that JD Vance is
apparently planning to visit Hungary
to show support for Orbán
ahead of their election.
And that is because, for them,
Orbán is not a cautionary tale.
He's a blueprint.
To put it another way:
if Orbán is a sperm, think of Trump
as the baby the sperm eventually…
Forget that, that's a disgusting
image, let's reset and try again.
Look, it's not just me
sounding the alarm here.
People like this Hungarian politician
tried to warn us for a while.
You must be familiar with the fact
that there are many U.S. conservatives
coming here to learn
from Orbán's style of governance.
Why do you think that is?
I don't know why that is,
but I know that it's dangerous.
You should take care of your
democracy, because fortunately enough,
you have your checks
and balances.
If somebody is able to switch them
off, you would also slide down.
This is what happened to Hungary,
and I really hope that your system,
the 200-year- old American
democracy, which I admire,
is strong enough
to withstand any such threat.
Yeah, he's right. The fact is,
we are lucky to have the checks
and balances that we do,
but we would do well to watch
for warning signs
of what happened in Hungary
starting to happen here.
Small things, like, I don't know,
stacking the courts,
or shameless gerrymandering,
or fearmongering about immigrants,
or presidential allies
buying up the media.
You know,
anything you might spot like that.
And look,
it is not a perfect one-to-one.
Orbán's takeover was organized
and methodical,
while Trump has the attention
span of a coked-up hummingbird
with a head injury.
But they're not worlds apart, either.
If the right is looking
to Orbán as a model,
the rest of us could do a lot worse
than to look to those Hungarians
in the streets for inspiration.
Because to everyone who's ever
fought for American democracy,
failing to resist authoritarianism
would be a huge slap in the face.
And unfortunately, not the
undeniably fun kind. And now, this.
And Now: Some Disgusting New Ballpark
Food for Baseball's Opening Day.
The Miami Marlins
are serving up the Machete.
It's a two-foot-wide tortilla
with melted mozzarella, Oaxaca cheese,
carne asada, salsa verde,
and cilantro.
Schwarbomb Sundae, funnel
cake-fried strawberry uncrustable,
covered in fruity cereal
and served with ice cream.
This is our Double Diamond
Waffle Fry with cheese sauce,
lardons of bacon, mushroom,
beef short ribs braised in red wine,
fontina cheese
and some crispy onions.
The Behemoth Backflip, two pounds
of meat and onions and egg,
and holy moly.
I don't know how you're gonna
eat it, but I challenge you.
Crab mac and cheese hot dog.
It's a monster burger topped
with entire Vienna sausages.
Nachos on a stick. Barbeque brisket
on a mac and cheese waffle.
A chow mein burrito.
Hempler's Jalapeno Cheddar Bowl.
It's got Hempler's jalapeno
cheddar sausage bites
with sauteed peppers and onions
on dirty Cajun rice.
It's topped with Cajun
cream sauce.
You can't tell me if you get that
you're gonna be able to stay
in your seat for nine innings.
You're gonna make it two innings
and you're gonna be like,
"I'll see you in an hour."
Moving on. Before we go,
a quick word about branding.
In Trump's second term,
he's continued his famous love
of slapping his name
and face on things.
Just this week, we learned he'd be
the first-ever sitting president
to put his signature
on our currency,
and that is just the latest thing
he's awkwardly added himself to,
from the "Donald J. Trump United
States Institute of Peace",
which is bold, to the Kennedy Center,
which is now called
"The Donald J. Trump
and the John F. Kennedy"
"Memorial Center
for the Performing Arts," to even this.
The annual national parks pass
is getting a new look.
As you can see,
the America the Beautiful card
features a photo of President Trump
near an image of George Washington.
Well, that is not ideal!
You don't expect a national parks pass
to feature spooky live-action
Statler and Waldorf here.
And look,
I get what they're going for
by showcasing America's first
and final presidents together,
but Trump making himself and famed
cherry-tree enemy George Washington
the faces of our national parks is
weird for a number of reasons.
First, Trump seems to hate them,
he's made steep cuts
to the parks service,
which has now lost 24%
of its permanent employees.
But also,
the passes have previously focused
on the natural beauty of the parks,
like this one,
featuring an image
of a redwood forest,
this one, featuring
a frog with bedroom eyes,
and this one,
featuring a roseate spoonbill,
a bird that always looks like a regular
duck attending the Met Gala.
The point is, the parks passes
were about the parks.
And there's actually
a lawsuit right now
arguing that Trump's face
can't be on there,
as "federal law requires the main
America the Beautiful pass"
"to feature the winning photo"
"of the National Parks Foundation's"
annual public lands photo contest."
That is an argument
seemingly backed up
by the announcement of last year's
winner, which says,
"This photo by Akshay Joshi"
"will be featured on the 2026
America the Beautiful annual pass"
and does not go on to say,
"Unless, that is, the president feels
like replacing it with a shot of him"
"getting a prostate exam
from George Washington."
The winning photo is on
the more expensive pass
for international visitors.
But the cheaper one for U.S. residents
now has Trump slapped on it.
And while that winning photo
is clearly better,
if you'll just
permit a quick digression here,
if you look at the runners-up
from last year's contest,
I'd argue they both got robbed.
Because second place went to this
iconic big bird bonking little bird.
And third place
was this absolute masterpiece:
a bear moments after
the photographer said,
"Now let's take a silly one."
But obviously, any of these
three would be a better choice
for a pass than this image
that looks like you asked AI,
"What would Ebenezer
Scrooge look like today?"
And it's not just me who thinks that.
People buying these passes
have sometimes been
unpleasantly surprised,
like this motorcyclist, who filmed
buying a pass at an entrance booth
and then showed
his real-time reaction.
Last year when I bought a park pass,
it was, like, a cool picture
of a lizard or something on it.
I bought this one, and I'm all like,
"This is gonna be
my park pass for the year."
"I wonder what cool picture is on it."
And it's fucking George Washington
and a fucking lizard.
No love or hate towards anyone
specifically,
but I just thought
this was funny.
I would have preferred a cool scenic
nature-animal or something,
but this is funny too.
Excellent.
And kudos to that guy
for rolling with what had
to be a disappointment.
You think you're going to see a cool
lizard only to get Trump instead?
That sucks in any context.
If your friend said,
"Come to the garage, I trapped
a cool lizard under a bucket",
but it turned out to be
Donald Trump instead?
Ah, man!
I was really looking
forward to that lizard.
And it seems there are plenty
of park regulars
annoyed at having to carry
around his face in their pocket.
'Cause some have even come up with
ways to cover it up, like this woman.
Really just want to embrace what people
are already expressing everywhere,
that they want to see nature
on their national parks pass.
Jenny created stickers
out of some of her paintings.
There's a grizzly bear sitting here
looking at Denali.
The stickers are the dimensions
of the America the Beautiful pass.
The back has different
segments that come off,
so it's broken up into segments
so they could leave.
And they're designed to be peeled off
in different ways.
So that when it's adhered
to the front of the pass,
you could flip that up and show
the diamond underneath.
Yeah, pretty clever! Sometimes
you've got to get imaginative
when you're trying to cover something
up or make it more palatable.
For her, it was stickers. And for
the producers of "Snakes on a Plane",
it was having Samuel L. Jackson
retake his lines
for a clean version like this.
I have had it
with these monkey-fighting snakes
on this Monday to Friday plane!
Yeah, it's pretty
monkey-fighting smart!
Possibly in response to people putting
stickers on their passes like that,
the Department of Interior
suddenly updated their rules,
"explicitly flagging stickers
and other coverings"
"as alterations that could
invalidate the pass."
Though, interestingly, stickers
have never caused an issue before,
with one park worker saying,
"I've personally accepted passes
that people put stickers on"
"because they just like stickers
and it's never been a problem."
Which seems fair to me.
Other designers are now selling
non-sticker-based solutions,
like this sleeve that,
what do you know,
turns out to fit just
perfectly over the card.
These sleeves are apparently selling
pretty well on Etsy and getting reviews
like, "This is perfect to obscure
that face I do not need to see."
There is something inspiring
about seeing people find a way to enjoy
their experience at national parks
without having to look at the guy
who's actively trying to ruin them.
And if you want to, you can still buy
any of the things I've shown you.
But if, for whatever reason, you want
to adorn your pass even further,
perhaps we can help here.
Because we've designed some stickers
that you can download for free,
that can cover up either
Trump's face, or the entire image.
First, we contacted the photographer
who took that excellent bear photo,
and they've very kindly let us
turn it into a sticker,
which honestly works
pretty well on that pass.
Now, if you want to respect
this year's presidential theme,
but would like a different president
to do that,
we've made stickers of all
our wax presidents' faces,
and I've gotta say, Jimmy Carter's
in particular looks great on there.
If you want some wildlife, you can
print out a sticker of Mr. Nutterbutter
or, if you, like that motorcyclist,
would prefer a cool lizard,
why not try a sticker of one
of our earliest mascots,
the Russian space gecko? Again, they
each fit pretty nicely on the pass.
Finally, if you'd prefer
a vista to cover the whole image,
how about this one from when
we sent our mascot Marshmallow,
the polar bear with the broken penis,
to Alaska
to bet on an ice-melting contest.
Or, of course, this gorgeous rendering
of what two wild animals get up to
when you simply
allow nature to thrive.
I would argue it's the perfect image
to hold your rights
to visit all America's national
parks for the next 12 months.
All of these stickers to cover
Trump's face are available for you
at John-Oliver-Gives-Trump-Head
dot-com.
Actually, wait, hold on. No.
I do not like the way that sounds.
It feels wrong to me. 'Cause we're
giving out multiple heads, aren't we?
So, it should be John-Oliver-Gives-
Trump-Heads-dot-com.
That is much better. That is our show,
thank you so much for watching.
We're off for the next couple of weeks,
back on April 19th. Good night!