Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s13e13 Episode Script
Presidential Pardons
1
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you so much for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
Ken Paxton won
Texas' Republican Senate runoff,
one of Jeff Bezos' rockets blew
all the way up on the launchpad,
and D.C. saw plans ramp up
for America's 250th birthday.
The UFC Octagon's
going up on the South Lawn,
and Wednesday
saw this big announcement.
Freedom 250 announcing the first
round of stars that will be taking over
the National Mall in D.C.
for the Great American State Fair.
The 16-day event's gonna kick off
with Martina McBride on June 25th,
also gonna feature musicians
like Vanilla Ice, Flo Rida
and Bret Michaels on July 3rd,
leading right up to Independence Day
and America's 250th birthday.
Yeah, it is a stacked lineup
of people that you haven't
thought about since 2009.
Honestly, that sounds less like
America's 250th birthday
and more like the playlist
at Rhonda's 50th.
The only really surprising
thing about that lineup
is there's not a special appearance
from the ShamWow guy
and the Gushers kid whose
head turned into a raspberry.
And quick side note:
that kid died, right?
If your head turns into a raspberry
but the rest of your body stays human,
you die, right?
Now, crucially, the organization
planning that event, Freedom 250,
is not the same thing
as the non-profit
"America250, led by a bipartisan
board created by Congress."
Instead, it's a "public-private
partnership launched by White House",
with some dicey elements,
including the fact that,
for 1 million dollars,
donors to it could get access to Trump.
And as its political slant
became clear,
acts who were part of that initial
announcement quickly began to bail.
Young MC of "Bust a Move" fame
declared on Thursday
that he won't be performing as part of
the upcoming Freedom 250 celebration.
Minnesota's own Morris Day and
The Time says they will not perform.
The Commodores also say
they're not performing.
Martina McBride is one of many
artists pulling out of performances
at the Freedom 250 fair.
Rock singer Bret Michaels is now
the fifth act out of nine to pull out
of the Freedom 250 concerts
in D.C.
Yeah, that is a lot of cancellations,
though I do have to tell you,
Vanilla Ice did not pull out,
which I do realize sounds like
the answer to the question, "Why
does that baby have frosted tips?"
I should say, even some of the acts
currently still scheduled to play
may not be the exact people
you're expecting.
For instance, neither of the Cs in
C+C Music Factory will be performing,
it's just their rapper,
Freedom Williams,
who'd initially agreed to perform,
then considered backing out,
then doubled down on performing,
because he was so mad
that people were criticizing him,
a decision that he explained in this
7-minute video filmed in his bathroom.
You keep pushing me. I'll do the
motherfucking show in North Korea,
pissing on a fucking American flag,
smoking a Cuban cigar,
drinking Venezuelan wine,
playing golf
with motherfucking Kim Il-Jong,
with an Iranian bitch on my lap.
While Trump's standing there
with his dick in his hand,
that's how much of a fuck
I give what you think.
What you do? I'm sitting on
the toilet taking a shit.
Ironically.
Slap your ass in the face
with some fucking wet napkins.
Okay, there is so much there,
from the frankly gorgeous wallpaper,
to his shirt depicting,
and this is true,
Katniss and Peeta
from "The Hunger Games",
to the late-breaking reveal that he's
taking a shit through all of it.
And let me just say,
if you don't like the idea
of someone taking a shit
while delivering a long rant,
find another show.
Because that's right.
Every episode.
The whole time.
The point is, let's put C+C Music
Factory down as a maybe.
Even with those cancellations,
there'll still be things to do.
Because Freedom 250's also touting
events that'll include
"state and territory showcases
from across America",
"a 110-foot Ferris wheel",
"CEO and innovator-led conversations
and demonstrations",
and "special screenings of the iconic
films 'National Treasure'
and 'National Treasure:
Book of Secrets'",
bringing a real "substitute history
teacher doesn't give a fuck" energy
to the proceedings.
Although at this point,
given how everything's been going,
I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow
we got a press release reading,
"Due to divisive politics,
I will no longer
be attending the 250th celebration",
from the fucking Ferris wheel.
There'll clearly be plenty more to say
about America's 250th going forward.
But for now,
we're going to dive straight in
with our main story this week,
which concerns law and order.
It's not just the phrase
that'll be uttered at least 400 times
at Dick Wolf's funeral.
It's also something that Trump's made
a cornerstone of his appeal to voters.
I campaigned on law and order.
I was elected by a landslide
on law and order.
They stand for crime
and chaos and corruption.
We stand for law
and order and justice.
There was a time you weren't allowed
to use the words "law and order".
You weren't allowed to use
the term "law and order".
You weren't allowed to use
the term "Christmas",
merry Christmas, everybody, right?
Remember that? 2016, I ran on,
"We're going to bring back Christmas."
We did, now they're afraid
to suggest it.
But we brought that back. But law
and order, we need law and order.
Yeah, how could we forget
that Trump saved Christmas?
We all remember,
right, that before 2016,
the Hallmark Channel just ran movies
called "A Boyfriend for Winter",
"Finding Mistletoe for Strictly
Agricultural Reasons"
and "I Fell in Love with a Chiseled
Nordic-Looking Man
Who's Secretly a Prince
on a Normal Wednesday."
Thank goodness Trump intervened.
But it's not just rhetoric,
he's touted all sorts
of "tough-on-crime" tactics,
from calling
for the reopening of Alcatraz
to advocating for the death penalty
for drug dealers,
to launching a "war on fraud"
to "stop Medicare and Medicaid from
being looted by criminals and thugs",
to signing the Laken Riley Act,
mandating all undocumented people
be held in federal detention for crimes
as minor as shoplifting.
But I actually want to talk about
the other side of the coin here,
where Trump's used the powers of
the presidency to show mercy.
Specifically, his use of pardons,
you know, the power presidents use
to spare turkeys
every Thanksgiving.
Even if, as in this instance, the turkey
really tries to push its luck.
Hey, buddy, buddy,
your pardon ain't in there.
The executive power to pardon
someone for federal crimes
is enshrined in the Constitution,
and it's virtually unchecked.
And once a president
decides to do it,
there's basically nothing
courts or Congress can do.
And that is generally a good thing.
As we've mentioned before
in our piece on wrongful convictions,
it's hard to appeal a conviction,
especially in federal cases.
And given
there's no federal parole program
and that some people are serving
"egregiously long mandatory,
minimum sentences, oftentimes under
laws that don't even exist anymore",
in a deeply flawed
criminal justice system,
getting a pardon can be someone's
only real chance at relief.
But as you undoubtedly know,
Trump's used pardons very selectively,
as this scholar
who studies them points out.
One thing about clemency
is that, because it's an unchecked
power of the president,
it's gonna reflect
the values of that president.
President Trump,
we all knew before he was elected,
things that are important to him
include loyalty and celebrity.
And so, it should not surprise us
that clemency has been used
for celebrities, and for those
who have been loyal to him.
Right. Trump has pardoned
some famous shitheads,
from George Santos to Rudy Giuliani
to Sheriff Joe Arpaio,
quite possibly the most difficult
"fuck, marry, kill" I've ever seen.
I can't imagine anyone
who'd pick Giuliani
as the one to marry there,
except for, of course, his cousin.
And Trump's use of pardons
has escalated sharply.
While he granted 238 pardons and
commutations in his first term,
"less than a year into his second,
he'd already issued nearly 2,000."
On top of that,
he's rumored to be planning
to announce another 250 soon,
to mark America's 250th birthday.
So, given all of that,
we thought tonight,
it'd be worth taking a look
at Trump's pardons:
who he's given them to, why,
and what those choices mean.
And let's start with where
the power to pardon comes from.
It's actually a relic
of monarchical rule,
where kings had the final say
on justice proceedings.
And over the years,
it's been used in all sorts of ways.
Rutherford B. Hayes
once pardoned an Ohio man
convicted of sending
a "scurrilous postcard"
and Abraham Lincoln once pardoned
a man convicted of attempted bestiality.
Apparently, his reasoning
was that the man had displayed
"exemplary behavior in prison"
plus he was drunk at the time.
And if nothing else, it is kind of fun
to imagine Lincoln going,
"Okay, hold on, Henry fucked a goat?
Quick question:
how many beers deep was he,
and can I see a picture of the goat?
Let's be fair here."
Now, over the years, some pardons
have held up very well,
like the mass commutation of drug
sentences under Obama,
or the pardons for Vietnam draft
evaders under Ford and Carter.
But obviously, there've been
some infamous examples, too.
Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter.
Bill Clinton pardoned his friend
and megadonor Marc Rich, who'd been
"indicted on 65 criminal counts,
including tax fraud and trading
with Iran
while it held American hostages"
and who'd fled the country
to avoid arrest.
And then there was Gerald Ford's
decision, in his first month in office,
to pardon Richard Nixon,
which did not go down well at the time.
The president got a face-to-face
look at the hostility in Pittsburgh,
where he went to make a speech.
On the flight back to Washington,
the president declined to talk
to reporters about the pardon.
His spokesman, Hushen,
said the president knew
the pardon would be controversial
and was aware of the reaction.
A White House switchboard operator
told the president last night
the volume of calls was very heavy
and kind of unfavorable.
Yeah. That's a pretty kind way
for that operator to put it.
"The calls were heavy and unfavorable"
is a lot easier for a president to hear
than, "Beverly from Cincinnati
called you a corrupt taint"
and "Paul from Kenosha said you're
as crooked as a pig's dick".
But obviously, presidents pardoning
their predecessors or family members
are the exception.
And to understand what Trump's
done to the pardon system,
it's worth knowing
how it's usually worked.
Very basically, the system we've set up
is that anyone can submit an application
to the Office of the Pardon Attorney.
They then judge it
on a long list of criteria,
including the person's "post-conviction
conduct, character, and reputation",
the "seriousness and relative
recentness of the offense",
the "acceptance of responsibility,
remorse and atonement",
the "need for relief" and "official
recommendations and reports",
like, for instance, the FBI
doing a background check
to see if the person would be
a threat to public safety if released.
Now, if the pardon office signs off,
the application goes to the president.
But crucially, that whole system
is optional for a president.
They don't need to listen to what
the recommendations are,
or indeed, run a pardon through
that process at all.
And Trump, by and large, hasn't.
In his first term,
he famously pardoned cronies
and friends like Charles Kushner,
Jared's dad, Paul Manafort
and Roger Stone,
who for some reason sells signed
copies of his pardon on his website.
It is the perfect gift
for the special person in your life
who you no longer want
in your life.
Incredibly, it's only the second
weirdest thing Roger Stone sells,
with the weirdest being this signed
"make America Italian again" hat.
First, I don't know what "make
America Italian again" even means.
The only country on earth that's ever
been Italian is, pretty famously, Italy.
But also, the listing specifies
that the "hat comes hand-signed
by Roger Stone by default"
and "please leave a note with your
order if you would like it unsigned."
And just imagine the person
that's aimed at,
someone
who likes Roger Stone enough
to be browsing the merch
on Stone-Zone-dot-com,
and decides to spend 30 dollars
on a "make America Italian again" hat,
but doesn't want Roger Stone's
signature on it,
'cause that would make it weird.
Now, to be fair, Trump's first term
also saw some very worthy pardons,
including Alice Johnson,
who'd been serving a life sentence
for drug trafficking charges
from the '90s.
And while the reason he did that
probably had more to do with the fact
that she'd been advocated for
by Kim Kardashian,
it is still undeniably
good that he did it.
But in Trump's second term,
he's used his pardon power
to a truly ridiculous degree.
To start, on day one, he did this.
So, this is January 6th,
and these are the hostages,
approximately 1,500 for a pardon,
full pardon.
The full, complete,
and unconditional pardons
include the former leader
of the far-right group the Proud Boys,
Enrique Tarrio, sentenced
to 22 years for sedition.
Trump also commuting
the sentences of 14 others
charged with sedition,
including Stuart Rhodes,
founder of the Oath Keepers militia,
sentenced to 18 years.
Trump even granting clemency
to the more than 600 people
charged with assaulting and
resisting law enforcement.
Rioters on January 6th
attacking police,
using everything from shields
to flag poles, even cattle prods.
Yeah, not great! Because if you show up
to a protest with a cattle prod,
your motives
are automatically questionable.
Honestly, that's true if you
show up anywhere with one.
Next time your friends
invite you to dinner,
try showing up with
a bottle of wine and a cattle prod,
and see how long it is before
they say they're not feeling well
and will have to invite you over
another time.
The very next day,
Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht,
founder of the Silk Road
dark web marketplace,
who was serving a life sentence
for his site becoming
what the DOJ described as "the most
sophisticated and extensive
criminal marketplace
on the internet today."
Which is saying a lot, considering
I recently discovered a website
charging people real human dollars
for an autographed
"make America Italian again" hat.
If that's not a crime,
I don't think I know what one is.
So, clearly, that was a lot of wild
decisions right off the bat.
In fact, "legal experts
say no president has started a term
with so many pardons that violate
long-standing policies and norms."
And those norms
were there for a reason.
Take those January 6ers.
Even if you think many posed
no threat to their community,
there is a reason that it might've
been good to do things
like running background checks
before allowing all of them
to return home
with zero supervision.
Because not only were many facing
other charges at the time,
in the year and a half since,
at least 12 have been charged
with other serious crimes,
including assault, harassment
and murder plots.
And when it comes to remorse,
just listen to one of the more
prominent January 6ers, Jake Lang,
at a rally to celebrate the one-year
anniversary of their pardons.
You were accused
of doing some violent stuff.
Well, I was accused of defending
my country versus the violence…
Beating Capitol police officers,
with a pole.
These people were redcoats,
traitors to the Constitution.
They turned their weapons
against unarmed…
- Uniformed police officers?
- It doesn't matter if you're uniformed.
Okay, you probably already know
that he is full of shit,
but let's address the most striking
part of that: his outfit.
Because what is happening there?
I didn't realize you could get
scarves in the wrong size.
Everything from his neck up
is giving "frat boy on spring break",
but everything from the neck down is
giving "poetry professor at Hogwarts".
He looks like what'd happen
if Steve Carell fucked Gru,
which must be something that
Steve's thought about, right?
Doesn't every voice actor wonder
what it'd be like to have sex
with the cartoon character
that they voice?
I know I have. I've thought
about what it would be like
to fuck Vanity Smurf, and
what it'd be like to fuck Zazu.
It's not because
I find it arousing, I don't,
but you can't tell me
you wouldn't be curious
what it'd be like to fuck someone
and hear your own voice
coming out of their mouths.
It'd be so strange.
And if you're thinking,
"Well, why would you find
a cartoon character sexually
attractive in the first place?"
First, lots of people do,
but that's not what this
thought exercise is asking, really.
For the record, I don't find either
of these characters attractive,
but let's suppose
there was a universe where I did,
and they found me attractive,
could I go through with it
if they sounded exactly like me?
Because it's not like I'd be
fucking myself, is it?
I'd be fucking someone else
that just has my voice.
How would that feel?
How would I react if, mid-coitus,
I heard my own pleasure moans
coming out of Zazu's beak?
Would it ruin the whole thing?
Would I somehow enjoy it?
And if so,
does that make me a narcissist?
Also, would it be weird for them?
Because to Vanity Smurf and Zazu,
I have their voices, don't I?
So, could they do it?
Of course,
they're cartoon characters,
this could just be me
projecting my own humanity
onto a Smurf and a talking bird,
when they exist on their own planes
of morality and biological impulse
that don't necessarily conform
to what we'd say is right or wrong.
You know, after a lot of thought
and consideration, ultimately,
I think I would be able
to power through
and have sex
with Vanity Smurf and Zazu,
but I'd feel really guilty
about it afterwards,
and I'm not totally sure why.
Anyway, I would love to talk about
this more, but we don't have time,
so I'll just conclude by saying this:
let's see Byron Allen do that on
"Comics Unleashed".
The point here is,
Trump rushed out a ton
of pardons for January 6th rioters.
And since then, he's even tried
to set up a nearly 1.8 billion fund
to compensate anyone who feels they
were unfairly prosecuted under Biden,
which, it seems, many January
6ers hope to take advantage of,
given that guy you just saw
apparently answered his phone
the day that fund was announced
with,
"Jake Lang's office,
America's newest billionaire."
But the truth is, rumors
of the fund had been circulating
long before
it was officially announced,
to the point that one January 6er
literally tried to use it
to cover up his tracks on a different,
truly horrendous crime.
Meet Andrew Paul Johnson,
charged with storming the Capitol,
pardoned by the president.
There you see him,
circled in the crowd.
He was arrested just six months later
for multiple child sexual abuse
charges in Florida.
And apparently, he tried to buy
the silence of one of his child victims
by claiming he stood to receive
10 million dollars
as restitution for being
a January 6er.
Holy shit. I don't know
if there is any clearer example
of "two wrongs don't make a right"
than trying to silence your child
victim with your treason money.
And look, if Trump's pardons were
only about releasing January 6ers
and funneling money to them,
that would be bad enough.
But it goes well beyond that.
"More than 50 of the pardons
and commutations he's made
in his second term are for fraud"
and "white-collar offenses
such as money laundering,
bank fraud, and wire fraud are among
the frequent crimes he's wiped clean."
It's ranged
from your Ponzi schemers,
to campaign finance violators,
to this man, Trevor Milton.
He was the founder of an electric
trucking company called Nikola,
which he apparently wanted
to name after Nikola Tesla,
but as "Tesla" was already taken,
he went with Nikola instead.
A name only marginally
more creative than Tesla2,
Teslaa with two As,
and Tesla Again But Different.
Anyway, Nikola's electric truck
looked pretty impressive,
here's a video that was posted
to the company's social media,
captioned, "Behold, the 1,000 HP,
0-emission Nikola semi-truck in motion."
The only problem was,
as the company later admitted,
the reason that truck
wasn't emitting anything
is that it had been
"towed to the top of a hill
and allowed to roll down",
making it the perfect truck
for anyone who's environmentally
conscious and needs to commute
to the bottom of a hill exactly once
and then never again.
Now, Milton wound up being convicted
of defrauding the company's investors
with what prosecutors said
were "his repeated lies"
and was facing
a four-year prison term.
He was appealing that when Trump
suddenly stepped in to pardon him.
And here is Milton
telling the moving story
of how Trump broke the news
to him over the phone.
He says, "Well, Trevor,
I've heard your story,
and what they did to you was evil
and disgusting,
was wrong on every level.
And I'm going to issue you
a full and unconditional pardon.
The highest pardon a president
can give a human
is a full and unconditional,
and I'm gonna issue you a pardon.
You don't deserve what you've been
through. I'm so sorry."
And he says, "You're clean.
You're cleaner than a baby's bottom."
Trevor, wait.
"Cleaner than a baby's bottom"?
First, that is not a phrase.
But also, if you're trying to talk up
someone's honesty and integrity,
maybe try and avoid comparing
them to something that is, famously,
literally full of shit.
And if you're wondering why Trump
gave Milton a pardon,
here's how he explained it
when asked.
What was your reasoning
for pardoning Trevor Milton?
Highly recommended by many people
that was taken advantage of.
They say the thing that he did wrong
was, he was one of the first people
that supported a gentleman
named Donald Trump for president.
He supported Trump.
He liked Trump.
I didn't know him,
but he liked him.
And they got him. I said that's unfair.
There are many people like that.
They support Trump,
and they went after them.
Okay, even by Trump's standards,
that was a mess.
First, he answered the question,
"What's your reasoning
for pardoning Trevor Milton?"
with, and I quote,
"Highly recommended by many people
that was taken advantage of."
That is simply not how the English
language works, but okay.
Then,
in the middle of another thought,
he switches from speaking
in the third person to the first,
like a "Survivor" contestant
in confessional
who's only eaten coconut water
for three weeks.
"Rizo's playing well,
Rizo's dominating,
I'm going to faint,
Rizo going down."
If you looked at a transcript
of what Trump just said on paper,
you'd assume it was ChatGP
trying to kill itself.
But it is notable that Milton
wasn't just a supporter of Trump,
he was also a heavy donor.
In fact, he and his wife made
contributions totaling over 1.8 million
to a Trump re-election campaign fund
just a few months before the pardon.
And if that helped swing it,
it was frankly money well-spent,
especially given that
in addition to prison,
Milton was also facing roughly 676
million in restitution costs.
And while, historically, presidential
pardons don't wipe those away,
and for very good reason,
in Milton's case, it did.
So, Milton's investors would now get
absolutely none of their money back,
prompting one reporter
to ask him a pretty obvious question.
If someone came out and said,
"I lost my life savings",
would you pay them back?
I wouldn't pay them back.
I would definitely be open to…
I've got a few big ventures
I'm working on right now.
I'd definitely be open to trying
to help those people in the future.
So, I'm not heartless.
As a matter of fact,
I feel for these people,
probably more than most.
What an answer! "You lost your life
savings on my company,
may I offer you another
amazing investment opportunity?"
I can't wait to see all
the big ventures he's working on!
Just think of all the new, cutting-edge
things he's gonna roll down a hill!
When it comes to getting out
of financial restitution to victims,
Milton is not a one-off.
Trump's second term pardons alone
have taken
an estimated 1.3 billion away
from victims and survivors of crime.
And some are considerably less
fun than fake truck shenanigans.
Take Joseph Schwartz,
the head of a nursing home empire
who was facing three years
in prison for, among other things,
orchestrating a 39 million payroll tax
scheme, to which he'd pled guilty.
But it wasn't just his employees
who suffered
from how Schwartz managed
his nursing homes,
it was the patients in them, too.
Betty McFadden's son was in
a Schwartz-run nursing home,
in Arkansas, after a stroke left
him unable to move.
Sanitary conditions were so poor
in 2017
that inspectors documented maggots
on her son's catheter.
The state later issued fines
for neglect.
Do you think the people
in the nursing home
just ignored what was
blatantly negligent care?
Yes, I do.
Yeah, so do I.
And yet, despite all of that,
Schwartz received
a full pardon from Trump.
And while I cannot say for sure why,
I'm guessing it didn't hurt
that he'd paid "nearly a million
dollars to right-wing operatives
who claimed to have worked
with Laura Loomer"
and another 100,000 or more
to a lobbyist who had a different
set of connections to Trump.
One of the arguments Schwartz's
supporters made for his pardon
was that he had paid his full
5 million in federal restitution.
Which makes it pretty frustrating
to learn that, as part of his pardon,
he was actually refunded
that 5 million dollars.
And the only way
I'd be okay with that
is if the refund had come in the form
of 5 million worth of fucking maggots.
Now, obviously,
that image is an estimate.
I don't know what 5 million
dollars of maggots looks like.
I'm not Joseph Schwartz.
The point is, in Trump's second term,
it sure feels like, to the extent
there is any rhyme or reason
in how people get pardons,
it has little to do with
any of the established criteria.
In fact, only 10 of the people
granted them since last year
had even filed petitions to
the Office of the Pardon Attorney,
and "even within that small group,
some did not appear to meet
the Justice Department's
standards and requirements."
Instead, we now seem to have
a system where things
like media coverage, money and
appeals to Trump's vanity are key.
In fact, he'll often tie
his justification for pardons
to what he sees as his own
railroading by prosecutors,
to the point that, according
to administration officials,
the magic words to get him
to help with a pardon
are "unjust persecution".
Take what happened with
the former president of Honduras,
Juan Orlando Hernández, who
was pardoned after Roger Stone,
famous hat salesman,
advocated on his behalf,
and after Hernández's wife
appeared on Matt Gaetz's show
to claim that, just like Trump,
"My husband is a victim of
the DOJ's Biden lawfare agenda."
Which is a pretty big stretch, given
what her husband was convicted of.
Hernández was convicted in 2024
of what prosecutors called
one of the biggest and most violent
narcotrafficking conspiracies
in the world,
protecting drug routes
in exchange for millions.
In total, prosecutors said,
he helped flood the U.S.
with more
than 400 tons of cocaine.
He allegedly even boasted
they were going to stuff
cocaine up the gringos' noses.
Yeah, pretty bad! The violent drug
conspiracy part, that is,
not
the "stuff cocaine up gringos' noses."
If anything, that's just
helpful customer service.
That's at-home installation
and troubleshooting.
It's essentially Geek Squad
but for cocaine.
If you're thinking, "Wait. Hold on.
Wasn't 'stopping the flow of drugs
across the southern border'
Trump's whole deal?
Isn't that why we recently kidnapped
a different country's leader,
and why we're blowing up
boats off Venezuela on a regular basis?
In fact,
wasn't 'they're bringing drugs'
one of the first things Trump burped
into our collective brains a decade ago
after descending
from hell's mezzanine?"
Yeah! It very much was!
And if the world had any justice,
his shoelaces would have gotten
stuck right then and there,
and today,
instead of intuitively associating Trump
with America imploding,
we'd just associate him
with the need
to be really careful at the mall.
Look up from your phone
there, Alyssa.
You don't want to get Trump'd
outside an American Eagle.
Learn from history.
But maybe the best way to understand
just how fully the brakes have come off
is to look at what happened with
the crypto trading platform Binance.
In 2023, the company and its CEO,
Changpeng Zhao, who goes by "CZ",
pled guilty to violating
anti-money laundering laws.
DOJ said Zhao had caused "significant
harm to U.S. national security"
by "allowing sanctioned
Iranian crypto exchanges,
Russian drug traffickers, Hamas
militants, and other criminal groups
to move billions of dollars
through the exchange."
And it was a pretty slam dunk case,
with among other things,
internal communications
from employees,
including its chief compliance
officer texting a coworker,
"Like come on.
They are here for crime",
to which the colleague replied,
"We see the bad,
but we close two eyes."
Which is both
a flagrant admission of guilt
and also, a frankly gorgeous way
to describe playing peekaboo.
Binance's plea agreements constituted
the largest settlements in history,
and the company paid more
than 4 billion dollars in fines.
And yet,
seemingly out of nowhere,
Trump gave Zhao a full pardon.
And when asked about that just a few
days later, his answer wasn't great.
He pled guilty in 2023 to violating
anti-money laundering laws.
The government at the time said that
CZ had caused
"significant harm
to U.S. national security",
essentially by allowing terrorist
groups like Hamas
to move millions of dollars around.
Why did you pardon him?
Okay. Are you ready?
I don't know who he is.
I know he got a four-month
sentence or something like that.
And I heard
it was a Biden witch hunt.
There it is.
There it is, right there.
Trump's classic move of claiming
he doesn't know someone
after it turns out his association
with them might be a problem.
He literally says,
"Are you ready?" there
as if to prepare everyone
for the incoming bullshit.
"Okay, buckle the fuck up, everyone,
because even by my standards,
this lie is about to be
an absolute doozy!"
But Zhao's pardon
may not just have been down
to the "Biden witch hunt" factor.
Because it turns out, just
months before it came through,
Binance had done a crypto deal that
benefited the Trump family massively.
Very basically, a UAE investment
fund bought a stake in Binance,
and to do that, they used 2 billion
worth of the crypto coin
associated with the Trump family's
World Liberty Financial.
That meant 2 billion dollars
was now parked indefinitely
with the company,
off of which the Trumps
could then earn interest.
And while Binance will insist
that there was no quid pro quo
and that it didn't choose
the crypto coin in question,
what it can still very much do is
determine exactly how long
World Liberty continues earning
interest on that 2 billion,
which is pretty meaningful,
given even a 4% yield
would generate 80 million annually,
of which the Trump family would be
entitled to around 30 million a year.
Which is a lot of money.
I mean, 30 million!
That's a million signed Italian
felony hats! That's ricchezza!
And it's not just me that thinks
that Zhao's pardon looks bad.
Even Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of
Palantir, and a big Trump supporter,
tweeted, "Trump has been
terribly advised on this,
it makes it look like massive fraud
is happening around him in this area."
And I do not love being on
the same side as that guy!
It makes me
second-guess everything now.
Imagine if Tucker Carlson announced
that "The Comeback"
is his favorite show of all time.
I think I'd kill myself!
So, what do we do? Well, legally,
there is not much that we can do.
Especially given the Supreme Court's
found that a president can't be
prosecuted for official acts,
which giving out
pardons unquestionably is.
And while some critics have suggested
reining in the president's pardon power,
I would want to tread
very carefully there.
Because historically,
the harm of sketchy pardons
has generally been offset by clemency
coming for many more
who actually deserved it.
The problem is that right now it feels
that that ratio's been reversed,
and that outside of a few exceptions,
it's basically just the scumbags
and fraudsters with connections
to Trump who get pardons.
As one lawyer put it,
"If you're just an average citizen,
you can't even get in the line.
I told my guy he'd probably be
better off if he broke into the Capitol
or made a major donation
to Trump's inauguration."
Which is pretty bleak, isn't it?
Especially given just how much Trump
loves to rail about how tough he is
when it comes to law and order.
But that toughness
is clearly deeply selective,
'cause he'll happily
put violent people and fraudsters
right back on the streets
to victimize people again,
just because they support him.
And that's frankly not likely
to stop any time soon.
In fact, he's reportedly "promised his
top administration officials pardons
before he leaves office,"
effectively meaning
that they can get away
with any federal crimes
that they may commit
during his second term.
Which, among other things,
means RFK Jr. is about to enter
the illegal wildlife trade in ways
that we have never seen before.
The hypocrisy here
is just so flagrant.
Just last week, administration
officials triumphantly announced
indictments as part of their ongoing
crackdown on healthcare fraud.
But as reporters quickly pointed out,
some of those fraud cases
seemed strikingly similar to those
for which Trump has granted clemency,
when people
had connections to him.
And when one reporter pointed that
out during the DOJ's press conference,
the answer that he got
was pretty revealing.
President Trump has granted
clemency to numerous individuals
who have stolen hundreds of
millions of dollars in Medicaid funds.
Can we expect Aimee Bock
or any of these folks
to be shown the same mercy
in the future?
I'll take a different question
as the final question.
I mean, that is not even
an attempt to explain, is it?
And if someone is dodging
a question that hard,
it means the answer is truly bad.
If you asked your girlfriend,
"Will you marry me?"
and she says,
"I'll take a different question",
go ahead and download Hinge,
'cause whatever the real answer is
does not bode well for you.
And look, while that answer
is clearly laughable,
the underlying message
is pretty dark.
I know it is not news that America
has a two-tiered justice system,
but this is taking it
to an absurd extreme.
The way we're going right now,
we may well end up at a point
where we don't so much have
a system of laws,
as much as we just have a guy.
And if you're on that guy's team,
you basically get to commit crimes.
But that's just not the social
contract any of us signed up for.
All of this is a very,
very slippery slope.
And the problem is,
much like a Nikola truck,
once we start going down that slope,
it could be very hard to come back.
And now, this.
And Now: People Calling In
To C-SPAN on Their Birthday.
Don is next, Bert, Virginia,
Democrats line, good morning.
- Good morning, it's my birthday.
- Well, happy birthday.
Elroy, Wisconsin, independent
caller for Eamon Javers. Hey, Harold.
- Good morning, gentlemen.
- Good morning, sir.
Yes, it's my birthday today.
I'm 84 years old.
- Happy birthday.
- Thank you very much.
I am a senior citizen. Today is
my birthday, and I'm 80 years old.
- Happy birthday.
- Thank you.
By the way, today is my birthday,
and I'm glad to be on this earth.
Happy birthday. How old are
you, Vivian? Do you mind me asking?
- 72 years old.
- Happy 72nd birthday.
I came into this world
86 years ago today.
- Happy birthday, Bob.
- Well, thank you.
I feel good about that.
I'm still kicking.
Greta, so, if you didn't know,
I just turned 90.
- Happy birthday.
- Oh, thanks.
Tomorrow's my birthday.
I had two vaccines and the booster,
and I'm sick right now.
And so, goodbye.
How old are you going
to be tomorrow, Jane?
- 76. No-oh, God. 75.
- Happy 75th birthday, Jane.
Hello, good morning,
how you doing today?
- Good morning.
- It's my birthday.
I've been trying to get in for months
and months, I finally got in.
- Happy birthday.
- Thank you.
First of all, I want to say,
today is my birthday
and I listen to C-SPAN
every day that I'm off.
Good morning, Steve.
I cannot tell you how excited I am
to see you back on the air.
It is my birthday
and I can't tell you,
this is the best birthday gift
I have ever received.
- Well, happy birthday.
- Wonderful to see you back.
Very excited.
Good morning, Greta.
Well, today is my birthday, and…
- Happy birthday.
- Thank you.
And prior to the explosion
of the Challenger,
there was never anything
memorable about my birthday,
but since then people remember it.
Moving on.
Before we go, a quick word
about movie posters:
helping boys in college make bad
decorating decisions from the jump.
"Hello, my personality is 'Scarface,'
welcome to my hole."
The best posters find a way to sum up
a film in a single image,
whether it's Uma Thurman doing
some armed bedtime reading,
or Jodie Foster with a death moth
on her face, or "Ghost",
which conveys in an instant that
it's a sexy supernatural romance.
But I'm going to show you another
poster for that same movie
that went in a slightly
different direction.
This obviously looks nothing like
the actual poster for "Ghost".
None of this happens in "Ghost".
You have Patrick Swayze here,
Demi Moore kind of screaming
in agony,
and Whoopi Goldberg's head bursting
through Demi Moore's body.
Again, none of that happens
in the movie.
That is excellent.
Especially her clarifying,
"None of that happens in the movie."
Girl, we know!
Even if all you know about "Ghost"
is pottery that fucks,
you're probably aware
that Whoopi Goldberg
does not "here's Johnny" her way
out of Demi Moore's uterus.
That poster is just one example
in the incredible world
of Ghanaian movie posters.
It turns out, artists there
have been making their own
hand-painted posters for decades now,
from this amazing one
for "Jurassic Park",
featuring a golfer for some reason,
to this one for
"The Spy Who Loved Me"
that's unexpectedly fish-forward,
to this one for "Hard Boiled",
which features Chow Yun Fat
shooting some bad guys so hard
one of their heads comes off.
And there's an interesting
explanation for this tradition.
Back in the 1980s,
the widespread introduction of
foreign videocassettes into Ghana
led to the creation of a "mobile
cinema" phenomenon,
basically, local entrepreneurs
bought TV monitors, VCRs,
and portable gas-powered generators,
then traveled around setting up
makeshift screening areas in villages
with limited or no electricity.
But they hit a roadblock
when it came to advertising.
Because at that time, Ghana
was under a military dictatorship,
whose laws had cut off
the importation
of the large-scale offset printing
presses you'd use to make posters.
So, instead, local artists were
commissioned to make their own,
often using repurposed
flour sacks as a canvas.
And as this artist explains, they had
a lot of freedom to improvise.
In those days, there were posters
that would come with the movies,
but we'd decide what to paint
by watching the movies ourselves
and selecting the scenes
that we wanted to see.
Western action films were mainstays,
as those from China and Bollywood.
Many posters include paranormal
elements and gratuitous violence,
even if the films had none.
I love that idea.
Giving someone the freedom
to make movies seem more interesting
than they might otherwise be?
Because it has led to some truly
unique representations.
For instance,
this poster for "Predator"
has Predator holding a naked
woman in the background,
which does not happen
in the movie.
And this one for "Hellraiser III"
has Pinhead eating a person whole,
which wasn't in the movie,
but frankly should have been.
Although, as this cultural
anthropologist explains,
that approach
had both pros and cons.
Sometimes, you have things
depicted on the posters
that will arouse your interest
because you think
that you are going to see those
depictions in those movies.
It created tensions
where you have certain folks
demanding their money back because
they've been deceived, right?
Yeah, that makes sense,
doesn't it?
If you buy a ticket
to "The Spy Who Loved Me"
thinking you're going to see
the big red fish
and he hasn't shown up
an hour into the movie,
you're going to start whispering
to your date,
"I'm so sorry. I know you wanted
to see the big red fish.
I'm so sorry about this."
And if your date happens
to be a big red fish,
you'd also have to say,
"I know there aren't a lot of good
representations of big red fish,
and you wanted to see yourself
and your struggles on the screen.
Again, I am really
so sorry about this."
But he is not kidding there.
One Ghanaian artist said,
for a Chinese movie he assumed
was a martial-arts film,
he painted actor Jet Li
delivering a beatdown.
But neither Jet Li nor
fighting was in the film.
And "when angry customers
began demanding their money back,
he sneaked out."
And while all of this
was born out of commerce,
it was truly an art form,
"many of the artists
were well-trained
and did three-to-four-year
apprenticeships."
But after the dictatorship fell,
and Ghanaians gained access to cheap
printing techniques and home TV sets,
the demand
for these artists' services declined.
Unfortunately, many were
unable to make a living as artists,
and had to go back
to doing ordinary jobs.
After attracting international
attention over the last decade,
Ghanaian artists,
partnering with this gallery,
have been getting commissioned to
make posters for collectors and fans.
Some have even specialized
in taking non-action movies
and amping up the violence.
Like in this one from
"Ferris Bueller's Day Off",
where everyone has guns
and Jennifer Gray is slitting Cameron's
throat because she has had enough,
or this one for "The Wizard of Oz"
where every supporting character
is a vampire, the Tin Man
doesn't have a heart
but does have a bleeding human
arm that he appears to have cut off
with his own axe, and Toto is
the only one reacting appropriately.
Meanwhile, action movies
can get amped up even further,
like in this poster for "Star Wars",
featuring a car crash,
multiple exploding torsos,
an ant attack,
and Yoda going absolutely feral,
all of which are enough
to distract you from the fact that
there's a werewolf on the poster!
But the more you study
these posters,
the more you start to see
some patterns.
Snakes, for instance,
are a constant motif,
showing up in unexpected places,
like in this poster for
"Cool Runnings." Snake!
Or this one for "The Matrix".
Snakes! And more snakes!
Or this one for "Willy Wonka
and the Chocolate Factory",
with snakes launching themselves out
of a demonic Violet Beauregarde.
Other posters shoehorn in characters
that don't appear in the film,
like this version of "Magic Mike"
featuring "Macho Man" Randy Savage,
or this version of "Flubber"
featuring Alvin and the Chipmunks,
where not only are they at the beach,
but also "Flubber" has two guns.
Or this portrayal of the shark
from "Jaws" with rippling abs,
and also Chuck Norris.
These artists are incredible!
And just think of the talent it takes
to be presented with a movie
like, say, "Paddington," a movie
where, famously, an orphaned bear
goes to London, and is taken
in by a kindly family,
but then have the imagination
to say, "Okay, I think I got it.
So, for a poster, you probably
want something like this, then."
That is an absolute masterpiece!
And I am genuinely glad these posters
are becoming popular again,
especially because, as that
anthropologist points out,
it is helping keep a tradition alive.
We need to have a way of motivating,
you know, upcoming artists
to be rooted in this tradition.
To preserve this way of painting,
we need to have a way
of, you know, motivating
these artists, you know, to grow.
Yeah, he's right.
Artists need support.
Even Da Vinci had wealthy patrons,
although to be fair,
if he'd been regularly cranking out
gold like this "Face/Off" poster,
he might have had a lot more.
If I'm a Medici,
I'm throwing all my florins at that.
While we can mourn the loss of
the original purpose of these posters
which, remember, was to lure
unsuspecting Ghanaians to see movies
by misrepresenting the number
of decapitations in "Space Jam",
it is nice to know these artists
are finding a new market
among international collectors.
Because you can still get
some great custom work done.
And the reason I know that is…
We actually reached out to that gallery
to commission a poster for this show.
And I'll tell you why: each year,
during Emmy voting season,
HBO launches a campaign
on behalf of its shows,
with tasteful ads like these.
They even rent out billboards
in L.A. for the ads.
And while they're always
done in a restrained, classy style,
it's never really felt like it spoke
to the chaos we like to think
we stand for here.
So, we commissioned
a Ghanaian poster artist
to make something different
for us this year.
We sent them a few images
from the last year of our show,
including me trying to force my way
onto a soap opera,
my wife Wanda Jo
helping me open a med spa,
and our Moon Mammoth mascot.
But we didn't tell them much else
about what this show actually was.
And would you like to see
what they came up with?
Good. Please, come with me.
Because all we asked them to do
was to use their imagination,
include at least one character
who is not a part of this show,
and to use as many of their
regular tactics as they wanted to.
So, may I present to you,
from Ghanaian artist C.A. Wisely,
a poster that I think truly represents
what this show is about.
Behold!
Look at this masterpiece!
It has everything that you want,
it's got me holding a gun,
and also a second gun.
It's got our wooden cabbage man
statue from our AI slop story.
It's got me drinking wine
with a horse, who by the way,
seems to have
an elegant human hand.
It's got a chainsaw cutting through
tentacles, blood, snakes,
an explosion, and also,
the fucking Fonz is there!
And he's holding a pickaxe
for no clear reason, other than,
I'm guessing, to defend himself from
everything happening around him.
I love this painting so much.
I think we can all agree,
it is an ad for a much more
entertaining show
than the one you just watched.
Now, we have shown this to HBO,
and they've agreed to put it
on their digital billboard over
Sunset Boulevard next month,
from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM only.
Which is the funniest possible time
for it to be up there.
But this poster
can also be in your home,
because we are selling high-quality
prints of it for 50 dollars,
with all proceeds going
to Ghanian artists and community led
charities across Ghana.
You can frame this poster and put
it up on any wall of your house,
and you can find it at
Hang-John-Oliver-dot-com,
a URL I'm honestly a little
surprised was still available.
That is our show, thank you
so much for watching.
We'll see you next week,
good night!
It's beautiful. It's just beautiful.
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you so much for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
Ken Paxton won
Texas' Republican Senate runoff,
one of Jeff Bezos' rockets blew
all the way up on the launchpad,
and D.C. saw plans ramp up
for America's 250th birthday.
The UFC Octagon's
going up on the South Lawn,
and Wednesday
saw this big announcement.
Freedom 250 announcing the first
round of stars that will be taking over
the National Mall in D.C.
for the Great American State Fair.
The 16-day event's gonna kick off
with Martina McBride on June 25th,
also gonna feature musicians
like Vanilla Ice, Flo Rida
and Bret Michaels on July 3rd,
leading right up to Independence Day
and America's 250th birthday.
Yeah, it is a stacked lineup
of people that you haven't
thought about since 2009.
Honestly, that sounds less like
America's 250th birthday
and more like the playlist
at Rhonda's 50th.
The only really surprising
thing about that lineup
is there's not a special appearance
from the ShamWow guy
and the Gushers kid whose
head turned into a raspberry.
And quick side note:
that kid died, right?
If your head turns into a raspberry
but the rest of your body stays human,
you die, right?
Now, crucially, the organization
planning that event, Freedom 250,
is not the same thing
as the non-profit
"America250, led by a bipartisan
board created by Congress."
Instead, it's a "public-private
partnership launched by White House",
with some dicey elements,
including the fact that,
for 1 million dollars,
donors to it could get access to Trump.
And as its political slant
became clear,
acts who were part of that initial
announcement quickly began to bail.
Young MC of "Bust a Move" fame
declared on Thursday
that he won't be performing as part of
the upcoming Freedom 250 celebration.
Minnesota's own Morris Day and
The Time says they will not perform.
The Commodores also say
they're not performing.
Martina McBride is one of many
artists pulling out of performances
at the Freedom 250 fair.
Rock singer Bret Michaels is now
the fifth act out of nine to pull out
of the Freedom 250 concerts
in D.C.
Yeah, that is a lot of cancellations,
though I do have to tell you,
Vanilla Ice did not pull out,
which I do realize sounds like
the answer to the question, "Why
does that baby have frosted tips?"
I should say, even some of the acts
currently still scheduled to play
may not be the exact people
you're expecting.
For instance, neither of the Cs in
C+C Music Factory will be performing,
it's just their rapper,
Freedom Williams,
who'd initially agreed to perform,
then considered backing out,
then doubled down on performing,
because he was so mad
that people were criticizing him,
a decision that he explained in this
7-minute video filmed in his bathroom.
You keep pushing me. I'll do the
motherfucking show in North Korea,
pissing on a fucking American flag,
smoking a Cuban cigar,
drinking Venezuelan wine,
playing golf
with motherfucking Kim Il-Jong,
with an Iranian bitch on my lap.
While Trump's standing there
with his dick in his hand,
that's how much of a fuck
I give what you think.
What you do? I'm sitting on
the toilet taking a shit.
Ironically.
Slap your ass in the face
with some fucking wet napkins.
Okay, there is so much there,
from the frankly gorgeous wallpaper,
to his shirt depicting,
and this is true,
Katniss and Peeta
from "The Hunger Games",
to the late-breaking reveal that he's
taking a shit through all of it.
And let me just say,
if you don't like the idea
of someone taking a shit
while delivering a long rant,
find another show.
Because that's right.
Every episode.
The whole time.
The point is, let's put C+C Music
Factory down as a maybe.
Even with those cancellations,
there'll still be things to do.
Because Freedom 250's also touting
events that'll include
"state and territory showcases
from across America",
"a 110-foot Ferris wheel",
"CEO and innovator-led conversations
and demonstrations",
and "special screenings of the iconic
films 'National Treasure'
and 'National Treasure:
Book of Secrets'",
bringing a real "substitute history
teacher doesn't give a fuck" energy
to the proceedings.
Although at this point,
given how everything's been going,
I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow
we got a press release reading,
"Due to divisive politics,
I will no longer
be attending the 250th celebration",
from the fucking Ferris wheel.
There'll clearly be plenty more to say
about America's 250th going forward.
But for now,
we're going to dive straight in
with our main story this week,
which concerns law and order.
It's not just the phrase
that'll be uttered at least 400 times
at Dick Wolf's funeral.
It's also something that Trump's made
a cornerstone of his appeal to voters.
I campaigned on law and order.
I was elected by a landslide
on law and order.
They stand for crime
and chaos and corruption.
We stand for law
and order and justice.
There was a time you weren't allowed
to use the words "law and order".
You weren't allowed to use
the term "law and order".
You weren't allowed to use
the term "Christmas",
merry Christmas, everybody, right?
Remember that? 2016, I ran on,
"We're going to bring back Christmas."
We did, now they're afraid
to suggest it.
But we brought that back. But law
and order, we need law and order.
Yeah, how could we forget
that Trump saved Christmas?
We all remember,
right, that before 2016,
the Hallmark Channel just ran movies
called "A Boyfriend for Winter",
"Finding Mistletoe for Strictly
Agricultural Reasons"
and "I Fell in Love with a Chiseled
Nordic-Looking Man
Who's Secretly a Prince
on a Normal Wednesday."
Thank goodness Trump intervened.
But it's not just rhetoric,
he's touted all sorts
of "tough-on-crime" tactics,
from calling
for the reopening of Alcatraz
to advocating for the death penalty
for drug dealers,
to launching a "war on fraud"
to "stop Medicare and Medicaid from
being looted by criminals and thugs",
to signing the Laken Riley Act,
mandating all undocumented people
be held in federal detention for crimes
as minor as shoplifting.
But I actually want to talk about
the other side of the coin here,
where Trump's used the powers of
the presidency to show mercy.
Specifically, his use of pardons,
you know, the power presidents use
to spare turkeys
every Thanksgiving.
Even if, as in this instance, the turkey
really tries to push its luck.
Hey, buddy, buddy,
your pardon ain't in there.
The executive power to pardon
someone for federal crimes
is enshrined in the Constitution,
and it's virtually unchecked.
And once a president
decides to do it,
there's basically nothing
courts or Congress can do.
And that is generally a good thing.
As we've mentioned before
in our piece on wrongful convictions,
it's hard to appeal a conviction,
especially in federal cases.
And given
there's no federal parole program
and that some people are serving
"egregiously long mandatory,
minimum sentences, oftentimes under
laws that don't even exist anymore",
in a deeply flawed
criminal justice system,
getting a pardon can be someone's
only real chance at relief.
But as you undoubtedly know,
Trump's used pardons very selectively,
as this scholar
who studies them points out.
One thing about clemency
is that, because it's an unchecked
power of the president,
it's gonna reflect
the values of that president.
President Trump,
we all knew before he was elected,
things that are important to him
include loyalty and celebrity.
And so, it should not surprise us
that clemency has been used
for celebrities, and for those
who have been loyal to him.
Right. Trump has pardoned
some famous shitheads,
from George Santos to Rudy Giuliani
to Sheriff Joe Arpaio,
quite possibly the most difficult
"fuck, marry, kill" I've ever seen.
I can't imagine anyone
who'd pick Giuliani
as the one to marry there,
except for, of course, his cousin.
And Trump's use of pardons
has escalated sharply.
While he granted 238 pardons and
commutations in his first term,
"less than a year into his second,
he'd already issued nearly 2,000."
On top of that,
he's rumored to be planning
to announce another 250 soon,
to mark America's 250th birthday.
So, given all of that,
we thought tonight,
it'd be worth taking a look
at Trump's pardons:
who he's given them to, why,
and what those choices mean.
And let's start with where
the power to pardon comes from.
It's actually a relic
of monarchical rule,
where kings had the final say
on justice proceedings.
And over the years,
it's been used in all sorts of ways.
Rutherford B. Hayes
once pardoned an Ohio man
convicted of sending
a "scurrilous postcard"
and Abraham Lincoln once pardoned
a man convicted of attempted bestiality.
Apparently, his reasoning
was that the man had displayed
"exemplary behavior in prison"
plus he was drunk at the time.
And if nothing else, it is kind of fun
to imagine Lincoln going,
"Okay, hold on, Henry fucked a goat?
Quick question:
how many beers deep was he,
and can I see a picture of the goat?
Let's be fair here."
Now, over the years, some pardons
have held up very well,
like the mass commutation of drug
sentences under Obama,
or the pardons for Vietnam draft
evaders under Ford and Carter.
But obviously, there've been
some infamous examples, too.
Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter.
Bill Clinton pardoned his friend
and megadonor Marc Rich, who'd been
"indicted on 65 criminal counts,
including tax fraud and trading
with Iran
while it held American hostages"
and who'd fled the country
to avoid arrest.
And then there was Gerald Ford's
decision, in his first month in office,
to pardon Richard Nixon,
which did not go down well at the time.
The president got a face-to-face
look at the hostility in Pittsburgh,
where he went to make a speech.
On the flight back to Washington,
the president declined to talk
to reporters about the pardon.
His spokesman, Hushen,
said the president knew
the pardon would be controversial
and was aware of the reaction.
A White House switchboard operator
told the president last night
the volume of calls was very heavy
and kind of unfavorable.
Yeah. That's a pretty kind way
for that operator to put it.
"The calls were heavy and unfavorable"
is a lot easier for a president to hear
than, "Beverly from Cincinnati
called you a corrupt taint"
and "Paul from Kenosha said you're
as crooked as a pig's dick".
But obviously, presidents pardoning
their predecessors or family members
are the exception.
And to understand what Trump's
done to the pardon system,
it's worth knowing
how it's usually worked.
Very basically, the system we've set up
is that anyone can submit an application
to the Office of the Pardon Attorney.
They then judge it
on a long list of criteria,
including the person's "post-conviction
conduct, character, and reputation",
the "seriousness and relative
recentness of the offense",
the "acceptance of responsibility,
remorse and atonement",
the "need for relief" and "official
recommendations and reports",
like, for instance, the FBI
doing a background check
to see if the person would be
a threat to public safety if released.
Now, if the pardon office signs off,
the application goes to the president.
But crucially, that whole system
is optional for a president.
They don't need to listen to what
the recommendations are,
or indeed, run a pardon through
that process at all.
And Trump, by and large, hasn't.
In his first term,
he famously pardoned cronies
and friends like Charles Kushner,
Jared's dad, Paul Manafort
and Roger Stone,
who for some reason sells signed
copies of his pardon on his website.
It is the perfect gift
for the special person in your life
who you no longer want
in your life.
Incredibly, it's only the second
weirdest thing Roger Stone sells,
with the weirdest being this signed
"make America Italian again" hat.
First, I don't know what "make
America Italian again" even means.
The only country on earth that's ever
been Italian is, pretty famously, Italy.
But also, the listing specifies
that the "hat comes hand-signed
by Roger Stone by default"
and "please leave a note with your
order if you would like it unsigned."
And just imagine the person
that's aimed at,
someone
who likes Roger Stone enough
to be browsing the merch
on Stone-Zone-dot-com,
and decides to spend 30 dollars
on a "make America Italian again" hat,
but doesn't want Roger Stone's
signature on it,
'cause that would make it weird.
Now, to be fair, Trump's first term
also saw some very worthy pardons,
including Alice Johnson,
who'd been serving a life sentence
for drug trafficking charges
from the '90s.
And while the reason he did that
probably had more to do with the fact
that she'd been advocated for
by Kim Kardashian,
it is still undeniably
good that he did it.
But in Trump's second term,
he's used his pardon power
to a truly ridiculous degree.
To start, on day one, he did this.
So, this is January 6th,
and these are the hostages,
approximately 1,500 for a pardon,
full pardon.
The full, complete,
and unconditional pardons
include the former leader
of the far-right group the Proud Boys,
Enrique Tarrio, sentenced
to 22 years for sedition.
Trump also commuting
the sentences of 14 others
charged with sedition,
including Stuart Rhodes,
founder of the Oath Keepers militia,
sentenced to 18 years.
Trump even granting clemency
to the more than 600 people
charged with assaulting and
resisting law enforcement.
Rioters on January 6th
attacking police,
using everything from shields
to flag poles, even cattle prods.
Yeah, not great! Because if you show up
to a protest with a cattle prod,
your motives
are automatically questionable.
Honestly, that's true if you
show up anywhere with one.
Next time your friends
invite you to dinner,
try showing up with
a bottle of wine and a cattle prod,
and see how long it is before
they say they're not feeling well
and will have to invite you over
another time.
The very next day,
Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht,
founder of the Silk Road
dark web marketplace,
who was serving a life sentence
for his site becoming
what the DOJ described as "the most
sophisticated and extensive
criminal marketplace
on the internet today."
Which is saying a lot, considering
I recently discovered a website
charging people real human dollars
for an autographed
"make America Italian again" hat.
If that's not a crime,
I don't think I know what one is.
So, clearly, that was a lot of wild
decisions right off the bat.
In fact, "legal experts
say no president has started a term
with so many pardons that violate
long-standing policies and norms."
And those norms
were there for a reason.
Take those January 6ers.
Even if you think many posed
no threat to their community,
there is a reason that it might've
been good to do things
like running background checks
before allowing all of them
to return home
with zero supervision.
Because not only were many facing
other charges at the time,
in the year and a half since,
at least 12 have been charged
with other serious crimes,
including assault, harassment
and murder plots.
And when it comes to remorse,
just listen to one of the more
prominent January 6ers, Jake Lang,
at a rally to celebrate the one-year
anniversary of their pardons.
You were accused
of doing some violent stuff.
Well, I was accused of defending
my country versus the violence…
Beating Capitol police officers,
with a pole.
These people were redcoats,
traitors to the Constitution.
They turned their weapons
against unarmed…
- Uniformed police officers?
- It doesn't matter if you're uniformed.
Okay, you probably already know
that he is full of shit,
but let's address the most striking
part of that: his outfit.
Because what is happening there?
I didn't realize you could get
scarves in the wrong size.
Everything from his neck up
is giving "frat boy on spring break",
but everything from the neck down is
giving "poetry professor at Hogwarts".
He looks like what'd happen
if Steve Carell fucked Gru,
which must be something that
Steve's thought about, right?
Doesn't every voice actor wonder
what it'd be like to have sex
with the cartoon character
that they voice?
I know I have. I've thought
about what it would be like
to fuck Vanity Smurf, and
what it'd be like to fuck Zazu.
It's not because
I find it arousing, I don't,
but you can't tell me
you wouldn't be curious
what it'd be like to fuck someone
and hear your own voice
coming out of their mouths.
It'd be so strange.
And if you're thinking,
"Well, why would you find
a cartoon character sexually
attractive in the first place?"
First, lots of people do,
but that's not what this
thought exercise is asking, really.
For the record, I don't find either
of these characters attractive,
but let's suppose
there was a universe where I did,
and they found me attractive,
could I go through with it
if they sounded exactly like me?
Because it's not like I'd be
fucking myself, is it?
I'd be fucking someone else
that just has my voice.
How would that feel?
How would I react if, mid-coitus,
I heard my own pleasure moans
coming out of Zazu's beak?
Would it ruin the whole thing?
Would I somehow enjoy it?
And if so,
does that make me a narcissist?
Also, would it be weird for them?
Because to Vanity Smurf and Zazu,
I have their voices, don't I?
So, could they do it?
Of course,
they're cartoon characters,
this could just be me
projecting my own humanity
onto a Smurf and a talking bird,
when they exist on their own planes
of morality and biological impulse
that don't necessarily conform
to what we'd say is right or wrong.
You know, after a lot of thought
and consideration, ultimately,
I think I would be able
to power through
and have sex
with Vanity Smurf and Zazu,
but I'd feel really guilty
about it afterwards,
and I'm not totally sure why.
Anyway, I would love to talk about
this more, but we don't have time,
so I'll just conclude by saying this:
let's see Byron Allen do that on
"Comics Unleashed".
The point here is,
Trump rushed out a ton
of pardons for January 6th rioters.
And since then, he's even tried
to set up a nearly 1.8 billion fund
to compensate anyone who feels they
were unfairly prosecuted under Biden,
which, it seems, many January
6ers hope to take advantage of,
given that guy you just saw
apparently answered his phone
the day that fund was announced
with,
"Jake Lang's office,
America's newest billionaire."
But the truth is, rumors
of the fund had been circulating
long before
it was officially announced,
to the point that one January 6er
literally tried to use it
to cover up his tracks on a different,
truly horrendous crime.
Meet Andrew Paul Johnson,
charged with storming the Capitol,
pardoned by the president.
There you see him,
circled in the crowd.
He was arrested just six months later
for multiple child sexual abuse
charges in Florida.
And apparently, he tried to buy
the silence of one of his child victims
by claiming he stood to receive
10 million dollars
as restitution for being
a January 6er.
Holy shit. I don't know
if there is any clearer example
of "two wrongs don't make a right"
than trying to silence your child
victim with your treason money.
And look, if Trump's pardons were
only about releasing January 6ers
and funneling money to them,
that would be bad enough.
But it goes well beyond that.
"More than 50 of the pardons
and commutations he's made
in his second term are for fraud"
and "white-collar offenses
such as money laundering,
bank fraud, and wire fraud are among
the frequent crimes he's wiped clean."
It's ranged
from your Ponzi schemers,
to campaign finance violators,
to this man, Trevor Milton.
He was the founder of an electric
trucking company called Nikola,
which he apparently wanted
to name after Nikola Tesla,
but as "Tesla" was already taken,
he went with Nikola instead.
A name only marginally
more creative than Tesla2,
Teslaa with two As,
and Tesla Again But Different.
Anyway, Nikola's electric truck
looked pretty impressive,
here's a video that was posted
to the company's social media,
captioned, "Behold, the 1,000 HP,
0-emission Nikola semi-truck in motion."
The only problem was,
as the company later admitted,
the reason that truck
wasn't emitting anything
is that it had been
"towed to the top of a hill
and allowed to roll down",
making it the perfect truck
for anyone who's environmentally
conscious and needs to commute
to the bottom of a hill exactly once
and then never again.
Now, Milton wound up being convicted
of defrauding the company's investors
with what prosecutors said
were "his repeated lies"
and was facing
a four-year prison term.
He was appealing that when Trump
suddenly stepped in to pardon him.
And here is Milton
telling the moving story
of how Trump broke the news
to him over the phone.
He says, "Well, Trevor,
I've heard your story,
and what they did to you was evil
and disgusting,
was wrong on every level.
And I'm going to issue you
a full and unconditional pardon.
The highest pardon a president
can give a human
is a full and unconditional,
and I'm gonna issue you a pardon.
You don't deserve what you've been
through. I'm so sorry."
And he says, "You're clean.
You're cleaner than a baby's bottom."
Trevor, wait.
"Cleaner than a baby's bottom"?
First, that is not a phrase.
But also, if you're trying to talk up
someone's honesty and integrity,
maybe try and avoid comparing
them to something that is, famously,
literally full of shit.
And if you're wondering why Trump
gave Milton a pardon,
here's how he explained it
when asked.
What was your reasoning
for pardoning Trevor Milton?
Highly recommended by many people
that was taken advantage of.
They say the thing that he did wrong
was, he was one of the first people
that supported a gentleman
named Donald Trump for president.
He supported Trump.
He liked Trump.
I didn't know him,
but he liked him.
And they got him. I said that's unfair.
There are many people like that.
They support Trump,
and they went after them.
Okay, even by Trump's standards,
that was a mess.
First, he answered the question,
"What's your reasoning
for pardoning Trevor Milton?"
with, and I quote,
"Highly recommended by many people
that was taken advantage of."
That is simply not how the English
language works, but okay.
Then,
in the middle of another thought,
he switches from speaking
in the third person to the first,
like a "Survivor" contestant
in confessional
who's only eaten coconut water
for three weeks.
"Rizo's playing well,
Rizo's dominating,
I'm going to faint,
Rizo going down."
If you looked at a transcript
of what Trump just said on paper,
you'd assume it was ChatGP
trying to kill itself.
But it is notable that Milton
wasn't just a supporter of Trump,
he was also a heavy donor.
In fact, he and his wife made
contributions totaling over 1.8 million
to a Trump re-election campaign fund
just a few months before the pardon.
And if that helped swing it,
it was frankly money well-spent,
especially given that
in addition to prison,
Milton was also facing roughly 676
million in restitution costs.
And while, historically, presidential
pardons don't wipe those away,
and for very good reason,
in Milton's case, it did.
So, Milton's investors would now get
absolutely none of their money back,
prompting one reporter
to ask him a pretty obvious question.
If someone came out and said,
"I lost my life savings",
would you pay them back?
I wouldn't pay them back.
I would definitely be open to…
I've got a few big ventures
I'm working on right now.
I'd definitely be open to trying
to help those people in the future.
So, I'm not heartless.
As a matter of fact,
I feel for these people,
probably more than most.
What an answer! "You lost your life
savings on my company,
may I offer you another
amazing investment opportunity?"
I can't wait to see all
the big ventures he's working on!
Just think of all the new, cutting-edge
things he's gonna roll down a hill!
When it comes to getting out
of financial restitution to victims,
Milton is not a one-off.
Trump's second term pardons alone
have taken
an estimated 1.3 billion away
from victims and survivors of crime.
And some are considerably less
fun than fake truck shenanigans.
Take Joseph Schwartz,
the head of a nursing home empire
who was facing three years
in prison for, among other things,
orchestrating a 39 million payroll tax
scheme, to which he'd pled guilty.
But it wasn't just his employees
who suffered
from how Schwartz managed
his nursing homes,
it was the patients in them, too.
Betty McFadden's son was in
a Schwartz-run nursing home,
in Arkansas, after a stroke left
him unable to move.
Sanitary conditions were so poor
in 2017
that inspectors documented maggots
on her son's catheter.
The state later issued fines
for neglect.
Do you think the people
in the nursing home
just ignored what was
blatantly negligent care?
Yes, I do.
Yeah, so do I.
And yet, despite all of that,
Schwartz received
a full pardon from Trump.
And while I cannot say for sure why,
I'm guessing it didn't hurt
that he'd paid "nearly a million
dollars to right-wing operatives
who claimed to have worked
with Laura Loomer"
and another 100,000 or more
to a lobbyist who had a different
set of connections to Trump.
One of the arguments Schwartz's
supporters made for his pardon
was that he had paid his full
5 million in federal restitution.
Which makes it pretty frustrating
to learn that, as part of his pardon,
he was actually refunded
that 5 million dollars.
And the only way
I'd be okay with that
is if the refund had come in the form
of 5 million worth of fucking maggots.
Now, obviously,
that image is an estimate.
I don't know what 5 million
dollars of maggots looks like.
I'm not Joseph Schwartz.
The point is, in Trump's second term,
it sure feels like, to the extent
there is any rhyme or reason
in how people get pardons,
it has little to do with
any of the established criteria.
In fact, only 10 of the people
granted them since last year
had even filed petitions to
the Office of the Pardon Attorney,
and "even within that small group,
some did not appear to meet
the Justice Department's
standards and requirements."
Instead, we now seem to have
a system where things
like media coverage, money and
appeals to Trump's vanity are key.
In fact, he'll often tie
his justification for pardons
to what he sees as his own
railroading by prosecutors,
to the point that, according
to administration officials,
the magic words to get him
to help with a pardon
are "unjust persecution".
Take what happened with
the former president of Honduras,
Juan Orlando Hernández, who
was pardoned after Roger Stone,
famous hat salesman,
advocated on his behalf,
and after Hernández's wife
appeared on Matt Gaetz's show
to claim that, just like Trump,
"My husband is a victim of
the DOJ's Biden lawfare agenda."
Which is a pretty big stretch, given
what her husband was convicted of.
Hernández was convicted in 2024
of what prosecutors called
one of the biggest and most violent
narcotrafficking conspiracies
in the world,
protecting drug routes
in exchange for millions.
In total, prosecutors said,
he helped flood the U.S.
with more
than 400 tons of cocaine.
He allegedly even boasted
they were going to stuff
cocaine up the gringos' noses.
Yeah, pretty bad! The violent drug
conspiracy part, that is,
not
the "stuff cocaine up gringos' noses."
If anything, that's just
helpful customer service.
That's at-home installation
and troubleshooting.
It's essentially Geek Squad
but for cocaine.
If you're thinking, "Wait. Hold on.
Wasn't 'stopping the flow of drugs
across the southern border'
Trump's whole deal?
Isn't that why we recently kidnapped
a different country's leader,
and why we're blowing up
boats off Venezuela on a regular basis?
In fact,
wasn't 'they're bringing drugs'
one of the first things Trump burped
into our collective brains a decade ago
after descending
from hell's mezzanine?"
Yeah! It very much was!
And if the world had any justice,
his shoelaces would have gotten
stuck right then and there,
and today,
instead of intuitively associating Trump
with America imploding,
we'd just associate him
with the need
to be really careful at the mall.
Look up from your phone
there, Alyssa.
You don't want to get Trump'd
outside an American Eagle.
Learn from history.
But maybe the best way to understand
just how fully the brakes have come off
is to look at what happened with
the crypto trading platform Binance.
In 2023, the company and its CEO,
Changpeng Zhao, who goes by "CZ",
pled guilty to violating
anti-money laundering laws.
DOJ said Zhao had caused "significant
harm to U.S. national security"
by "allowing sanctioned
Iranian crypto exchanges,
Russian drug traffickers, Hamas
militants, and other criminal groups
to move billions of dollars
through the exchange."
And it was a pretty slam dunk case,
with among other things,
internal communications
from employees,
including its chief compliance
officer texting a coworker,
"Like come on.
They are here for crime",
to which the colleague replied,
"We see the bad,
but we close two eyes."
Which is both
a flagrant admission of guilt
and also, a frankly gorgeous way
to describe playing peekaboo.
Binance's plea agreements constituted
the largest settlements in history,
and the company paid more
than 4 billion dollars in fines.
And yet,
seemingly out of nowhere,
Trump gave Zhao a full pardon.
And when asked about that just a few
days later, his answer wasn't great.
He pled guilty in 2023 to violating
anti-money laundering laws.
The government at the time said that
CZ had caused
"significant harm
to U.S. national security",
essentially by allowing terrorist
groups like Hamas
to move millions of dollars around.
Why did you pardon him?
Okay. Are you ready?
I don't know who he is.
I know he got a four-month
sentence or something like that.
And I heard
it was a Biden witch hunt.
There it is.
There it is, right there.
Trump's classic move of claiming
he doesn't know someone
after it turns out his association
with them might be a problem.
He literally says,
"Are you ready?" there
as if to prepare everyone
for the incoming bullshit.
"Okay, buckle the fuck up, everyone,
because even by my standards,
this lie is about to be
an absolute doozy!"
But Zhao's pardon
may not just have been down
to the "Biden witch hunt" factor.
Because it turns out, just
months before it came through,
Binance had done a crypto deal that
benefited the Trump family massively.
Very basically, a UAE investment
fund bought a stake in Binance,
and to do that, they used 2 billion
worth of the crypto coin
associated with the Trump family's
World Liberty Financial.
That meant 2 billion dollars
was now parked indefinitely
with the company,
off of which the Trumps
could then earn interest.
And while Binance will insist
that there was no quid pro quo
and that it didn't choose
the crypto coin in question,
what it can still very much do is
determine exactly how long
World Liberty continues earning
interest on that 2 billion,
which is pretty meaningful,
given even a 4% yield
would generate 80 million annually,
of which the Trump family would be
entitled to around 30 million a year.
Which is a lot of money.
I mean, 30 million!
That's a million signed Italian
felony hats! That's ricchezza!
And it's not just me that thinks
that Zhao's pardon looks bad.
Even Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of
Palantir, and a big Trump supporter,
tweeted, "Trump has been
terribly advised on this,
it makes it look like massive fraud
is happening around him in this area."
And I do not love being on
the same side as that guy!
It makes me
second-guess everything now.
Imagine if Tucker Carlson announced
that "The Comeback"
is his favorite show of all time.
I think I'd kill myself!
So, what do we do? Well, legally,
there is not much that we can do.
Especially given the Supreme Court's
found that a president can't be
prosecuted for official acts,
which giving out
pardons unquestionably is.
And while some critics have suggested
reining in the president's pardon power,
I would want to tread
very carefully there.
Because historically,
the harm of sketchy pardons
has generally been offset by clemency
coming for many more
who actually deserved it.
The problem is that right now it feels
that that ratio's been reversed,
and that outside of a few exceptions,
it's basically just the scumbags
and fraudsters with connections
to Trump who get pardons.
As one lawyer put it,
"If you're just an average citizen,
you can't even get in the line.
I told my guy he'd probably be
better off if he broke into the Capitol
or made a major donation
to Trump's inauguration."
Which is pretty bleak, isn't it?
Especially given just how much Trump
loves to rail about how tough he is
when it comes to law and order.
But that toughness
is clearly deeply selective,
'cause he'll happily
put violent people and fraudsters
right back on the streets
to victimize people again,
just because they support him.
And that's frankly not likely
to stop any time soon.
In fact, he's reportedly "promised his
top administration officials pardons
before he leaves office,"
effectively meaning
that they can get away
with any federal crimes
that they may commit
during his second term.
Which, among other things,
means RFK Jr. is about to enter
the illegal wildlife trade in ways
that we have never seen before.
The hypocrisy here
is just so flagrant.
Just last week, administration
officials triumphantly announced
indictments as part of their ongoing
crackdown on healthcare fraud.
But as reporters quickly pointed out,
some of those fraud cases
seemed strikingly similar to those
for which Trump has granted clemency,
when people
had connections to him.
And when one reporter pointed that
out during the DOJ's press conference,
the answer that he got
was pretty revealing.
President Trump has granted
clemency to numerous individuals
who have stolen hundreds of
millions of dollars in Medicaid funds.
Can we expect Aimee Bock
or any of these folks
to be shown the same mercy
in the future?
I'll take a different question
as the final question.
I mean, that is not even
an attempt to explain, is it?
And if someone is dodging
a question that hard,
it means the answer is truly bad.
If you asked your girlfriend,
"Will you marry me?"
and she says,
"I'll take a different question",
go ahead and download Hinge,
'cause whatever the real answer is
does not bode well for you.
And look, while that answer
is clearly laughable,
the underlying message
is pretty dark.
I know it is not news that America
has a two-tiered justice system,
but this is taking it
to an absurd extreme.
The way we're going right now,
we may well end up at a point
where we don't so much have
a system of laws,
as much as we just have a guy.
And if you're on that guy's team,
you basically get to commit crimes.
But that's just not the social
contract any of us signed up for.
All of this is a very,
very slippery slope.
And the problem is,
much like a Nikola truck,
once we start going down that slope,
it could be very hard to come back.
And now, this.
And Now: People Calling In
To C-SPAN on Their Birthday.
Don is next, Bert, Virginia,
Democrats line, good morning.
- Good morning, it's my birthday.
- Well, happy birthday.
Elroy, Wisconsin, independent
caller for Eamon Javers. Hey, Harold.
- Good morning, gentlemen.
- Good morning, sir.
Yes, it's my birthday today.
I'm 84 years old.
- Happy birthday.
- Thank you very much.
I am a senior citizen. Today is
my birthday, and I'm 80 years old.
- Happy birthday.
- Thank you.
By the way, today is my birthday,
and I'm glad to be on this earth.
Happy birthday. How old are
you, Vivian? Do you mind me asking?
- 72 years old.
- Happy 72nd birthday.
I came into this world
86 years ago today.
- Happy birthday, Bob.
- Well, thank you.
I feel good about that.
I'm still kicking.
Greta, so, if you didn't know,
I just turned 90.
- Happy birthday.
- Oh, thanks.
Tomorrow's my birthday.
I had two vaccines and the booster,
and I'm sick right now.
And so, goodbye.
How old are you going
to be tomorrow, Jane?
- 76. No-oh, God. 75.
- Happy 75th birthday, Jane.
Hello, good morning,
how you doing today?
- Good morning.
- It's my birthday.
I've been trying to get in for months
and months, I finally got in.
- Happy birthday.
- Thank you.
First of all, I want to say,
today is my birthday
and I listen to C-SPAN
every day that I'm off.
Good morning, Steve.
I cannot tell you how excited I am
to see you back on the air.
It is my birthday
and I can't tell you,
this is the best birthday gift
I have ever received.
- Well, happy birthday.
- Wonderful to see you back.
Very excited.
Good morning, Greta.
Well, today is my birthday, and…
- Happy birthday.
- Thank you.
And prior to the explosion
of the Challenger,
there was never anything
memorable about my birthday,
but since then people remember it.
Moving on.
Before we go, a quick word
about movie posters:
helping boys in college make bad
decorating decisions from the jump.
"Hello, my personality is 'Scarface,'
welcome to my hole."
The best posters find a way to sum up
a film in a single image,
whether it's Uma Thurman doing
some armed bedtime reading,
or Jodie Foster with a death moth
on her face, or "Ghost",
which conveys in an instant that
it's a sexy supernatural romance.
But I'm going to show you another
poster for that same movie
that went in a slightly
different direction.
This obviously looks nothing like
the actual poster for "Ghost".
None of this happens in "Ghost".
You have Patrick Swayze here,
Demi Moore kind of screaming
in agony,
and Whoopi Goldberg's head bursting
through Demi Moore's body.
Again, none of that happens
in the movie.
That is excellent.
Especially her clarifying,
"None of that happens in the movie."
Girl, we know!
Even if all you know about "Ghost"
is pottery that fucks,
you're probably aware
that Whoopi Goldberg
does not "here's Johnny" her way
out of Demi Moore's uterus.
That poster is just one example
in the incredible world
of Ghanaian movie posters.
It turns out, artists there
have been making their own
hand-painted posters for decades now,
from this amazing one
for "Jurassic Park",
featuring a golfer for some reason,
to this one for
"The Spy Who Loved Me"
that's unexpectedly fish-forward,
to this one for "Hard Boiled",
which features Chow Yun Fat
shooting some bad guys so hard
one of their heads comes off.
And there's an interesting
explanation for this tradition.
Back in the 1980s,
the widespread introduction of
foreign videocassettes into Ghana
led to the creation of a "mobile
cinema" phenomenon,
basically, local entrepreneurs
bought TV monitors, VCRs,
and portable gas-powered generators,
then traveled around setting up
makeshift screening areas in villages
with limited or no electricity.
But they hit a roadblock
when it came to advertising.
Because at that time, Ghana
was under a military dictatorship,
whose laws had cut off
the importation
of the large-scale offset printing
presses you'd use to make posters.
So, instead, local artists were
commissioned to make their own,
often using repurposed
flour sacks as a canvas.
And as this artist explains, they had
a lot of freedom to improvise.
In those days, there were posters
that would come with the movies,
but we'd decide what to paint
by watching the movies ourselves
and selecting the scenes
that we wanted to see.
Western action films were mainstays,
as those from China and Bollywood.
Many posters include paranormal
elements and gratuitous violence,
even if the films had none.
I love that idea.
Giving someone the freedom
to make movies seem more interesting
than they might otherwise be?
Because it has led to some truly
unique representations.
For instance,
this poster for "Predator"
has Predator holding a naked
woman in the background,
which does not happen
in the movie.
And this one for "Hellraiser III"
has Pinhead eating a person whole,
which wasn't in the movie,
but frankly should have been.
Although, as this cultural
anthropologist explains,
that approach
had both pros and cons.
Sometimes, you have things
depicted on the posters
that will arouse your interest
because you think
that you are going to see those
depictions in those movies.
It created tensions
where you have certain folks
demanding their money back because
they've been deceived, right?
Yeah, that makes sense,
doesn't it?
If you buy a ticket
to "The Spy Who Loved Me"
thinking you're going to see
the big red fish
and he hasn't shown up
an hour into the movie,
you're going to start whispering
to your date,
"I'm so sorry. I know you wanted
to see the big red fish.
I'm so sorry about this."
And if your date happens
to be a big red fish,
you'd also have to say,
"I know there aren't a lot of good
representations of big red fish,
and you wanted to see yourself
and your struggles on the screen.
Again, I am really
so sorry about this."
But he is not kidding there.
One Ghanaian artist said,
for a Chinese movie he assumed
was a martial-arts film,
he painted actor Jet Li
delivering a beatdown.
But neither Jet Li nor
fighting was in the film.
And "when angry customers
began demanding their money back,
he sneaked out."
And while all of this
was born out of commerce,
it was truly an art form,
"many of the artists
were well-trained
and did three-to-four-year
apprenticeships."
But after the dictatorship fell,
and Ghanaians gained access to cheap
printing techniques and home TV sets,
the demand
for these artists' services declined.
Unfortunately, many were
unable to make a living as artists,
and had to go back
to doing ordinary jobs.
After attracting international
attention over the last decade,
Ghanaian artists,
partnering with this gallery,
have been getting commissioned to
make posters for collectors and fans.
Some have even specialized
in taking non-action movies
and amping up the violence.
Like in this one from
"Ferris Bueller's Day Off",
where everyone has guns
and Jennifer Gray is slitting Cameron's
throat because she has had enough,
or this one for "The Wizard of Oz"
where every supporting character
is a vampire, the Tin Man
doesn't have a heart
but does have a bleeding human
arm that he appears to have cut off
with his own axe, and Toto is
the only one reacting appropriately.
Meanwhile, action movies
can get amped up even further,
like in this poster for "Star Wars",
featuring a car crash,
multiple exploding torsos,
an ant attack,
and Yoda going absolutely feral,
all of which are enough
to distract you from the fact that
there's a werewolf on the poster!
But the more you study
these posters,
the more you start to see
some patterns.
Snakes, for instance,
are a constant motif,
showing up in unexpected places,
like in this poster for
"Cool Runnings." Snake!
Or this one for "The Matrix".
Snakes! And more snakes!
Or this one for "Willy Wonka
and the Chocolate Factory",
with snakes launching themselves out
of a demonic Violet Beauregarde.
Other posters shoehorn in characters
that don't appear in the film,
like this version of "Magic Mike"
featuring "Macho Man" Randy Savage,
or this version of "Flubber"
featuring Alvin and the Chipmunks,
where not only are they at the beach,
but also "Flubber" has two guns.
Or this portrayal of the shark
from "Jaws" with rippling abs,
and also Chuck Norris.
These artists are incredible!
And just think of the talent it takes
to be presented with a movie
like, say, "Paddington," a movie
where, famously, an orphaned bear
goes to London, and is taken
in by a kindly family,
but then have the imagination
to say, "Okay, I think I got it.
So, for a poster, you probably
want something like this, then."
That is an absolute masterpiece!
And I am genuinely glad these posters
are becoming popular again,
especially because, as that
anthropologist points out,
it is helping keep a tradition alive.
We need to have a way of motivating,
you know, upcoming artists
to be rooted in this tradition.
To preserve this way of painting,
we need to have a way
of, you know, motivating
these artists, you know, to grow.
Yeah, he's right.
Artists need support.
Even Da Vinci had wealthy patrons,
although to be fair,
if he'd been regularly cranking out
gold like this "Face/Off" poster,
he might have had a lot more.
If I'm a Medici,
I'm throwing all my florins at that.
While we can mourn the loss of
the original purpose of these posters
which, remember, was to lure
unsuspecting Ghanaians to see movies
by misrepresenting the number
of decapitations in "Space Jam",
it is nice to know these artists
are finding a new market
among international collectors.
Because you can still get
some great custom work done.
And the reason I know that is…
We actually reached out to that gallery
to commission a poster for this show.
And I'll tell you why: each year,
during Emmy voting season,
HBO launches a campaign
on behalf of its shows,
with tasteful ads like these.
They even rent out billboards
in L.A. for the ads.
And while they're always
done in a restrained, classy style,
it's never really felt like it spoke
to the chaos we like to think
we stand for here.
So, we commissioned
a Ghanaian poster artist
to make something different
for us this year.
We sent them a few images
from the last year of our show,
including me trying to force my way
onto a soap opera,
my wife Wanda Jo
helping me open a med spa,
and our Moon Mammoth mascot.
But we didn't tell them much else
about what this show actually was.
And would you like to see
what they came up with?
Good. Please, come with me.
Because all we asked them to do
was to use their imagination,
include at least one character
who is not a part of this show,
and to use as many of their
regular tactics as they wanted to.
So, may I present to you,
from Ghanaian artist C.A. Wisely,
a poster that I think truly represents
what this show is about.
Behold!
Look at this masterpiece!
It has everything that you want,
it's got me holding a gun,
and also a second gun.
It's got our wooden cabbage man
statue from our AI slop story.
It's got me drinking wine
with a horse, who by the way,
seems to have
an elegant human hand.
It's got a chainsaw cutting through
tentacles, blood, snakes,
an explosion, and also,
the fucking Fonz is there!
And he's holding a pickaxe
for no clear reason, other than,
I'm guessing, to defend himself from
everything happening around him.
I love this painting so much.
I think we can all agree,
it is an ad for a much more
entertaining show
than the one you just watched.
Now, we have shown this to HBO,
and they've agreed to put it
on their digital billboard over
Sunset Boulevard next month,
from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM only.
Which is the funniest possible time
for it to be up there.
But this poster
can also be in your home,
because we are selling high-quality
prints of it for 50 dollars,
with all proceeds going
to Ghanian artists and community led
charities across Ghana.
You can frame this poster and put
it up on any wall of your house,
and you can find it at
Hang-John-Oliver-dot-com,
a URL I'm honestly a little
surprised was still available.
That is our show, thank you
so much for watching.
We'll see you next week,
good night!
It's beautiful. It's just beautiful.