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00:30Welcome, welcome, welcome to Last Week Tonight.
00:33I'm John Oliver, thank you so much for joining us.
00:35It has been a busy week. Chile got a new far-right president,
00:38and Trump endorses Jake Paul, even though he's not running for office.
00:43But we're gonna start with Iran.
00:44It's been two weeks since we launched strikes there,
00:46and it's still unclear how long this is gonna continue.
00:48On Monday, Trump claimed the war was very complete,
00:51before adding pretty much.
00:53And that qualifier turned out to be important.
00:56Mr. President, you've said the war is, quote, very complete,
00:59but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning,
01:02so which is it, and how long should Americans be prepared
01:05for this war to last four?
01:06The beginning, it's the beginning of building a new country.
01:09We could call it a tremendous success right now,
01:12as we leave here, I could call it, or we could go further,
01:15and we're gonna go further.
01:17That's not a great response there.
01:19That non-committal floundering makes him sound less like
01:22a president laying out a strategy, more like what happens
01:24when you ask your situationship if you should put him down
01:26as your plus one to a wedding in six months.
01:28I don't know, we could go further.
01:31I could call it, but we're gonna go further, right?
01:35At every point, the president seemed utterly disconnected
01:38from the stakes of this war, right down to greeting
01:41the remains of fallen American troops
01:42while wearing his most formal baseball cap.
01:45He's also been conveniently confused
01:47about civilian casualties.
01:49Take the horrifying strike on an elementary school
01:51that killed at least 175 people, most of them children.
01:54Observers quickly came to believe that the US was responsible,
01:57including, it now seems, our own military.
02:00Yet, Trump's repeatedly played dumb
02:02whenever asked about it.
02:03A tomahawk missile likely destroyed that Iranian girl's school.
02:09So, will the Americans, will the US accept any responsibility
02:12for that strike?
02:12Well, I haven't seen it.
02:13And I will say that the tomahawk,
02:16which is one of the most powerful weapons around,
02:18is used by, you know, is sold and used by other countries.
02:22You know that.
02:23And whether it's Iran, who also has some tomahawks,
02:27they wish they had more.
02:29But, uh, whether it's Iran or somebody else,
02:31the fact that a tomahawk, a tomahawk, is very generic.
02:34You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands
02:36on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school
02:39on the first day of the war.
02:40But you're the only person in your government saying this.
02:42Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that
02:44when he was asked, standing over your shoulder
02:46on your plane on Saturday.
02:47Why are you the only person saying this?
02:49Because I just don't know enough about it.
02:51Yeah.
02:52That makes sense, doesn't it?
02:53What's he really supposed to do?
02:55Ask the people who work for him?
02:57Listen to the daily briefings he gets?
02:59Of course not.
02:59It is hard to say whether Trump is being actively deceptive
03:03there or just playing dumb.
03:04In his words, I think you could say both.
03:07Meanwhile, the conflict continues to spread
03:09throughout the region, with Israel now bombing Lebanon,
03:11killing nearly 800 so far and displacing over 800,000.
03:14And Iran's effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz,
03:17through which about 20% of the world's oil use
03:19usually transit.
03:20At least 16 ships have been attacked there
03:22since the war began, sending oil prices soaring.
03:25Now, polls have consistently shown the majority of America
03:28is against this conflict.
03:30And that may be why the White House is selling it hard,
03:33tweeting multiple gross video showing footage
03:35of bombs exploding, intercut with things like baseball
03:38players hitting a ball, captioned,
03:39pure American dominance, and football hits
03:42in a post confusingly titled, Touchdown.
03:45And if you think, well, that is all in terrible taste,
03:48but at least they didn't set missile strikes
03:50to nearly here comes the boom.
03:52I have some terrible news for you.
03:55There comes stuff.
03:57Here comes stuff.
03:59You know, here comes stuff.
03:59You know, here comes stuff.
04:00You know, here comes stuff.
04:00Y'all don't really worry la-la-la, yeah-la.
04:02Yeah.
04:02So cool, bro.
04:05I always wanted a government that made war propaganda
04:08like eighth grade boys making a lacrosse team hype video.
04:11And look, with this White House, that's kind of to be expected.
04:15What's surprising is Iran's been trolling in return.
04:18State-aligned media there even shared an AI Lego video
04:21that opened with a scene making it clear
04:23they think Trump started this war as a distraction.
04:37Look, I think I get Iran's point there.
04:40This war is just a smokescreen to distract from Trump's friendship
04:43with notorious sex criminal Ulrich Epstein.
04:47And by the way, who is it with Epstein in the corner there?
04:50Is that Dick Van Dyke? Dick, no, not you!
04:54That video also features the straight-off halboos being closed
04:58and businessmen crying about oil prices spiking,
05:01as well as a Lego depiction of the aftermath of the school bombing,
05:05which is surreal. It is odd for a human rights atrocity
05:09to be rendered in Lego.
05:10But I guess that's where we are with this conflict,
05:13especially given the White House continues
05:15to churn out shitposts like this one.
05:28Here comes the heat from the USA!
05:31Pins down! What a strike!
05:34And the White House...
05:36...we do you think you are?
05:45Okay, look, this isn't the point.
05:47The point should be that everyone in this White House
05:48clearly needs parental controls on screen time.
05:51But...
05:52But also, you send a ball right down the middle like that,
05:55you're gonna get a split.
05:56You...
05:57You've got to come in at a slight angle,
05:58otherwise there's no way you're going ten for ten.
06:00Again, I don't do much bowling myself, too whimsical.
06:02I'm more of a frown-and-play chess man.
06:04But even I know...
06:05...that's not a ball that's gonna give you what you want.
06:08Now, one reason the White House might be doing all this
06:11is to distract from negative press coverage.
06:13CNN, for instance, published this article
06:15about the failure to plan for the closure
06:16of the Strait of Hormuz.
06:18And on Friday morning, Pete Hegseth addressed that directly.
06:22From CNN.
06:24Reports that the Trump administration
06:26underestimated the Iran war's impact
06:28on the Strait of Hormuz.
06:30Patently ridiculous, of course.
06:32For decades, Iran has threatened shipping
06:34in the Strait of Hormuz.
06:36This is always what they do.
06:38Hold the Strait hostage.
06:40CNN doesn't think we thought of that.
06:43It's a fundamentally unserious report.
06:46The sooner David Ellison takes over that network,
06:50the better.
06:51Wow! That is not good.
06:54I can't wait until the billionaire sympathetic
06:56to this administration takes over the news.
06:58Isn't it like your mom saying,
07:00when you were conceived,
07:01your dad came harder than ever before.
07:03He jizzed like a geyser.
07:05Even if you thought that was the case,
07:08your ability to make it through the day
07:10really depends on never hearing those words.
07:14But that wasn't all.
07:16Unhappy of the coverage this war has gotten,
07:18Hegseth decided to offer the press some helpful tips.
07:21Allow me to make a few suggestions.
07:24People look up at the TV and they see banners,
07:27they see headlines.
07:28Mid-East war intensifies,
07:30splashing on the screen the last couple of days,
07:33alongside visuals of civilian or energy targets
07:36that Iran has hit,
07:37because that's what they do.
07:39What should the banner read instead?
07:42How about Iran increasingly desperate?
07:45Another example of a fake headline
07:47that I saw yesterday.
07:49War widening.
07:51Here's a real headline for you
07:53for an actual patriotic press.
07:55How about Iran shrinking, going underground?
07:59OK, so even if his version of events were true there,
08:02which it's not, that is a terrible headline.
08:05Iran shrinking, going underground?
08:08What does that even mean?
08:10A headline's supposed to give you a clear idea
08:12of a story in a few words.
08:13That makes it seem like Iran is literally getting smaller
08:16and sinking like some kind of Middle Eastern Atlantis.
08:20And look, I get why Hegseth is trying to force feed headlines
08:23to the press and why the White House is pumping out
08:25fun bowling animations.
08:26Though I will point out, in bowling,
08:28no matter how many times you knock those pins down,
08:30they do return to their original positions,
08:33which feels pretty on the nose here.
08:35Look, clearly, no one behind this war
08:38wants to deal with how complicated it's turned out to be.
08:40Trump is saying that it'll be over
08:42when I feel it in my bones,
08:44whatever the fuck that means.
08:47And that's a pretty thoughtless way to approach a conflict
08:51that's already killed so many.
08:52It's not just disrespectful to the Iranian people
08:54and to US service members affected.
08:56It's disrespectful to the rest of us
08:58to assume childish memes and sugarcoated headlines
09:01will change what we can all see with our own eyes.
09:04Because at this point, we don't deserve deflections.
09:07We deserve explanations, accountability,
09:09and if it is not too much trouble,
09:11the full release of the Ulrey Epstein files.
09:15And now, this.
09:18And now, Jim Cramer went to Harvard.
09:22When I was doing my senior thesis at Harvard
09:24to use some mindless name dropping,
09:25then I consider myself an average American
09:27who took three years of economics at Harvard.
09:29I'm a proud supporter of Harvard.
09:32For law school, I went to Harvard.
09:33It's been a long time since I studied antitrust at Harvard Law,
09:35and I was the greatest antitrust scholar of all time.
09:37When I got to Harvard, we had every single Nobel.
09:40I took three years of economics at Harvard.
09:42That's why I went to Harvard and Harvard Law,
09:44to get stupid!
09:46Now, I didn't go to Harvard Law School for nothing.
09:49I actually did well at Harvard.
09:50I mean, look, I went to Harvard.
09:51I mean, I went to Harvard.
09:52I took seven courses on communism at Harvard.
09:54Here's something I learned when I went to economics at Harvard.
09:57Class at Harvard took that stupid corporate law course at Harvard
10:00and got an A in it.
10:01I actually had the highest grade on my generals,
10:03my major at Harvard.
10:04You know, when I was at Harvard,
10:06hey, hey, he dropped out.
10:06I had to mention Harvard, because I'm a jerk.
10:12Moving on.
10:13A main story tonight concerns J.D. Vance.
10:16Sworn in at just 40 years old,
10:18he's our first millennial vice president.
10:20So we can confidently say he's the first VP
10:22to have definitely jacked it to Space Jam.
10:26I know to some, Vance might appear to be just another abrasive
10:29MAGA arsehole with a load-bearing beard.
10:31But to many on the right, he's a towering intellect.
10:34The president of the Heritage Foundation said Vance is going to be
10:37one of the leaders, if not the leader, of our movement.
10:39And Tucker Carlson once called him the smartest and deepest senator
10:42he's ever met.
10:43Which is kind of like Ryan Lochte calling Cookie Monster
10:46his go-to guy for investment advice.
10:49I don't trust any of the individuals involved
10:52to be reliable judges of any of the subjects involved.
10:55And his rise to become Trump's right-hand man is especially striking,
10:58given as recently as 2016, he was casting himself
11:01as a never-Trump Republican, saying he might write in his dog
11:04for president, or if Trump had a really good chance of winning,
11:08hold his nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.
11:09Privately, he even mused that Trump could become America's Hitler.
11:13And yet, just a few years later, he was campaigning for Senate
11:17alongside Trump, and adopting a very different tone,
11:21something that did not go unnoticed.
11:23You know what? He's a guy that said some bad shit about me.
11:28Come on up, JD.
11:29The president is right. I wasn't always nice,
11:32but the simple fact is, he's the best president of my lifetime,
11:36and he revealed the corruption in this country like nobody else.
11:40I mean, I guess that is true.
11:43Donald Trump definitely revealed corruption in this country
11:46like nobody else, in the same way no one taught us more
11:49about what a Ponzi scheme is than Bernie Madoff.
11:52It's true, just not in the way I think you're implying.
11:56And Vance has turned out to be perfect for Trump,
11:59as in many ways he's become like a son Trump doesn't even
12:02have to pretend to love.
12:03And as VP, he has served dutifully,
12:06often receding into the background, but willing to be
12:09an attack dog when needed, like when he demanded Zelensky
12:11say thank you to Trump in the Oval Office.
12:14He's also relentlessly defended his boss's moves,
12:17even when they directly contradict his prior beliefs,
12:20like his anti-interventionist approach to foreign policy.
12:22When people criticized last year's US strikes
12:25in the waters of Venezuela, calling them a war crime,
12:28he replied on Twitter,
12:29I don't give a shit what you call it.
12:31And when Trump decided to first strike Iran last year,
12:34Vance defended him and didn't even try
12:36to come up with a good rationalization.
12:38I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted
12:42after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East.
12:46I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then,
12:50we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows
12:53how to accomplish America's national security objectives.
12:56Yeah, it wasn't okay before because the presidents were stupid heads
13:00who ate dumb for breakfast, but now we have a big, strong real estate developer
13:04and state salesman to give us the national security expertise
13:07we so badly need, so it's completely fine.
13:09And look, obviously, some of that's just part of being vice president.
13:14You have to roll over for your boss, but it's worth remembering,
13:17Vance has an inside track to the Oval Office in the future,
13:20not only because polls show him leading the Republican field for 2028,
13:24but also because if this guy doesn't make it through his term either,
13:27because the 25th Amendment got invoked,
13:29or his internal organs decided,
13:31you know what, dude, you can't keep doing this to us, we're out,
13:35J.D. Vance will become president.
13:37So before things reach that point, it feels like tonight,
13:40it may be worth looking at J.D. Vance, what he stands for,
13:43and who he might be without Donald Trump.
13:46And I'll skip over his early life, because it's been well chronicled
13:49in his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy,
13:51voted 2016's number one Christmas gift by,
13:54oh, fuck, Emergency Airport Purchases magazine.
13:57If you haven't read it, long story short,
13:59he was raised in Ohio by a mother who battled an opioid addiction
14:02and his loudmouth grandmother before a stint in the military in Iraq
14:05and attending Yale Law School.
14:07If you want to know more, you can read the book,
14:09or just watch the movie adaptation featuring this scene,
14:12where his grandmother catches Vance smoking weed
14:14and decides to raise him herself.
14:16Oh, I don't give a rat fart what you're smoking, kid.
14:20If you think you're hiding it, honey, you're dumb as a bag of hair.
14:24Pack up.
14:24For what?
14:25What are you doing?
14:27I'm taking him.
14:29Oh, where?
14:30To live with me.
14:31And if you've got a problem with that,
14:33you can talk to the barrel of my gun.
14:35Listen, listen, listen.
14:38This is a pro-Glen Close show.
14:42Always has been, always will be.
14:43That being said, no.
14:45I do not like what I'm seeing there.
14:48The only good thing, and I mean the only good thing,
14:50that came out of that film is the fact that when Glenn Close
14:53was nominated for Best Supporting Actress
14:54and attended the Academy Awards,
14:56she was approached by Lil Rel for a music trivia game,
14:59and this happened.
15:00You're not a do-de-butt.
15:01Quisterna.
15:03Come on, let's see it. Let me see a do-de-butt.
15:04Come on, let's see it.
15:11Yeah, that was eight-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close
15:14doing de-butt on camera.
15:16So, Hillbilly Elegy was a terrible film,
15:19but let's not say it didn't give us anything.
15:21Anyway, Vance's book hit stores during Trump's first run
15:24for the White House, making him a hot commodity
15:26for news shows looking for someone to explain
15:28the grievances of the white working class.
15:30And at the time, he struck what seemed
15:32to be a fairly moderate tone.
15:34I think that this election is really having a negative effect,
15:38especially on the white working class, right?
15:40Because I think a lot of these grievances are legitimate,
15:42but what it's doing is it's giving people an excuse
15:45to point the finger at someone else.
15:47It's point the finger at Mexican immigrants,
15:48or Chinese trade, or the Democratic elites,
15:51or whatever else, and sometimes these villains are legitimate.
15:55I think it's totally fair to say that the policy elites
15:58of the Democratic Party haven't been totally concerned
16:00about the white working class.
16:02But at the same time, fundamentally, what's going on
16:05and what Donald Trump has done is change the focus
16:08of the white working class from a sort of engaged
16:11and constructive politics to a politics of pointing the finger.
16:13So watching that now feels weird for a number of reasons.
16:18First, I never thought I'd long for J.D. Vance's beard,
16:21but it turns out the thing none of us needed from him
16:24was more face.
16:26Without a beard, he looks like Radio Shack's
16:28assistant store manager of the year in 1998.
16:31He looks like he played Cartman in a live-action South Park movie.
16:35But also, it is strange to see such a nuanced tone
16:38from a guy who's since become such a troll.
16:41It would be like finding old videos of your dog
16:44eating with a fork and a knife.
16:45What the fuck?
16:47Yesterday, I watched you take a shit
16:49and then eat it mouth first.
16:51How on earth did we get from this to that?
16:55And while that may sound like a fairly even-handed critique,
16:59since then, Vance has clearly picked a side
17:01between blaming the elites of the Democratic Party
17:04and finger-pointing Republicans.
17:06And some of that may have to do with his mentor, Peter Thiel,
17:09the co-founder of Paypal and Palantir,
17:11and a man who looks like he got stuck
17:13trying to animorph between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
17:18Vance has said of Thiel that if there's something
17:20interesting going on, and I want to bounce ideas
17:22off of a very fascinating and knowledgeable person,
17:25I'll give him a call.
17:26Which is worrying, given Thiel holds some troubling views.
17:30In 2009, he wrote that he no longer believed
17:32that freedom and democracy were compatible,
17:33and more recently called the quest for diversity,
17:36very evil, as well as giving multiple lectures
17:38around the idea that critics of technology or AI
17:41are legionnaires of the antichrist.
17:44Thiel is a huge influence on Vance,
17:47who's attributed pretty much his entire career
17:49to Thiel's mentorship.
17:51They met when Thiel spoke at Yale,
17:53when Vance was a student, and Thiel later wound up hiring him
17:56and eventually investing in his venture capital firm.
17:58He then backed Vance's 2022 Senate campaign,
18:01with, at that point, the largest amount given
18:03to a single candidate in congressional history.
18:06That campaign, by the way, gave us this political ad
18:09with a truly iconic opening line,
18:12written by Vance himself,
18:14that somehow gets worse from there.
18:16Are you a racist?
18:18Do you hate Mexicans?
18:20The media calls us racist for wanting to build Trump's wall.
18:23They censor us, but it doesn't change the truth.
18:26Joe Biden's open border is killing Ohioans.
18:29With more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters
18:31pouring into this country.
18:33This issue is personal.
18:34I nearly lost my mother to the poison
18:36coming across our border.
18:38No child should grow up an orphan.
18:40I'm J.D. Vance, and I approve this message,
18:42because whatever they call us, we will put America first.
18:46That whole ad has a terrible vibe,
18:49and I don't think anything could fix it.
18:51Not even the fact that you could sing the beginning
18:52to the opening of Bohemian Rhapsody,
18:54and it scans perfectly.
18:56Are you a racist?
18:59Do you hate Mexicans?
19:02Two questions, by the way.
19:04He never ends up answering them.
19:06It was during that campaign that Vance made that appearance
19:08with Trump that you saw earlier,
19:10and I wish I could tell you what happened to him
19:12between 2016 and that moment,
19:15but sadly, I am not a mind reader
19:16or the therapist he so desperately needs.
19:19Vance will claim it's because he believed Trump turned out
19:22to be a great president in his first term.
19:24Others might say he's a power-hungry ladder climber
19:26who saw that the MAGA right was the only way up,
19:29but I'd argue his shift was both opportunistic and genuine.
19:33Because Vance has seemed to have journeyed farther and farther
19:36into some pretty far-right thought.
19:39Chris Rufo, the conservative activist,
19:40has jokingly described Vance's evolution as taking him
19:43from the pages of National Review
19:44to the fever swamp of right-wing Twitter.
19:47And Vance himself has said he's plugged into
19:49a lot of weird right-wing subcultures,
19:51which isn't something you want to hear from your Tinder date,
19:54let alone the fucking vice president.
19:57In fact, in many ways, he's become the archetype
19:59of the hyper-online conservative troll,
20:01right down to the whole kidding, not kidding,
20:04trigger the libs schtick.
20:05Just watch him brag about doing exactly that
20:07at an event a few years ago.
20:09I got myself into a little hot water last week
20:12because I made what seemed to me
20:15a plainly obvious observation
20:18that Alex Jones, the InfoWars guy,
20:21is a better source of information than Rachel Maddow,
20:23the MSNBC gal.
20:26Now, some people said,
20:27well, J.D., you're just trolling.
20:29Well, yeah, of course I was just trolling.
20:32But that doesn't mean what I said is in any way untrue.
20:35Okay, so with all due respect,
20:38which, to be perfectly clear, is none.
20:41Saying that Alex a billion dollars
20:43in defamation damages Jones
20:44is a better source of information than Rachel Maddow
20:47is just laughable.
20:48The man's entire brand was called InfoWars.
20:51Also, calling Rachel Maddow the MSNBC gal
20:54is off base for so many reasons,
20:56including that she does not remotely give off
20:58the breezy energy that you associate with that word.
21:00Julia Roberts, that's a gal.
21:02Reese Witherspoon, definitely a gal.
21:05Paul Rudd, such a gal.
21:08Rachel Maddow, though, not so much.
21:11And Vance went on to expand on what he meant by that.
21:14Ladies and gentlemen, the most important truths
21:19often come from people who are crazy 60% of the time,
21:22but they're right 40% of the time.
21:23I'm very close friends with Peter Thiel.
21:25I think Peter Thiel is one of the most important sources
21:27of non-conventional truth in our society.
21:30Peter Thiel believes some things
21:32that are considered crazy by opinion makers.
21:34We have to get away from this weird tension
21:38that we feel in our chest when somebody says,
21:41this person believes something crazy,
21:43therefore you must announce them.
21:44Believing crazy things is not the mark
21:47of whether somebody should be rejected.
21:49Believing important truths should be the mark
21:52of whether we accept somebody.
21:54And if they believe some crazy things on the side,
21:56that's fine.
21:57We need to be okay with non-conventional people.
21:59Okay, so here's the thing.
22:02We generally are okay with non-conventional people.
22:05I'd argue some of our best people are non-conventional.
22:09Cyndi Lauper, Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand.
22:11She cloned her dog and has a tiny mall
22:13in the basement of her house.
22:15But if Babs came out and said Sandy Hook was staged,
22:19you'd be justified in retiring your DVD copy of Yentl.
22:23And look, in some ways, that is a very convenient argument
22:26for hanging out with odious people.
22:28Relax, I don't agree with everything they say,
22:30just the important truths.
22:32But it's worth knowing just how closely aligned Vance is
22:35with some pretty extreme thinkers.
22:37He's close friends with the conservative writer,
22:38Rod Dreyer, who said, among other things,
22:40that LGBT activism is the tip of the spear
22:43at our throats in the culture war.
22:45Vance also wrote a glowing blurb for a book co-written
22:48by the far-right activist, Jack Posobiec,
22:49who promoted the Pizzagate hoax, a book, by the way,
22:53called Unhumans, a term that it uses for people on the left,
22:56who it says undo civilization itself.
22:59He's also expressed admiration for Curtis Yarvin,
23:01a self-proclaimed neo-reactionary,
23:03who's not only said things like,
23:05we should put the church blacks in charge of the ghetto blacks,
23:08he's also argued for a policy he called rage,
23:11retire all government employees to seize and consolidate power.
23:15That thought clearly made its way into Vance's head
23:19and then straight back out of his mouth
23:21during this interview.
23:22There's this guy, Curtis Yarvin,
23:24who's written about some of these things.
23:27I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him
23:29one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat,
23:34every civil servant in the administrative state,
23:36replace them with our people, and when the courts,
23:39because you will get taken to court,
23:40and when the courts stop you, stand before the country,
23:43like Andrew Jackson did, and say,
23:45the Chief Justice has made his ruling,
23:47now let him enforce it.
23:48Yeah, not ideal.
23:49And while many people do erroneously think Andrew Jackson said that,
23:52as part of the run-up, incidentally,
23:54to the Trail of Tears, there's no evidence that he did.
23:57And if we're gonna completely make up Andrew Jackson quotes,
24:01how about this one?
24:02The Chief Justice has made his ruling,
24:04now let him enforce it.
24:05Also, I really hope in the future my fans are cool.
24:08If my historical legacy is two fish-lipped weirdbeards
24:11bro-ing out about me on a podcast,
24:13do me a favor, dig me up and kill me again.
24:16And it's worth noting that in Vance's vast amount of time online,
24:20he's ended up promoting some flagrantly racist bullshit.
24:24It tends to get forgotten, but Trump's whole,
24:26they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats meltdown
24:28in the presidential debate came after Vance elevated a false rumor
24:32that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio,
24:34were eating people's pets.
24:36And after it all blew up, and it became clear
24:38that the whole thing was total nonsense,
24:41Vance doubled down in a pretty revealing way.
24:44When you have a lot of people saying my pets are being abducted
24:48or geese at the city pond are being abducted
24:51and slaughtered right in front of us, this is crazy stuff.
24:54And again, whether those exact rumors turn out
24:58to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be,
25:02Caitlin, this town has been ravaged
25:04by 20,000 migrants coming in, healthcare costs are up,
25:08housing costs are up, communicable diseases like HIV and TB
25:12have skyrocketed in this small Ohio town.
25:15This is what Kamala Harris's border policies have done.
25:18And I think it's interesting, Caitlin, that the media didn't care
25:21about the carnage wrought by these policies
25:24until we turned it into a meme about cats.
25:28OK, first, just a quick shout out to this look
25:31on Caitlin Collins' face.
25:33Because her eyes are saying what we are all thinking there,
25:36which is, is this guy for fucking real right now?
25:40Second, you didn't turn it into a meme about cats.
25:43You shared misinformation that turned a whole town upside down.
25:46And it wasn't even the fun kind of misinformation,
25:48like when that same summer, everyone got convinced
25:50J.D. Vance had fucked a couch.
25:52A theory that went so viral, it led to us calling Vance's team
25:56and asking, has the senator ever had sex with a couch?
25:59To which, by the way, they hung up on us.
26:02We then emailed them the same question,
26:04as well as asking, what about sex with a latex glove,
26:07stuffed between two couch cushions?
26:08Has Senator Vance ever had sex with any other furniture
26:11or household items?
26:12And anything else you'd like to add at this time?
26:15And they still haven't responded to us,
26:16which isn't exactly a resounding no, is it?
26:20And it's not like it is hard to deny that you fucked a couch.
26:23In fact, if you email hasjohnoliverfuckedacouch.com
26:28and ask if I have fucked one,
26:29I promise you'll be emailed right back
26:31with an answer of, no way!
26:34Anyway, that exchange is basically J.D. Vance in a nutshell.
26:39He told a racist lie he found on social media,
26:41doubled down, then tried to play the
26:43you elites don't get it card
26:45to huff his way out of the whole thing.
26:47And at this point, it's probably worth talking
26:49about where J.D. Vance's political evolution has taken him.
26:52Because it's pretty grim.
26:54On immigration, he's argued that while he bears
26:56no personal animus toward immigrants,
26:58they're the cause of many problems Americans face.
27:00He's claimed we're bankrupting a lot of hospitals
27:03by forcing them to provide care for people
27:04who don't have the legal right to be in our country.
27:07And he said that illegal aliens competing with Americans
27:09for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers
27:12of home prices in the country.
27:13Two assertions, by the way, that have been soundly rejected
27:16by experts.
27:17And when he's talking about immigrants
27:19to conservative audiences, the mask can slip all the way off.
27:24There is a logic to what the Democrats are trying to do.
27:27It's disgusting, but there's a logic to it.
27:29They want illegal aliens to steal everybody's job,
27:31and now they want illegal aliens to steal everybody's vote.
27:34It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens
27:38to look at their next door neighbors and say,
27:40I want to live next to people who I have something in common with.
27:44I don't want to live next to four families of strangers.
27:48Look, the thing on immigration is that no one can avoid
27:53that it has made our societies poorer, less safe,
27:58less prosperous, and less advanced.
28:01Okay, that is just route one bigotry.
28:03Also, it's a bit of a tell to say that you want to be able
28:06to look at your neighbors and have something in common with them.
28:09That only really means one thing.
28:11And for what it's worth here, I don't think most people's
28:14biggest priority in neighbors is having something
28:16in common with them.
28:17It's just hoping and praying that they don't have
28:19a creepy trampoline kid who stares in your windows all day.
28:24Can you, can you please, can you at least,
28:26can you, can you just bounce the other way?
28:31Can, can you do another way bounce?
28:36But remarks like those are part of a pattern
28:40of Vance expressing anxiety that immigrants
28:42could replace Americans with lines like,
28:44you can't have so many people coming to the country
28:46at a time when our own families aren't replicating themselves.
28:50And that gets to another of his major obsessions,
28:52which is Americans having more children.
28:54To hear him tell it, it's an existential crisis.
28:57He's complained about the childless left
28:59and said the rejection of the American family
29:01is perhaps the most pernicious and evil thing
29:03the left has done, which is both untrue and just ridiculous.
29:06The most evil thing the left has ever done
29:09would be hands down these fucking candles.
29:13But this is a big deal to Vance.
29:16Over the years, he's repeatedly focused on prominent Democrats
29:19who didn't at that point have kids, among them AOC and Pete
29:22Buttigieg, to draw some sweeping conclusions.
29:26There's just these basic cadences of life
29:29that I think are really powerful and really, really valuable
29:31when you have kids in your life.
29:33And the fact that so many people,
29:35especially in America's leadership class,
29:38just don't have that in their lives,
29:40you know, I worry that it makes people more sociopathic
29:43and ultimately our whole country a little bit less,
29:45uh, uh, less mentally stable.
29:48Wow.
29:50Having kids makes you mentally stable?
29:54Is something only someone who is not
29:56the default parent would say.
29:58Because try working a full-time job,
30:00always tracking when the diapers are about to run out,
30:02what size shoes your kids wear,
30:04what they won't eat for lunch at daycare,
30:05which toys their favorite,
30:06when the doctor's appointments are,
30:08when picture day is,
30:08which songs you have to sing to get them to sleep,
30:10how many child birthday parties you have to attend this weekend,
30:12and which ones specifically requested gifts.
30:14And also, if you leave the room,
30:16your child will scream bloody murder
30:18because you're the only one they want.
30:20I'm not saying kids can't give you a lot of things
30:22like joy, purpose, and hand, foot, and mouth disease,
30:25but mental stability is not one of them.
30:30And when pressed on those remarks a few years later,
30:33Vance's answer wasn't great.
30:36Your position on those family values
30:39have gotten a lot of scrutiny lately.
30:40Sure.
30:42You've talked about childless cat ladies.
30:45You've called childless people sociopathic, psychotic, deranged.
30:50And I know that you've said that those comments were sarcastic,
30:55but it's hard to hear those words entirely as a joke.
30:59What do you actually think of childless women in society?
31:02Well, as I said when I made those comments,
31:05and look, they were dumb comments.
31:06I certainly, you know, I think most people probably who've watched this
31:11have said something dumb, have said something that they wish they had put differently.
31:15And you said it over several, in several different venues.
31:19A very, very short period of time.
31:21Oh, well, you heard it here first, folks.
31:24If you're mean, dumb, and wrong, but in rapid succession, it's actually fine.
31:30And as for everyone says dumb stuff, not like that they don't.
31:35Yes, the normal dumb stuff people regret is usually things like,
31:38Armie Hammer is the next De Niro, or, sure, I'll have a third gordita crunch,
31:42but not, childless women are sociopaths.
31:46And if France really does want to make it easier for people to raise kids,
31:50there are things he could support.
31:52But he hasn't done that, and some, he's actively opposed.
31:55For instance, he's railed against universal daycare policies,
31:58calling it a class war against normal people,
32:01and that normal Americans want a family policy
32:03that doesn't shunt their kids into crap daycare.
32:06And one of his solutions for high daycare costs
32:08was pretty infuriating.
32:11One of the ways that you might be able to relieve
32:12a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare
32:16is make it so that, you know, maybe, like, grandma or grandpa
32:20wants to help out a little bit more.
32:21Or maybe there's an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more.
32:24If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure
32:26on all the resources that were spent in a daycare.
32:28Holy shit, that is brilliant!
32:31Have family help!
32:33How did no one think of this?
32:35Just call the grandparents, who are definitely close by and alive,
32:38or maybe an aunt and uncle who don't have jobs
32:41or children of their own to deal with.
32:43We can now close every daycare in the country
32:45because America's most eyelined boy genius
32:47just cracked the fucking code here.
32:49Pack a bunch of family members into your house to help out.
32:53Not too many, though, or J.D. Vars will get nervous
32:55if he lives next door.
32:57And while he has gestured vaguely toward federal money
33:02to incentivize family to help out, I'll point out that hasn't happened.
33:06In fact, the only concrete action he took
33:08during his two years in the Senate,
33:10when it comes to childcare policy,
33:12was introduce the failed Fairness for Stay-at-Home Parents Act,
33:15which focused on helping parents who decided
33:17to leave the workforce altogether.
33:19And if you're getting the sense that what he really wants
33:22is to turn the clock back to the 1950s,
33:24you're getting warmer.
33:26Especially given he's also expressed reservations
33:28about no-fault divorce.
33:30And this is one of the great tricks
33:32that I think the sexual revolution pulled
33:34on the American populace, which is this idea that,
33:37like, well, okay, these marriages were fundamentally,
33:40you know, they were maybe even violent,
33:42but certainly they were unhappy.
33:44And so getting rid of them and making it easier
33:47for people to shift spouses like they changed their underwear,
33:50that's gonna make people happier in the long term.
33:52And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads,
33:55though I'm skeptical, but it really didn't work out
33:57for the kids in those marriages.
33:59Yeah, he said, we shouldn't have made it so easy
34:02for people to leave violent marriages,
34:04which is just wild for multiple reasons,
34:06including, you know what happened before you could easily
34:09get a divorce? Some women would kill their husbands.
34:12By making divorce easy and accessible,
34:14what we have definitely reduced is the amount of women
34:16in fabulous hats who claimed,
34:19my husband fell ill suddenly.
34:22That is not just a victory for feminism,
34:25it is a lifesaver for shitty husbands everywhere.
34:29But it gets even worse because Vance is also hard-line
34:32anti-abortion, as he explained in a radio interview
34:35when he ran for Senate.
34:36Should a woman be forced to carry a child to term
34:40after she has been the victim of incest or rape?
34:44Look, my view on this has been very clear,
34:46and I think the question betrays a certain presumption
34:48that's wrong.
34:49It's not whether women should be forced
34:51to bring a child to term,
34:52it's whether a child should be allowed to live,
34:55even though the circumstances of that child's birth
34:58are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.
35:02The question really, to me, is about the baby.
35:04We want women to have opportunities,
35:07we want women to have choices,
35:08but above all, we want women and young boys
35:12in the womb to have the right to life.
35:15Okay, every part of that is awful.
35:18Not just calling becoming pregnant by rape an inconvenience,
35:21or taking women out of the pregnancy equation altogether,
35:24but also the phrase, young boys in the womb.
35:26What the fuck is wrong with you?
35:30If you can't discuss the realities of pregnancy
35:32without sounding like a high school football coach
35:34subbing a health class, don't comment on them at all.
35:38So that is, at least in part, who J.D. Vance is,
35:42and I'd argue it is repellent.
35:44But the dangerous thing is, he's proven himself
35:47able to hide the worst parts of himself
35:50at moments when the most people are watching him.
35:53Take the VP debate, where for 90 minutes,
35:55he managed to come off as measured,
35:57reasonable, and compassionate.
35:59Several times during that debate,
36:01Tim Walts actually said, I agree with you.
36:03And once it was over, many analysts
36:05seemed surprised by what they'd just seen.
36:07Let's face it, Vance looked very reasonable.
36:10He looked rational.
36:11He seemed, at many moments, to be reasonable.
36:14Yeah.
36:15And that was clearly a change in tone.
36:17I was getting texts from Democrats panicked,
36:19quite frankly, who were saying, wow,
36:21he's really moderating himself on a lot of these issues.
36:24He's the most likable he has ever been.
36:27Yeah.
36:28It's true, even though, for what it's worth,
36:30it's not like that is the highest bar to clear, is it?
36:33It's basically saying the Mucinex mascot
36:35is more fuckable than ever.
36:36That's not saying as much as it, frankly, should.
36:39The point here is, when the next election rolls around,
36:43if he can put that act back on when everyone is looking,
36:45we may be in trouble.
36:47No. All of which is why it is so important
36:50to remember who J.D. Vance actually is,
36:52because he'll present himself as an anti-elitist
36:55man of the people.
36:56But much of his career has been bankrolled
36:58by tech billionaires.
36:59He'll go to bat for Alex Jones,
37:01arguing we should show grace to those who are 40% right.
37:04But he'll happily co-sign on childless people
37:06being sociopaths and the left being unhumans.
37:09He'll offer empathy and understanding
37:11when it comes to non-conventional thinkers,
37:13but has no problem deriding immigrants
37:15as a net negative on society.
37:17And it's not hard to see what the difference
37:18between those two groups are.
37:21The point is, I know Vance is easy to write off
37:24as a charisma-less arsehole,
37:26but scratch even one inch under the surface,
37:29peel back the beard,
37:31and you'll find something far worse.
37:33His batshit views and his bare fucking face.
37:36Oh, and one last thing.
37:39J.D. Vance also stuck his dick
37:41in between the cushions of a sofa
37:43and thrust himself back and forth until climax.
37:48And if I may quote the man himself,
37:50yeah, of course I was just trolling by saying that.
37:53But that doesn't mean that what I said
37:55was in any way untrue.
37:58And now, this.
38:01And now, Kelly Clarkson does not like horror movies.
38:05Well, let's talk about the new movie.
38:07It's Maxine, so what's it about?
38:08It's scary, right?
38:09It's a horror, yeah, it's horror.
38:11Are you into horror?
38:12No.
38:12Me neither.
38:13I have to be completely honest with people on my couch
38:16when they say they're in a horror film,
38:17and I'm gonna be like, I will never watch your thing.
38:19Horror movies, like, I will pee my pants.
38:22How are you with horror films usually?
38:23I don't watch them.
38:25Do you usually like watching them?
38:27No, I don't.
38:28My first one, really, that I watched was Get Out,
38:30and that's when I was like,
38:31.
38:32I never went on a waterbed
38:34because of Freddy Krueger.
38:35Johnny Depp is always gonna be the waterbed scene
38:36and Freddy Krueger.
38:37It's always in my mind.
38:38Yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:39Freddy Krueger was the scariest thing I ever saw.
38:41Freddy Krueger was my guy.
38:43Oh, my God, we're so different.
38:45I don't watch horror, no thanks.
38:47I don't do scary.
38:48I don't watch them.
38:49I don't watch horror.
38:50I'm like, peace out.
38:51You do like horror.
38:52Oh, I love horror.
38:54Oh, me, no, I don't.
38:55You know?
38:55No.
38:56Kelly, why?
38:57It's scary.
38:58You know what?
38:58I saw something, this is random,
38:59but I saw something in my childhood,
39:00and it was actually a church,
39:02and it was this demon,
39:03and it was on top of this person.
39:03They were frozen, and I was like,
39:04oh, my God, I don't want to go to hell
39:06or see a demon ever in my life.
39:07And it ruined me.
39:08I don't watch anything scary.
39:09It was church.
39:13That's our show.
39:14Thanks so much for watching.
39:16Good night.
39:23Good night.
39:26Good night.
39:28Good night.
39:34Good night.
39:36Good night.
39:37Good night.
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