Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Joe Arpiao

October 2, 2017 3:55 AM - Season 4, Episode 23

Whew, what with hurricanes and stuff it's been a while! This episode is now a month old! Let's take a step back in time, to an age when we were, due to the aging effects of the Trump presidency, all several years younger:

• Trump's busy week. First he met with Congressional leaders to hammer out a deal to raise the "debt ceiling." (Suprisingly, Trump sided with the Democrats, giving them additional leverage in December when the time comes to make the deal again, and infuriating Republicans.) Then Trump gave the floor to his daughter Ivanka, annoying the further hell out of the Republicans (fortunately, they have an ample supply of hell to spare). No one seems to know why Trump did either of those things.
• Trump announces that he's ending Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), putting the fate of 800,000 undocumented immigrants in immediate jeopardy, then immediately spins and says Congress should really get off their butts and do something about this tragic circumstance he created. Trump on why he did it: "Either we have a country, or we don't have a country."
• And Now: A Look At What the NFL Will, And Will Not, Tolerate (This relates to players taking the knee during the National Anthem. This was before Trump directly attacked players who did so, provoking a considerable backlash, with many more players joining the protest.)
• Main story: the (then) recently pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, his many horrible acts, his downfall, and why Trumps pardoning of him was an awful thing to do. YouTube (14m) Warning: segment includes footage of Arpaio painfully droning "My Way.")
• And Now: Joe Arpaio Singing Another Song With No Sense of Irony Whatsoever (the theme from Fame, aka "I'm Gonna Live Forever")
• Finally, Scranton, PA station WNEP mentioned Last Week Tonight's mentioning of them on the air for the strangely controversial backyard train set they run on-camera during the weather report. Prompted by this, LWT went and build a ridiculously large train set for them, to have. More on that in the next episode....

Identified by John Oliver: whenever Trump says "you're going to be so happy" or something similarly vague but positive when pressed on details, he has nothing and is trying to shut down the conversation. He does it ALL THE TIME: a sequence of clips was shown with him applying his dubious technique when talking about border safety, the Middle East, steel tarriffs, replacing Obamacare and fixing national infrastructure.

F.37: "Equihax," EQUIFAX

Another reason this is so late -- at this point the sound of Trump's hateful, mealy-mouthed, disingenuous, bulllshit-flecked, lying voice makes me nearly shake with rage. I am almost looking forward to the inevitable wave of revisionism that's going to follow Trump's term, because I am going to take such joy in shouting aloud to those idiots all the ways their controversial takes are wrong wrong wrong, the peculiar privlege of living through stupid times.

posted by JHarris