[TV static drones]
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[cheers and applause]
- Welcome, welcome, welcome
to "Last Week Tonight."
I'm John Oliver.
Thank you so much
for joining us.
Just time for a quick recap
of the week,
and it has been
frantically busy.
The Senate triggered
the nuclear option
to put Neil Gorsuch
onto the Supreme Court
and, therefore, a lobster
onto our all-dog court.
Devin Nunes recused himself
from the House investigation
of Trump's Russia Ties
after he himself came under
an ethics investigation.
A classic Devin move.
And of course, on Thursday,
there was
the biggest news of all.
- We are coming on the air
right now
because President Trump
has just ordered
a military strike on Syria.
- On President Trump's orders,
U.S. warships
launched between 50 and 60
Tomahawk cruise missiles
targeting a Syrian
government air base.
- Yes, a Syrian airfield
this week
was bombed by President Trump,
two words that when placed
in a sentence like that
are as downright unsettling
as ham smoothie
or placenta kimono.
And before we get into
what we did and why we did it,
it is worth taking
a moment to acknowledge
some of the reactions
to the airstrikes themselves,
particularly within the media,
which occasionally
bordered on the orgasmic.
- We see these beautiful
pictures at night
from the decks of these two
U.S. Navy vessels
in the Eastern Mediterranean.
I am tempted to quote
the great Leonard Cohen,
"I'm guided by the beauty
of our weapons."
And they are beautiful
pictures of fearsome armaments.
- What are you talking about?
It's a little ironic
to see Brian Williams
on MSNBC talking about
"the beauty of our weapons,"
because that is
not a phrase anyone would use
if they had, for instance,
ever been in a helicopter
that was hit by ground fire.
And he wasn't even done talking
about whatever the f*ck
he was talking about.
- Because life imitates art,
there's a scene in
"The American President"
where Michael Douglas,
playing the fictional president,
is being told that an airstrike
against a radar installation
is proportional
and it's presidential,
and he chooses
to think about the guy
who's coming
on the night shift
as part of a cleaning crew
and how he's
gonna lose his life
in this presidential
airstrike.
Well, the same thing
happened tonight, obviously.
- No, it didn't.
Because first,
this is not a song.
It's not a movie.
We fired real missiles
at an actual country.
And also,
there is nothing obvious
about Trump expressing concern
for another human being.
I am pretty sure the only time
he's ever thought about
a cleaning crew has been to say,
"There's a fingerprint
on this vase.
Don't pay them this week."
But it wasn't just
the media who were excited.
Some of Trump's biggest critics
had praise for the strikes,
with John McCain
and Lindsey Graham saying
Trump deserves the support
of the American people,
and Chuck Schumer saying
it was the right thing to do.
While interestingly,
some of Trump's
most prominent supporters
were significantly less happy,
including Alex Jones,
who even tried to weave
a conspiracy around it.
- So paradoxically,
Trump is really disintegrating,
in my eyes, on many levels.
But paradoxically,
he's doing so much good
that I realize they're
maneuvering him into bad
so they won't call him
a Russian agent,
so he can look tough
to the Russians,
so he can look tough
to the Chinese,
and so he can shut down
his critics.
But once you feed the pirate,
they're going to want
more, more, more.
- Wait.
"Once you feed the pirate,
they're gonna want more"?
Not only is all of that crazy,
that is not even a phrase.
Oh, I'm against these strikes,
'cause you know what they say,
"If you want to skin a ferret,
you better bring
your dancin' shoes."
And I mean it!
"Once you start washing
an alligator, paradoxically,
you don't stop till it's dry."
But there are
some serious questions
that need to be answered
regarding these airstrikes,
which were in retaliation
against Syrian dictator
Bashar al-Assad's
apparent use of chemical weapons
to target his own people,
which is undeniably horrific.
But as many have noted,
when Assad did
the same thing four years ago,
Trump's response was
significantly different.
- The attack also a startling
about-face for President Trump,
who has repeatedly
argued against
military intervention
in Syria.
- Why do we care?
Let !sis and Syria fight.
And let Russia--
they're in Syria already.
- Mm-hmm.
- Let them fight !sis.
- Tweeting repeatedly after
the last major chemical attack
in Syria four years ago
that the United States should
stay out of the conflict.
- Is there anything
Trump is doing now
where he didn't at one point
tweet about doing the opposite?
I honestly
would not be surprised
if in 2011 he tweeted,
"Only a stupid idiot
would live in a big white house
"and sign bills into law.
#SAD."
Now, administration
officials have said
that it was
the gruesome images
of the chemical weapons attack
that changed Trump's mind,
which, on one level,
is absolutely understandable.
The images
were truly horrifying.
Just as, again,
they were four years ago.
But while it is natural
to want to take
some kind of action in response,
it has to come in the context
of a larger strategy,
or it's close to worthless.
Because though the strikes
seem to have made
certain people feel better,
what did they actually achieve?
- Does this change the facts
on the ground at all, Martha?
- I don't think
it really does.
I mean, this wasn't
a strategic strike
and hurting Assad
going forward.
It's this one airfield.
It is a punishing air strike.
It took out aircraft.
They took out fuel supplies.
They took out some of the
surrounding infrastructure.
But he has
many other airfields.
- It's true.
In fact, he apparently still
has the one we bombed,
because Syrian warplanes were
carrying out att*cks from it
just hours
after our m*ssile strike.
And that is hardly
a crippling blow.
Delta passengers experience
longer flight delays
on a daily basis.
Look, maybe
a symbolic airstrike
was strategically
the best move for Trump,
but I don't think
he's thinking strategically.
Because there is no indication
that he's taken the time
to answer
some fairly basic questions.
Like if this was
a warning shot,
what are we warning against?
Do we only want to stop Assad
using chemical weapons
or are we going to push
for regime change?
If he does it again,
are we prepared
to go to w*r to stop him?
If so, are we prepared
for how significantly
this may deteriorate
our relationship with Russia?
And how will that affect
our fight against !sis?
This is complicated.
And I am not saying
there are right answers here.
I'm saying there needs to be
a tangible strategy
acknowledging how difficult
taking on Assad actually is.
Because right now
we have a president
who feeds off praise,
and he just got a lot of it
for bombing someone,
and that should make everyone
very, very worried.
Or to put this in terms that
Brian Williams can understand.
There's a scene in the movie
"American Pie"
where the character Jim,
played by Jason Biggs,
has sex with a pie
because he wants to feel
like a big strong grownup man.
Well, the concern is
that if we blindly let him
continue down this path,
Donald Trump could become
that horny teenager,
and the whole world
could become that pie.
So for now,
let's move on--
[cheers and applause]
let's move on to Fox News,
a series of Cialis
and catheter commercials
occasionally interrupted
by an episode of "The Five."
Fox News has been rocked
by sexual harassment
scandals recently,
and this week brought
one of the most damaging yet.
- This morning,
new revelations
about sexual
harassment claims
at Fox News aimed at
the network's biggest star.
"The New York Times" finding
Fox News and Bill O'Reilly
paid five women
a total of almost $13 million
in settlements
going back 15 years.
- Yes, Bill O'Reilly,
who scientists hypothesize
is kind of a dense nebula
of boner and racism,
has been paying out settlements
for alleged harassment
for years,
and the details
are pretty disturbing here,
with the victims claiming
things like verbal abuse,
lewd comments,
unwanted advances
and phone calls in which
it sounded as if Mr. O'Reilly
was masturbating.
And I hate to ask this,
but what does that sound like?
Does it sound like
a dog's jowls flapping
when it sticks its head out
of the window of a moving car?
Or someone frantically stirring
a bowl of cake batter?
Or was it more a subtle
"tap, tap, tap"
like a mouse giving
a round of applause?
I mean, either way,
it's horrible.
And look, it's not just
those five women.
Dr. Wendy Walsh, an occasional
guest on O'Reilly's show,
came forward this week,
claiming he took her to dinner,
ostensibly to offer her
career advice,
but when she declined
to come back to his room,
his tone noticeably changed.
- He told me,
he complained about the--
I had ordered a soda water,
and he complained about the cost
of the soda water and said,
"I wonder what they're charging
for a cup of water here."
He told me my bag was ugly.
He goes, "That's the ugliest bag
I've ever seen.
- Okay, okay, hold on.
She's saying
when he got rejected,
he started negging her
by complaining
about the price of seltzer
and then criticizing
her fashion choices.
Apparently,
in Bill O'Reilly's mind,
every woman wants to f*ck
her own mother.
Now--now it is--
it is hard for us, any of us,
to imagine what it must be like
to be on the receiving end of
dirty talk from Bill O'Reilly,
but it's not, as it turns out,
impossible.
Because in 1998 he wrote a book
called "Those Who Trespass,"
featuring numerous sex scenes,
and he narrated
his own audiobook.
And yes, we're doing this.
Here's a sample.
Hot.
That--that is a man
describing a woman's orgasm
who has clearly
never seen a woman's orgasm.
And just on technical note,
you can't knead skin
with your tongue, Bill.
You've confused making love
with making
a rustic sourdough bread.
But wait, wait,
'cause we haven't even got
to the most
stomach-churning part yet.
I am willing to bet
that there has never been
a fictional character
more happy to not actually exist
than Ashley Van Buren.
And yet--and yet, so far,
Fox News is firmly
standing by their man
and is citing
some pretty weak reasoning.
- Fox's parent company
points out,
"No current or former
Fox News employee
"ever took advantage of
the 21st century Fox hotline
to raise a concern
about Bill O'Reilly."
- So their defense is,
he can't be guilty,
because no one called H.R.
to complain.
But why would they?
I've always assumed that
Fox News's H.R. department
is just a telephone
in an empty room
being manned by a horny goat.
Now--now, O'Reilly
denies the claims,
accusing these women
of just wanting money,
but Wendy Walsh
isn't even asking for money.
She just thinks
everyone could learn
a valuable lesson from this.
- All men need to learn
that a workplace
is not a mating marketplace.
And Bill O'Reilly,
like the rest of us,
needs to just use Tinder.
- No, no, he absolutely
does not need to do that.
That would be terrible
for literally everyone,
except Bumble,
because they would have
a rock-solid new ad campaign.
That's going to hit hard
and hit well.
And look, whether O'Reilly is
learning his lesson here or not,
his advertisers are
not hanging around to find out.
- We have seen dozens
of advertisers--
our latest count
is around 60 advertisers--
go ahead and say
we're not gonna run our ads
on "The O'Reilly Factor"
anymore.
- Well, that is not good
for Bill O'Reilly,
and I would
that say he should call
his advertisers to apologize,
but the problem is,
he might just start jerking off
while they're on the phone.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Almost nobody is
standing by Bill O'Reilly.
Nobody, that is,
apart from the President
of the United States.
- I think he's a person
I know well.
- Yeah.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- Nobody gets to be
surprised by that,
because it is entirely
plausible that the hill
our president
is willing to die on
is the one formed by Bill
O'Reilly's workplace erection
poking up against
his old-man slacks.
So to recap this story for you.
Bill O'Reilly
needs advertisers,
and Donald Trump needs to
understand sexual harassment.
And here is where we come in.
Because as you may remember,
our Catheter Cowboy
has spent this year
appearing in ads
on Fox News,
explaining everything
from the nuclear triad
to the American
Health Care Act.
And I think you know
where this is going.
We have produced an ad
to educate Donald Trump,
to air during the "O'Reilly
Factor" in New York and D.C.
We submitted it
to stations on Friday
but weirdly we haven't
heard back from them since,
which is a little surprising,
because we're one of the only
advertisers offering to buy time
on his show at the moment.
And I do hope
they don't reject this ad,
but just in case they do,
here's a sneak peek
of what we would like
the president to see.
- Howdy again.
I am a professional cowboy.
I use catheters,
and there's two things I know.
I don't like pain when I cath,
and repeated unwanted sexual
advances or obscene remarks
in the workplace
constitute sexual harassment.
If there is a power disparity
between the two parties,
well, that's about
as inappropriate
as lubricating a catheter
with hot sauce, partner.
Why would you do that?
I don't like pain when I cath.
And if you've got a friend
who was accused
of something like that
over and over again,
I might think twice
about defending him.
'Cause that contributes
to a culture
where women don't want
to come forward,
and I know you might not
care about that.
But on some level, you've got
to know you are blowing this.
You're sacrificing the chance
to make society a better place
on the altar of your towering
ignorance and fragile ego.
You are blowing this.
That's all for now.
Good-bye,
everyone watching this,
and definitely
not one specific person.
See you next time.
[cheers and applause]
- Moving on.
Our main story tonight
concerns democracy.
Undeniably,
the best Greek export
that doesn't have
fruit at the bottom.
Now, there is understandable
concern at the moment
about the personalities
harming our democracy,
but tonight,
let's talk about
one of the major structural
problems.
And it's something Democrats
in particular
love to complain about.
- We have seen Republicans
rig the system
with their gerrymandering,
often illegal gerrymandering.
- There is gerrymandering
to a fare-thee-well in states
controlled
by the Republicans.
- Listen, political
gerrymandering is probably
one of the greatest threats
to our democracy right now.
- Well, slow down.
That is a bit much.
The greatest threat to our
democracy right now is clearly
whatever tweet
the president has planned
for Cinco de Mayo this year.
We don't know what it'll be.
We don't know which Spanish
words will be misspelled,
but we can assume
it will be horrifying.
But gerrymandering
is a real problem.
It's the practice of drawing
voting districts in a way
that creates unfair advantages
for whoever happens
to be drawing the lines.
Which it does sound mundane,
but the results
can be significant.
Gerrymandering is partly
responsible for giving
Republicans such an edge
in the House of Representatives.
Because take a look at
what happened in some states
where they drew
the district lines.
- In Pennsylvania,
chose democratic candidates
for the House of
Representatives in 2014.
But 13 of the 18 districts,
more than two-thirds,
are represented
by Republicans.
In Ohio, about 40% of the voters
chose Democratic candidates
for the House
of Representatives.
But 12 out of 16 seats,
three-quarters of them,
are represented by
Republicans.
- Those numbers
are way out of proportion
to what people should expect.
You wouldn't accept
Neapolitan ice cream
that was 75% strawberry.
How is that okay?
What perverts voted for this?
So whoever draws the districts
has a lot of power.
And thanks to
technological advances,
it's possible to use that power
in very precise ways.
- In the age of computers,
you can gerrymander
with scientific precision.
You can run in and out of alleys
and up and down streets,
so carefully include and exclude
whichever voters you want
in one district
and not in another,
so it's become
a very precise science.
- He's right about that.
Gerrymandering has become
a very precise science.
And interestingly,
it's one of the few
remaining types of science
in which the Republican
party currently believes.
Now--now, there are
different reasons
politicians engage
in gerrymandering.
It's done
to disadvantage voters
based on race
or on political party
or to shore up seats
for incumbents,
sometimes even
within a party.
Take Hakeem Jeffries.
In 2000, he ran
a strong challenge
in a Democratic primary for
the New York State Assembly.
And he planned
to run again in 2002,
but the Democrats had done
something interesting
to the map.
- The map that was drawn
was absolutely fascinating.
They drew a map that literally
carved out the block
on which Hakeem Jeffries
lived from Assembly District 57.
- I remember shaking my head
in disbelief.
There were a lot of people
hoping to vote for me
but were surprised to find
that they no longer lived
in the assembly district
that they had been
living in for years,
if not decades.
Brooklyn politics
can be pretty rough,
but that move was gangster.
- Yeah, it was gangster.
And remember, the threshold
for "gangster" in Brooklyn
is the Notorious B.I.G.,
whose debut album
begins with songs that are,
respectively,
about armed robbery,
g*n v*olence,
armed robbery
and g*n v*olence,
and being prepared to die
by g*n v*olence
while committing
armed robbery.
And this is by no means
a new problem.
Even the term "gerrymandering"
goes back centuries.
- It gets its name from
a 19th-century politician
named Elbridge Gerry.
As governor
of Massachusetts,
he helped shape
a congressional district
so blatantly one-sided
that one critic said
it looked like a salamander.
No, another replied,
a gerrymander.
- Now, that counted
as a joke in 1810,
back when your
entertainment options
were sunsets,
Washington Irving novels,
and getting kicked
by a horse.
And quick side note,
you're not wrong to notice
that the "Gerry"
in "gerrymander" refers to a guy
whose name was actually
pronounced "Gary,"
because literally everything
about gerrymandering
is stupid and wrong.
And look, there's nothing
inherently wrong
with re-drawing
a voting district.
It's actually necessary.
They need to have around the
same number of people in them,
and populations shift over time,
as people move or die
or emigrate to America
because their stand-up careers
have endured what
might be best characterized
as a "pogrom of indifference."
And that is why, every
ten years, we have a census,
after which,
lines are re-drawn for both
the U.S. House
and state legislatures.
The problem is,
in most states,
the lines are drawn
by politicians.
In fact, in 37 states,
the drawing of
state legislative districts
is primarily controlled
by the legislators themselves,
and they have a pretty
clear vested interest there.
And if you think that seems
crazy, you're not alone.
- Every fall, I speak
to five or six members
of the British Parliament
that come over
to shadow members of congress,
and one of the things
I have to explain to them is,
"Here's how you get
elected to the House."
I have, you know--
I see these shocked looks
on these British faces,
and one time,
one stood up and said,
"Well, that's terrible!
"That's not the voters choosing
their representatives.
That's the representatives
choosing their voters."
- First, that's r*cist.
And--
And second--second,
even I find it difficult
hearing advice on map-drawing
in a British accent
that once said,
"I don't see
why one scrap of dust
"is any
different from another.
"So I ended the border here,
"because that's where my pen
ran out of ink.
"They'll learn to like it.
What's the worst
that can happen?"
But it is true
that if your party
holds the redistricting pen,
it wields substantial power,
and there are multiple
techniques at its disposal.
- There are a couple of ways
that you can reapportion people
and put them into districts,
and there's a thing
called packing,
and there's a thing
called cracking.
- Yes,
"packing and cracking."
Not to be confused
with the teen drug trend
of "cracking and packing,"
which is when the teens
hollow out a cucumber,
fill it with crack,
and put in their anus
to absorb it faster.
I saw it on the local news,
which means it's real,
and every teenager
is doing it right now.
But in this context,
"packing" means cramming
as many opposition voters
as possible
into just a few districts.
And "cracking" means
spreading them out thinly
over a bunch of districts,
so they can't gain
a majority in any one of them.
Either way,
it dilutes their impact.
Try and think of it as table
assignments at a wedding.
You can either break up
your eight awful relatives
and spread them out
over different tables,
or you can pack them
all together
in one insufferable
table of the damned.
"The Washington Post"
showed how this can work.
Look at this
hypothetical state.
It's 60% blue voters,
and it needs to be carved up
into five districts.
Now, proportionally,
you would want three blue
and two red districts,
but if you draw
the lines like this,
you can get three
red majorities and two blues.
And if you
draw it like this,
you could get five blue
majorities and no red.
And if you draw lines like this,
it looks like a d*ck,
which is irrelevant
to this discussion,
but it is objectively
very funny.
And--and if you are thinking,
"Shouldn't all of this
be illegal?"
Well, that's complicated.
Because if you're gerrymandering
to disadvantage minorities,
yes, that is illegal
under the Voting Rights Act.
But if you're gerrymandering
to disadvantage voters
of an opposing party,
that has generally been allowed.
So racial gerrymandering?
No.
Partisan gerrymandering?
That's kind of okay.
And it's led politicians
to be pretty brazen
in their behavior.
Like in North Carolina
last year.
Their congressional map
was thrown out
in federal court
for racial gerrymandering,
which is wrong.
So they had to redraw.
And while doing it,
State Rep David Lewis
went out of his way
to explain that the new map
would not illegally
f*ck over minorities.
It would just legally
f*ck over democrats.
- We want
to make clear that we,
to the extent are
going to use political data
in drawing this map,
it is to gain partisan
advantage on the map.
I want that criteria to be
clearly stated and understood.
- "I need you to understand
this is not a race thing,
"because it can't be.
"We just want a map
that churns out Republicans
"like it's Ann Romney.
"That is all we're saying.
"That is all
we are saying here.
Please let me understand."
And that map worked.
In 2016,
despite Republicans winning
just over half the votes
in House races,
they wound up controlling
That is a more blatant
disregard for what people want
than the assh*le who gives
out Bazooka Joe on Halloween.
Oh, great.
Gum from the Roosevelt
administration
wrapped in a comic
from the other
Roosevelt administration.
At least the guy handing out
Snickers
stuffed with razor blades
actually gives you
a Snickers.
And Republicans elevated
this technique to an art form
with a plan called REDMAP,
or the Redistricting
Majority Project.
They poured more than
$30 million
into state-level races
ahead of the last redistricting,
gaining huge numbers of seats,
and that paid
massive dividends.
- When Republicans
won the majority
of state houses in 2010,
it ensured they'd be redrawing
the maps in those states.
And lo and behold,
it paid off in 2012.
Nationwide, Democrats
running for congress
got 1.1 million
more votes,
but Republicans sent
- Exactly.
So the maps they drew
put Democrats
at a significant disadvantage.
It's like if
instead of Tim Duncan,
the San Antonio Spurs had
had to use Tim Burton.
It's not technically
impossible to win,
but it's going to be
much, much harder.
And look, to some extent,
Republicans got lucky,
because 2010 was a wave
election for their party,
and I'm not saying Democrats
are angels here.
By no means.
When they have had control,
they've gerrymandered the shit
out of districts
in states like Maryland,
and they've been
pretty brazen too.
Take Illinois.
In 2001,
the Democrats won the right
to redistrict there after,
and this is for reasons
too complicated
and too stupid to explain,
a name was
pulled out of a replica
of Abe Lincoln's
stovepipe hat,
but--but just watch
as one Democratic lawmaker
made the least
convincing promise ever.
- Well, we'll sit down
and draw a very fair map.
- Come on.
Come on!
That's an inherently
suspicious look on his face.
That's the exact expression
of someone who just urinated
in a public pool.
"Water's warm today, huh?
Enjoy your swim."
So how do you know
if your district
has been drawn
with nefarious intent?
Well, that's tricky.
Because too often,
people will just
lazily point to districts
that have a weird shape.
- North Carolina's
looks like spilled coffee.
Pennsylvania's 16th
is flexing its muscles.
And one commentator compared
Maryland's 3rd
to a broken-winged
pterodactyl.
And then there's this.
They call it the earmuffs.
- Ah, yes,
an earmuff district,
not to be confused
with "the" earmuff district,
which is a one-block area
of Manhattan where sketchy men
sell accessories made from
the fur of endangered species.
You should go.
You should visit.
But while
it is tempting to see
something suspicious
in an odd-shaped district,
there is
a pretty good argument
against prioritizing
tidy lines above all else.
- Dropping a bunch
of squares seems fair.
It seems like if you could
just draw a grid like "Tron"
that you could
put people into districts
and there wouldn't be any sort
of manipulation in the process.
But Americans don't live,
with the exception of Montana
and, you know,
a few other square places,
Americans don't live
in squares.
Our communities
are irregular and random.
- Yeah, that's true.
American communities
are not square.
They're like jazz music.
They're free-form,
free-flowing,
and they contain a troubling
amount of opioids.
And there's no one
right way to draw a district.
Reasonable people
will disagree.
Some might prioritize a district
being politically competitive.
Others might favor compactness.
Others want to keep so-called
"communities of interest"
together.
The problem is, it may be
physically impossible to do
all three of those things
in one place.
In fact,
take that earmuff district.
The thin line connecting the two
halves is just a single road,
and people love
to make fun of that.
- In Chicago,
squeezed between two freeways,
this narrow strip
is needed to connect
two halves
of a gerrymandered district
to keep it contiguous
as is required.
This is the way congress
gets around the contiguous rule
because there's obviously
nobody living here.
I mean, unless they're
homeless people, I guess.
Anybody here?
Any congressional voters
out there?
- Now you may laugh,
but a few seconds later,
an entire ghost baseball team
from the early 1900s
walked out
of the tall grass
and beat him to death
with their ghost bats.
And he kind of deserved it.
But--but here is
the thing, though.
It is drawn like earmuffs
for good reasons.
Because the northern
and southern parts
are two Latino communities,
and the district in the middle
is predominantly
African-American.
Both are Democratic, so it's
not about partisan advantage.
It's about ensuring
that both communities
have representatives
servicing their interests.
And it's criticized a lot,
but redistricting experts
absolutely love it.
In fact, two of them actually
put it on their wedding cake.
That is a real wedding cake.
And I'm guessing that
the bachelorette party cake
was something like,
"One more night
of packing and cracking!"
So--so to break it down,
not all weird-shaped
districts are bad,
and not all normal-shaped
districts are good.
And there is one more thing.
Gerrymandering
is not the sole reason
for the mismatch between
our popular vote percentages
and our representation.
Some of that is due to where
Democrats choose to live.
- Democrats live
in the wrong places basically.
They've decided
to cram themselves in cities
and that just makes it really
hard to have a winning coalition
when your people do that.
If you are college-educated,
if you want to work
in the creative economy,
you move to a city,
and those places have enough
Democrats already.
Democrats need to make places
like Des Moines or Columbus
or Raleigh, North Carolina,
cool so that those young people
move there,
but that's kind of outside
of the typical realm
of political strategy.
- Wait.
What do you mean "make"
Des Moines cool?
They've already got the
Des Moines Heritage Carousel,
the most badass,
balls-to-the-wall carousel
in the whole Midwest.
And yes,
according to their website,
it is closed for
the season of spring,
which is not a good time
for carousels,
but when May 28 rolls around,
it's gonna be an all-out
carousel fuckstravaganza!
Until 8:00 P.M.
But it is true,
Democrats are basically
packing themselves
into districts,
and that is not likely
to change anytime soon.
But there is a broader,
non-partisan point here,
and that is that
in a democracy,
the question of who
gets to draw the map
should not have
as much significance
as it currently does.
Now, there's actually
a Supreme Court case coming up
involving
a redistricting in Wisconsin
that was so partisan, a lower
court struck their maps down,
and the Supreme Court may,
for the first time,
actually issue a clear ruling
putting limits
on partisan gerrymandering.
So all our hopes
are now in the delicious claws
of Justice Neil Gorsuch.
But even without a ruling,
many experts argue
we should simply
be taking redistricting
out of the hands
of politicians
and give the task
to independent commissions,
and that's a pretty good idea.
In fact, a handful of states
already do some version of that.
And it's not perfect.
It is tough to completely
remove partisan biases,
a fact that one
state lawmaker brought up
to sh**t the idea down.
- If I felt there
were any way in the world
that I could stand
before my constituents and say,
"I believe that it's possible
"to come up
with a group of people
"who have no
political bias whatsoever
"who will simply sit down
in a room
and magically
create districts,"
I'd be behind it.
I'd be behind it 100%.
But those people don't exist.
- Now if you recognize
that guy,
it's because you saw him
about ten minutes ago,
reassuring everyone that
his intent in drawing districts
was to gain partisan
advantage for Republicans.
So he's essentially arguing
"nobody's unbiased,
"so let's use me,
the most brazenly biased man
in the universe,"
which is pretty much arguing,
"No babysitter's perfect,
so let's just use Slenderman."
But while independent
commissions
might not be perfect,
they would definitely
be better.
And the truth is, it's hard
to come up with a worse system
than the one
most states currently have,
and there is something
very important at stake here.
Lawmakers should not be
allowed to dilute our votes
by drawing
their own lines
and essentially
picking their own voters.
And you know--
you know what?
I will tell you why.
The foundations of democracy
are built on the idea
that everybody's vote
should count equally.
Everybody's.
That is what America
is all about.
That everyone--every one of us
should get an equal chance
to make a bad decision
which fucks things up
for everybody else.
Whoever we are,
however poor our decisions,
whether you are a Juggalo.
- Whoop whoop!
- Stop it.
Or a 47-year-old
Quidditch player.
- It's a sport!
- Or someone who bought
that stupid $6,000 jacket
I wore on the show last week.
It's horrible.
Our voices
should be fully heard
even if we're
Scientologists or Parrotheads
or guys who ride unicycles
as their primary mode
of transportation.
In this one context,
we should all be relevant
regardless of our
questionable life choices.
Whether you're an EDM bro...
- Yeah.
- ...or a guy jamming
a knife into a toaster
or a Washington Redskins fan...
- Whoo!
- ...or even
a Jill Stein supporter.
- She would've won!
- How would she have won?
What process could she
have used to--
The point is,
her voice should count
as much as anyone else's.
As much as a guy in a fedora
or a baker of erotic pastries
or a SantaCon attendee
or everyone's r*cist grandma.
Don't say anything.
Because at the end of the day,
that is the point
of this country.
That's what made America great.
Because think about it.
[cheers and applause]
Election results
should not be the fault
of lawmakers' crazy lines.
They should be the result
of our own crazy decisions.
Am I right?
[all cheering]
Am I right?
[all cheering]
That's our show.
Thank you so much
for watching.
We'll see you next week.
Good night.
She could not have won.
04x08 - Gerrymandering in the United States
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American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by comedian John Oliver.
American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by comedian John Oliver.