It’s Been a Busy Week
It’s emblematic of month one of the second Trump administration that John Oliver’s lighter side news round-up segment before he gets into the really heavy stuff is”light” in the way the hazy radiation coming from a cracked nuclear containment site is kind of a pretty green color.
And while no actual nuclear meltdowns seem to have occurred this week, Oliver did note that it would be nearly impossible to know that for sure, what with Elon Musk and his DOGE minions hacking and slashing all government regulations and oversight like an unstable ketamine enthusiast with a running chainsaw.
(Oh, Elon Musk appeared at CPAC wielding a running chainsaw while shouting “CHAINSAW!!!,” prompting Oliver to wonder if that’s the sound Elon Musk thinks chainsaws make. Oliver also mused that he’s not legally allowed to say what he wished would have happened there, but, as yet, imagination is free.)
Oliver did take his own much more measured and expertly wielded cutting tool to some of Musk and DOGE’s most recent claims, showing how the not-agency’s claim of 55 billion in “savings” was quickly revealed to more like $2 billion when all of Musk’s sloppy accounting and outright lies were surgically removed by fact-checkers.
But hey, this administration isn’t into that nerd crap like math or truth. (Ukraine also did not start the war with Russia and Social Security is not paying benefits to millions of people born 150 years ago, despite Trump and Musk’s claim to the contrary.) These guys are all about results… that crumble like drunkenly constructed sand castles when the tide rolls in.
That’s why, as Oliver showed, Donald Trump is planning a trip to Fort Knox to “make sure the gold is still there.” Prompted by the “bonkers right-wing theory” that Goldfinger was both real and successful in his scheme to heist the federal gold reserve, Oliver could only marvel at a sitting president’s quest to touch all that shiny gold in person, despite the fact that his former treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin was shown doing exactly that in Trump’s first term. Still, as Oliver noted, who could pay attention to mountains of glittering gold when a “certified smokeshow” like Mnuchin is in the picture.
Oh, and Oliver noted in passing how Trump’s pal and fellow aspiring dictator Jair Bolsonaro was arrested in Brazil for attempting a coup against that country’s democracy, seemingly to taunt Americans about how locking up traitors is really not that hard.
And Now This…
Someone at Last Week Tonight found Frankie Jupiter, the gloriously named and even more gloriously catty morning anchor from Milwaukee’s CBS affiliate morning show, and we should all send thank you cards.
For the blasé, eternally unimpressed Jupiter, morning show banter is catnip for skeptical comebacks like, “Are you sure, though?” that suggest a restless mind seeking greater purpose elsewhere.
As Jupiter noted after one especially unprofitable bout of co-host chatter, “I’m just here so I don’t get fired.” Shine on, Jupiter, you bright, glowing gas giant.
Our Main Story Tonight
Speaking of hacking and slashing, Oliver’s main story centered on Big Tech. More specifically, how tech giants like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook/Meta have all become especially chummy with/servile to the incoming Trump administration. Even more specifically, Oliver went all-in with his trusty comedy knife on Mark Zuckerberg, the former college student with “simple dreams of ranking his classmates by f*ckability” now in charge of one of the world’s most powerful, influential, and (as Oliver contends) deeply flawed and dangerous social media empires.
Now, it’s easy to mock the perennially offputting Zuckerberg for looking (in his video announcing that Facebook would essentially do away with all content moderation and fact checking) like “Eddie Redmayne was cast to play Ice Cube.” Or to quote comments on his own site comparing his new cool-guy perm look as “undercover cop,” your “25-year-old shrooms guy,” or Lil Dicky.
But that’s not what John Oliver is here for. After all, Oliver praised the video of now Musk-fired National Park rangers endearingly awkward “Can’t Touch This” instructional video about endangered (and/or dangerous) wildlife as coming from “America’s best dorks.”
As with Musk and his “social awkwardness” excuse about his Nazi salutes, dorkiness isn’t the issue. Showing a clip of Zuckerberg peddling his excuses for abandoning all hate speech and misinformation safeguards on an already toxic site to fellow “just asking questions” enthusiast Joe Rogan, Oliver could only note that there’s nothing more cringeworthy than watching a billionaire sporting a $900,000 wristwatch trying to be “a relatable everyman” by claiming that everybody really thinks unbridled hate speech is super-cool.
Delving into the long and fraught history of Facebook grappling with content moderation, Oliver was nearly sympathetic, noting experts’ analysis that moderating that much content is nearly impossible, and that it’s likely no fun to have the entire right-wing media-sphere accusing you of censoring them by sometimes sheepishly debunking a few outright lies and slurs against minorities.
Of course, Oliver also went on to show that even then Facebook didn’t exactly cover itself in corporate glory, pointing to a previous Last Week Tonight story about how the company’s hands-off moderation led directly to a literal genocide in Myanmar.
Still, content moderation is hard as hell, which makes Zuckerberg’s recent about-face in simply taking his own (so far) metaphorical chainsaw to the company’s already inadequate safeguards against lies and hate understandab—oh, wait. No, no it doesn’t, at all.
Oliver went on to show Zuckerberg’s choice to turn the internet sewage treatment apparatus to “off” comes after the election of Donald Trump, who, after Facebook shut off Trump’s account for spreading lies about the January 6 insurrection he started, explicitly threatened Zuckerberg with “life in prison.” Showing a clip of Trump outright admitting that those threats are the likely reason for Zuckerberg’s pro-Trump, anti-fact-checking changes, Oliver stated, “It doesn’t take a genius to draw a conclusion there—and in fact it didn’t take one.”
So what’s one to do? Oliver ran through some possible strategies to counter Facebook turning on the misinformation hate-hose. Simply cancelling your Facebook, Threads, and Instagram accounts might mean losing touch with some friends (or the internet versions thereof), but Oliver noted the 5,000 percent surge in online searches on the topic suggest that’s a popular choice. Pressuring advertisers by asking if they want, say, Olaf from Frozen appearing in ads next to posts brimming with anti-trans slurs and Hitler quotes is always an option, too.
Naturally, Oliver put some of his (okay, HBO’s) money where his cheeky British mouth is, as well. Referring back to a particularly memorable Last Week Tonight bit from the past, Oliver steered viewers to the site johnoliverwantsyourraterotica.com. Sadly for some, that won’t get you explicit rat furry art, but will instead show you how to cut off Meta’s ability to serve you up targeted ads, which is where Facebook derives some 98 percent of its revenue. Rat-f*cking, indeed.
He also enlisted some comedy friends for Last Week Tonight‘s own version of Facebook’s explanation video for it’s new “hands off for fascists” corporate policy. Cecily Strong, Ronny Chieng, Tarik Davis, Moujan Zolfaghari, and Peter Grosz portrayed Facebook employees finally freed from grappling with whether to ban comments like “immigrants are sh*t” rather than “immigrants are sh*tty,” or whether to stem racist lies to prevent another pesky ethnic cleansing. Ultimately, the happy workers all joined in to relish in the new Facebook motto: “F*ck it.”
The video also expanded on that sentiment a bit:
Cardus Endus
In a blow for men who like their spicy chicken wings with a creamy side order of corporate-sanctioned sexual harassment, restaurant chain Hooters appears to be heading into bankruptcy. Screw the economy, this is the sort of PC police travesty only a Donald Trump executive order could fix. And might.
Last Lines Tonight
“You know how your older relatives would say, ‘I got an email from a prince in Africa who will send me a million dollars if I give him my Social Security number,’ and you had to be like, ‘No, grandma, that’s fake.’ Now you have to do that for all your relatives for all news forever.”
a facebook spokesperson (cecily strong) explaining the new way of things
“And let me just say, don’t threaten me with a good time. I’d let that broad-backed cow with Patrick Dempsey hair give me the ride of my life. There’s not a person among us who wouldn’t happily get bucked and f*cked by god’s biggest chonk.”
on the national park service warning, “you don’t pet bison. Bison pets you if you get too close.”
“Our main story tonight concerns technology. The thing that’s brought us stone tools, the catapult, the Tamagotchi, and one day, god willing, a fourth thing worth having.”
Facebook is not that fourth thing
“‘You know how it is. Chilling in the living room with the bros, cracking a six pack of Ace of Spades magnums, kicking back on your diamond encrusted sofa, and turning on the big screen TV, which in my house is a hollow box where I pay the cast of The Office to reenact my favorite scenes. Y’know, just relatable, everyday stuff, guys.'”
on Zuckerberg’s bro-hang with joe rogan
