Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (2014–…): Season 4, Episode 21 - North Korea - full transcript
LAST WEEK TONIGHT
WITH JOHN OLIVER
Welcome, welcome, welcome
to Last Week Tonight.
I am John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Sadly, we must begin with the events
in Charlottesville, Virginia,
where one person was killed
and 19 injured after a car
plowed into protesters following
a rally of white nationalists.
It was truly a weekend of horrifying
images.
We saw Nazi flags and marchers carrying
torches, tiki torches, by the way.
Because nothing says
"white nationalist",
quite like faux-Polynesian kitsch.
And look, a protester being killed
in the wake of neo-Nazis
marching in the streets of
an American city is the kind of tragedy
that calls for true leadership
from whoever is in the Oval Office.
Unfortunately, the current occupant
is this guy,
and even after a few hours
to think about it,
the best he could do was squeeze
in this response before a bill signing.
We condemn in the strongest
possible terms this egregious display
of hatred, bigotry, and violence
on many sides... on many sides.
Wait, "on many sides ?"
This was a white nationalist rally.
You have to call that out by name.
There honestly aren't many instances
in modern American politics
where you can honestly think,
"that guy really should
have mentioned the Nazis",
but this is emphatically one of them.
It's like a reverse Godwin's law,
if you fail to mention Nazism,
you lose the argument.
And having made
a wild false equivalence
between "Nazis"
and "people who oppose Nazis",
Trump moved on to his favorite subject,
himself.
It's been going on for a long time
in our country.
Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama,
it's been going on
for a long, long time.
It seems Trump's first response
to anything bad happening
is always to immediately absolve
himself of any personal responsibility.
He's the kind of guy who starts
eulogies at funerals saying,
"Great guy, I didn't kill him, but he's
a great guy and I didn't do it."
And you know who might take issue
with his statement
that the white nationalists had nothing
to do with Donald Trump ?
The white nationalists themselves.
Because here is David Duke,
during yesterday's rally.
We are determined
to take our country back.
We're going to fulfill the promises
of Donald Trump.
That's what we believed in.
That's why we voted for Donald Trump.
He said he is going to take our country
back, and that's what we gotta do.
I've got to say, David Duke and the
Nazis really seem to like Donald Trump,
which is weird, because Nazis
are a lot like cats:
if they like you, it's probably
because you're feeding them.
Also...
Cats are like Nazis,
but that's a whole different subject.
And that kind of connection there
is something that anyone
in their right mind would want to
immediately and repeatedly disavow.
And it's not like Trump wasn't given
the opportunity.
Watch what happened
at the end of his speech.
Thank you, everybody.
Mr. President ! How do you respond
to white nationalists
who say they're participating
in Charlottesville
because they support you ?
They'd like me to sign the bill here,
instead of outside.
So I think we'll do that. Okay ?
Thank you.
You know, for a second there,
as he came back to the podium,
I almost thought, well, maybe
he's about to say the right thing.
But of course not.
He had one last shot before the buzzer
on the racism clock hit zero
and he threw an air ball so far away
it landed in the Third Reich.
And for the record,
even after he signed the bill,
he got another chance.
Mr. President, do you want the support
of these white nationalist groups
who say they support you ?
Have you denounced them
strongly enough ?
A car plowed into a group of people,
would you call that terrorism ?
So here is the problem with that:
a nonanswer in a moment like this
is an answer.
If you had asked me
"have you ever been aroused"
"by the fairies in Zelda:
The Ocarina of Time ?"
and I responded by slowly
and silently walking away from you,
you would know exactly
what I was saying.
And look,
don't take that just from me,
white nationalists seemed pretty clear
about the message
that Trump had sent to them
with his response.
This is from an infamous
neo-Nazi website.
Quote, Trump comments were good.
He said he loves us all.
Also refused to answer a question about
white nationalists supporting him.
No condemnation at all.
When asked to condemn,
he just walked out of the room.
Really, really good.
God bless him.
To which God immediately released
a statement saying:
"I unequivocally condemn
the Nazis who invoked my name."
"Their beliefs and actions in no way
reflect the glory of my creation."
"I mean, what kind of fucking idiot"
"would not immediately
distance himself from them ?"
And look: maybe Trump will,
eventually, take a second swing
at personally condemning
the white nationalists.
Maybe he has since we taped this show.
But even if he does, it'll be too late.
Because his first response is
who he is.
And the truly infuriating thing is
how completely predictable this was.
Nobody, no one in their right mind,
ahead of Trump's response yesterday,
thought, "okay, well,
this is going to go well."
But that still somehow didn't negate
just how painful it was to watch.
Because it simply doesn't get easier
than disavowing Nazis.
It's as much of a presidential gimme
as pardoning a fucking turkey.
It is almost impossible to screw it up.
But that's exactly what happened.
So there is clearly no point waiting
for leadership from our president
at moments like this,
because it is just not coming.
Which means we will have to look
to one another.
Because incredibly,
in a country where previous presidents
have actually had to defeat Nazis,
we now have one who cannot even be
bothered to fucking condemn them.
And now, this.
And now, highlights from Robocup 2017.
And now, highlights from Robocup 2017
vastly improved by Univision Deportes
commentator Luis Omar Tapia.
Goaaaaaaaaaaal !
Moving on.
Our main story tonight concerns
North Korea,
America's number one excuse
for putting off chores this week.
"I could do laundry, but if the world's
about to erupt into nuclear war,"
"what really is the point ?"
North Korea has clearly been
on everyone's minds this week,
and I think you know why.
President Trump and North Korea
escalate the war of words,
lobbing new threats
and sending new tweets.
North Korea now accusing the president
of the United States
of pushing the world to, quote,
the brink of nuclear war.
When Twitter was invented,
I'll bet even they didn't imagine
that it would one day lead us to
the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
It's like if the invention of the Furby
had led to the Sudanese Civil War.
Who knew that that's where
it was headed ?
Now tensions have sharply
escalated this week,
which is a little surprising,
given that the world has been dealing
with North Korea's provocative
missile tests for years now.
Just two weeks ago,
they were doing this.
North Korea fires yet another missile,
but Pyongyang claims this one
will be able to hit the U.S. mainland,
striking cities like Los Angeles,
Denver, Chicago,
and possibly even
New York and Boston.
Wait, New York ? I live in New York !
This shit just got real !
Now, I think if everyone
is really honest,
your level of fear over the North Korea
situation is in direct proportion
to whether or not they can hit
the exact place where you live.
We film this show on 57th Street.
If you told me that the blast radius
stops at 56th Street,
I'd think "well, I hope
nothing happens,"
"but we've still got some time
before things get serious."
Now, it is worth properly understanding
what North Korea
is currently capable of.
Because while their missiles
may be able to reach us,
and they do have
nuclear warheads,
most experts believe that they
don't yet have the technology
to reliably hit
the U.S. mainland.
So that is reassuring.
Although, on the other hand, a recent
Pentagon assessment did suggest
that they could cross
that threshold next year.
So if a job interviewer asks you,
"where do you see yourself
in five years' time ?"
it is now perfectly acceptable just
to scream in terror into their face.
Look, this is clearly a very serious
situation, requiring a deft hand.
And sadly, that's not what it got.
North Korea best not make any more
threats to the United States.
They will be met with fire and fury,
like the world has never seen.
"Fire and fury" ?
The only way that
that is not terrifying is
if you report it the way that one
newspaper actually did in Maine,
saying "Trump warns of fire and furry,"
in which case Trump was threatening
to send this to North Korea,
which is a very different
kind of threat.
Now, in response, North Korea
announced plans to fire missiles
that would land just off the coast
of the U.S. territory of Guam.
Which is frightening,
although not unprecedented.
They have made similar threats before.
But what is different this time,
obviously,
is that we now have a president who has
the general temperament of a wet cat.
And in response to that Guam threat,
Trump promptly doubled down.
Frankly the people that were
questioning that statement,
was it too tough,
maybe it wasn't tough enough.
If anything, that statement may not be
tough enough.
What would be tougher
than fire and fury ?
Well, you'll see, you'll see.
"Yeah, we're gonna go
with that bomb"
"more destructive than the nuclear
bomb. Why ? I don't know !"
"Who cares that it doesn't exist ?
Sincerely yours, Donald Trump."
"I'm not writing a letter, I'm talking.
Says you. Fake news. Goodbye !"
So tonight, we thought we would ask:
What, exactly,
is North Korea thinking ?
How did we get into this mess ?
And what can we possibly do about it ?
And let's start by trying to understand
just a little bit more
about North Korea.
And that in itself is difficult.
It's one of the most isolated nations
on Earth.
If you know anything about it at all,
it's probably just that they have
a wacky, totalitarian leader
who loves military parades
and Dennis Rodman,
and who really didn't like that Seth
Rogen movie about his assassination.
And it can be hard to trust
any information about North Korea,
because lots of it is inaccurate,
for multiple reasons.
First, there's the outright state
propaganda,
which glorifies North Korea's leaders,
the Kim family.
Just last year, we showed you
western journalists
being taken on a tour
of a historic target range,
where they learned something
suspiciously impressive
about Kim Jong-un's father.
Comrade Kim Jong-il shot three bullets
and three of them got bullseye.
They all got bulls-eye ?
And how old was he at the time ?
He was 7-year-old.
- A 7-year-old got three bulls-eyes ?
- Yeah.
That's pretty impressive.
I mean, that is the mm-hmm of someone
who really wants to shut down
a conversation.
She sounds like a parent fielding
questions about where babies come from.
"So, a stork brings the baby ?"
"Mm-hmm."
"It carries an 8-pound baby through
the air in its mouth ?" "Mm-hmm."
"Isn't that dangerous ?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Where does the stork get the babies ?"
"Storks fuck ! They fuck each other !"
"Storks fuck each other and the baby
comes out of the stork's vagina !"
"Don't ask for the truth
if you can't handle it !"
But, here's the thing: inaccuracies
like that are easy to spot.
What is trickier is that
a lot of eye-catching Western
reporting about North Korea
can be shakily sourced, like this one.
The BBC reports all of the men
in the Hermit Kingdom
must now sport the same haircut
as the dear leader, Kim Jong-un.
His look was known
as the Chinese smuggler haircut
not too long ago in the region,
but now it will be known as the haircut
every man in North Korea must have.
Lucky them.
Here's the thing: there is no solid
evidence that that story is true.
But it is seductive,
because it sounds like it could be.
It's like if you saw the headline:
"Trump to NATO: I invented squirrels."
You'd believe it, because it sounds
like something he would have claimed,
even though, as of this taping,
he has not.
And while it may not be true
that all men had to get the same
haircut as Kim Jong-un,
state TV did run a series called
"let us trim our hair in accordance
with the socialist lifestyle".
And it's weird when a verifiable truth
is almost as strange as a wild rumor.
It's like how the "Richard Gere
put a gerbil in his ass" story
is completely false,
but what if the truth was
that he engaged in consensual mutual
anal play with a chinchilla ?
That would still be bizarre.
You wouldn't have to exaggerate that.
And sometimes, the truth about life
in North Korea
can be just as striking
as the urban legends.
For instance, you may've seen claims
online
that "every teacher in North Korea
is obligated to play the accordion."
We could not confirm that,
although in trying to, we did discover
that North Korea does love
the accordion to a surprising extent.
The country is full of them.
Here is an accordion factory.
Here's some schoolchildren playing
the accordion.
Here's Kim Jong-un looking
at an accordion.
Here is an air combat exercise,
where the camera pans across pilots
and guess what ?
Yep.
It's a fucking accordion.
They also have a very popular song
called "Nothing To Envy In The World"
that begins with the line
"the sky is blue, my heart is merry,
let the sound of accordions ring."
And then there is this video
of North Koreans
playing the last song
that you would expect.
Yes, that is North Korean accordionists
playing "Take on Me".
So, beat that, everyone else
who plays the accordion !
By which I mean, exactly two old French
men, and one Weird Al Yankovic.
And if you think that
that is the most amazing piece
of North Korean pop culture that you're
going to see tonight, you are wrong.
Because let me introduce you
to "Pulgasari",
a 1985 movie known
as the "North Korean Godzilla".
The whole thing is incredible, but this
is undoubtedly my favorite part.
You know why I love that ?
It's relatable.
No matter where you're from,
or what your religious
or political beliefs are,
at some point, everybody
has been about to decapitate someone
and then out of nowhere
a baby monster jumps up
and takes a bite out
of your sword.
It works because it resonates.
And look: we're all having fun,
we're laughing about North Korea !
And it can be very funny.
But the very fact that that is true
can be extremely frustrating
to journalists who cover it.
It's always an exaggeration, and
a parody, and kind of a freak show.
Which I think those of us who cover
North Korea find a bit distressing
because it's not actually very funny to
the 24 million people who live there.
She's right.
She's absolutely right.
And even when North Korea
is objectively funny,
like with "Pulgasari,"
it has dark undertones.
Because Kim Jong-il got that movie made
by abducting two of South Korea's
biggest names in film,
and forcing them
to make movies for him for years.
And you know what ?
They did eventually escape.
So I'm going to go ahead and say
and I know this is not going
to be a popular opinion,
but if that's what it took to give us
that baby monster scene,
it was fucking worth it.
Just my opinion, just my opinion.
But the underlying truth
of North Korea is
that it is a dark place,
not just figuratively, but literally.
You can get a sense of how
little development has been there
when you look at it from space.
See that void where there is almost
no lights ?
That's North Korea.
It looks like a divorced dad's
Christmas tree,
where he gave up halfway
through hanging the lights,
got drunk and fell asleep
watching "Ken Burns: Baseball."
And the Kim family is known
for their bone-chilling cruelty
and mismanagement.
They were largely responsible
for the deaths
of somewhere between six hundred
thousand and 2.5 million people
during a famine in the 1990s.
And we know that there are large,
brutal camps
where political dissidents
are imprisoned,
sometimes alongside
their extended families.
Satellite images show their scale,
but for a picture
of what they're really like,
we can only rely
on those who've been there.
Every night someone tries to escape.
Or someone doesn't obey their orders.
For that they strip you naked.
And start the beating...
They beat you all night long.
These sketches are the recollections
of other prisoners who've managed
to escape the camps.
That is truly horrific.
But the existence, the continued
existence of those camps
brings us to a really important point
to understand:
Kim Jong-un is terrified
of losing power.
And while we love to present him
as a madman, many experts believe
that his actions are motivated
by rational self-preservation.
He has seen leaders like Saddam
Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi
scale back their nuclear programs,
only to be overthrown,
either by the U.S.
or by their own people,
and die gruesome deaths.
And it's true that dictators
generally don't end their careers
like disgraced American politicians,
with a stint
on Dancing With The Stars,
although that would've been
an incredible season.
Saddam, that foxtrot was a weapon
of mass seduction.
And Muammar, you worked hard
and it showed.
So, Kim Jong-un has continued
his family's military first policy,
spending huge amounts of money
on what is the fourth largest military
on Earth
and an expensive nuclear program,
in an impoverished country
whose economy has been estimated
to be smaller than that
of Birmingham, Alabama.
And Birmingham is a small economy.
Their most notable export is American
Idol season five winner Taylor Hicks.
Not that I am saying
that's a bad thing.
Soul Patrol forever !
Soul Patrol till I fucking die.
So, how can Kim Jong-un justify
that spending ?
Well, he argues that the huge military
is the only thing
staving off imminent invasion
from a host of outsiders.
And that is where we come in.
Because the most dominant
and useful villain
in North Korea's narrative
is the United States.
And it is not like that comes out
of nowhere.
We sided with the South
during the Korean War.
And while many Americans
may have forgotten
just how devastating that war was,
the North Koreans certainly haven't.
They have an entire museum devoted
to American war atrocities.
And I am not saying
that there were none,
but I don't think any were quite
as over-the-top as this.
In the last liberation war,
during our strategic retreat,
the American hyenas
occupied the land of Shinchon.
They arrested Min Young Shik
and stabbed her muscles
with a three-pronged spear
and sucked her flowing blood.
They also took the flesh
from her thighs using a bayonet,
dipped it in salt, and ate it.
And in case you're wondering:
yes, you can buy coasters depicting
that scene in the gift shop.
But they are 16 dollars,
which is the real war crime there !
And the North Koreans' indoctrination
in anti-Americanism
starts extremely young,
as one defector remembers.
In math book says, you know,
there are four American bastards.
You kill two of them.
Then how many American bastards
are there left to kill ?
And as a child I had to say,
two American bastards.
And that was my education.
Holy shit ! It is fascinating
when a country's culture seeps
even into their math lessons,
although it's not really surprising.
As a British child,
our math questions were,
if Johnny has two artifacts,
and Dinesh has two artifacts,
then how many artifacts
is Johnny about to have ?
The answer, of course:
all the artifacts.
Dinesh's family can come visit them
in the British Museum
whenever they're in town.
And the notion that North Korea
is working on a bomb
that can kill
all the American bastards
is a tremendous
source of national pride.
There have been stamps depicting
missiles hurtling towards
the U.S. Capitol,
and a few years ago,
they produced a video
depicting the destruction
of New York,
set to the least
appropriate song imaginable.
Yes, you heard right, that was
a karaoke version of We Are The World,
set to New York in flames.
And the last time I saw a karaoke song
with background imagery
that inappropriate was
every time
I have ever sung karaoke.
I don't know what LL Cool J's
"Doin' It"
has to do with these two babies
in a field of sunflowers,
but it's making
everybody uncomfortable.
So the North Korean regime
has been very careful
about presenting a threatening image
of Americans to its people.
And some activists have actually
been trying to undermine that
by sneaking information
into the country on USB drives.
We send various content
from stories on human rights,
general information on South Korea, to
images depicting the average American.
Or a fictional version
of the average American:
TV shows like The Mentalist
and Desperate Housewives.
Kang says scenes like this one
from NCIS...
Anything you say can and will be used
against you in a court of law.
...that show police officers reading
suspects their rights are very useful.
You know what, if nothing else,
we finally have our answer
to the decade-long question:
who the fuck is watching NCIS ?
It turns out it's all your mom's
friends, and the people of North Korea.
And if you think about it, that is very
dangerous for Kim Jong-un.
Because if people get a sense
that the image of America
that he has carefully painted for them
is false, he could have huge problems.
And when you understand him
in that light,
as a dictator desperately
hedging against a loss of power,
it is possible to understand
why all his recent threats against
the United States have been reckless,
but, in his mind, also rational.
And that brings us
to the key question here:
what are we going to do
about this ?
Because on the campaign trail, Donald
Trump made it all seem very simple.
They said, would you speak
to the leader of North Korea ?
I said, absolutely.
Why not ? Why not ?
And they come out:
Trump would speak to him !
Who the hell cares ?
I'll speak to anybody.
Who knows ? There's a ten percent
or a twenty percent chance
that I can talk him out
of those damn nukes,
'cause who the hell wants him
to have nukes ?
And there's a chance !
No, no, there really isn't.
Partly because remember:
Kim Jong-un believes they are critical
for his survival,
and on top of that,
Donald Trump is a shitty negotiator.
In his short presidency,
he has failed to get Mexico
to pay for his stupid wall,
he's failed to get a Congress his party
controls to pass a health care bill,
and even when his administration
does get something done,
it way oversells it,
like when the White House announced
a trade deal with China as very big
news, gigantic and Herculean,
and one much-celebrated component
turned out to be
lifting a ban on beef imports
that China had preliminarily
agreed to last September.
So way to fucking go there, Donald !
What a very big, Herculean deal !
Thanks to you,
except not entirely thanks to you,
America is now marginally more able
to export beef again !
And since taking office,
Trump has voiced support
for an even simpler solution.
China is helping us possibly
or probably
with the North Korean
situation.
Okay ? Which is a great thing.
Great thing.
So, in the space
of fourteen seconds there,
he said the word great twice,
he pronounced Chinaaaa with three
syllables,
suggested someone else
should do the work for him,
and then threw in
a possibly or probably,
rendering the whole thing
meaningless.
I think I may have just hit
Trump bingo,
and the prize that I want
is to go drown in a river.
But Trump's idea there
of convincing China to exert influence
on North Korea is not inherently crazy,
China shares an 800-mile border
with North Korea,
and accounts for as much as 90 percent
of North Korea's total trade,
so they do have significant
leverage.
But, some are skeptical about just
what China could, or is willing to do.
Take sanctions.
The UN have tried multiple rounds
of increasingly harsh sanctions,
but North Korea has always found
easy ways around them.
North Korea is a 100% state enterprise,
so these companies change
their names the next day
if they're listed for sanctions.
That way the company stays,
but with different names
whenever there are sanctions.
If I'm included in the list,
my name can be changed too.
Yeah, and that is some pretty weak
enforcement.
Think about it this way:
Let's say HBO decided
they wanted to cancel this show.
Their hand would be pretty weak
if I was just able to get around that
simply by changing the name
to Earlier Times But Now,
starring
Spance Mörgendörffer.
And it is true that China could
increase enforcement of its sanctions,
but they are understandably worried
about where that could lead.
What they worry about is, if they
do that, will the regime collapse ?
What does that mean ? Millions
of refugees pouring into China,
possibly unified Korea
that is then a pro-American country
sitting on their southern border,
which, don't forget, there are 30,000
American troops in South Korea,
which would then be on China's border,
and, by the way, 15 nuclear weapons.
You know that there are a lot of
problems when you end up saying,
oh and by the way: 15 nuclear weapons.
Imagine you were a babysitter
and you heard
okay, you've got his Epipen,
you know about his nut allergy,
he needs his inhaler every hour oh, and
by the way: he has 15 nuclear weapons.
Now, Trump has also been mentioning
military solutions.
But even targeted strikes
against weapons systems
could get out of hand very fast.
North Korea would likely retaliate
and they have an estimated
8,000 pieces of heavy artillery
stationed just north of the DMZ,
which is here.
And that artillery is capable
of reaching Seoul,
which is just 40 miles away,
and is an area with 25 million people.
So even a non-nuclear war
could have horrific results.
And let's just engage
in some truly magical thinking:
what if you could somehow just take out
Kim Jong-un ?
Well, you've probably got an immediate
humanitarian crisis on your hands,
as well as a leaderless country with
a power vacuum and nuclear weapons.
And as we've learned from Iraq
and Afghanistan,
when regimes fall
and there is no plan in place,
that vacuum
can be filled with terrible things.
We do not want to find out
what North Korea's ISIS would be.
Even just the phrase North Korea's ISIS
is absolutely terrifying.
It's like saying 9/11's Bill Cosby.
What would that even be ?
I hope we never have to find out.
So sanctions are no guarantee, and
military action could be catastrophic.
And diplomacy is going to be difficult,
given that you usually need
to have a specific goal in mind,
and Trump seems to be making
all of this up as he goes along.
We are learning stunning new details
about President Trump's extraordinary
fire and fury threat tonight,
multiple sources telling CNN
the president adlibbed those words,
they were improvised on the fly.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
That is just not a good idea.
As I'm sure someone
has had to say
to Wayne Brady
at a funeral more than once:
now is not a good time
to improvise.
Here's a one-word suggestion, Wayne:
mourn. Mourn like a person.
And look, the thing is that's not
a surprise !
Deep down, we all assumed
that he was winging it.
We have become accustomed
to discounting a large percentage
of what comes out of his face.
But North Korea is listening
to what he says.
And the people there have been primed
for decades
to believe that America
is on the brink of an invasion.
Just look at their government's
response to his fire and fury line.
The American commander in chief
remains stuck at a golf course,
oblivious to what is happening,
and talking about such nonsense
as 'fire and fury'.
Since it is impossible
to have talks with people who are
incapable of rational thought,
the strategic armed forces has judged
that we must respond
with absolute force.
Hey, hey, hey, okay, just to be clear:
the president is not stuck
at a golf course.
Unless the cart ran out of gas
and he has to walk.
In which case, yes, the president
is very much stuck at a golf course,
and may need to be airlifted out.
So here is where we are,
we have two nuclear-armed leaders,
who are accustomed to issuing empty
threats to impress their own people,
and they are now currently goading each
other towards Armageddon.
Which is absolutely terrifying.
And I don't really have a solution
to this.
But part of me would love the chance
to speak directly
to the North Korean people.
So on the off chance that this show
is smuggled over their border
on a USB drive
crammed with NCIS episodes,
I would just like to say this:
Hi, North Korea.
You may be hearing some frightening
rhetoric from our president.
But, if it helps at all,
when our president says words,
he doesn't necessarily mean
what those words mean.
It's very difficult to describe to you.
We're still trying to wrap our heads
around it ourselves.
Really, it's our problem, except it is
now kind of your problem, too.
But I want to talk to you
about some misconceptions.
Because we certainly have
misconceptions about you,
but you should know, ideally,
that we are not remotely what
your state propaganda implies either.
We honestly do not spend our days
plotting your destruction.
We spend them sharing cat memes,
and spinning fidgii,
and getting furiously angry
about a singing boy
barely appearing
in our favorite dragon show.
So, for what it's worth,
I would like to give you,
the North Korean people,
a sense of how America
is feeling right now,
in a way that you might understand
and enjoy.
And that is through the international
language of the accordion.
And I have some good news
and some bad news there.
The bad news is,
I do not play the accordion.
The good news is, I know someone
who plays it like a fucking angel.
Ladies and gentlemen,
and the people of North Korea,
please welcome Mr. Weird Al Yankovic.
Would you annihilate us
if you had the chance ?
That's such an anti-social thing to do.
You've got us crapping
our collective pants
May I suggest you take it down
a notch or two ?
We're not exactly sure
why you're upset.
Did that Seth Rogen movie make you
super mad ?
You'd like us if you got to know us,
I bet.
We're mostly harmless, decent people,
hey, we're really not so bad.
My point is...
Please don't nuke us, North Korea !
Right now we're all a little tense.
Believe me, we don't hate you !
Frankly, we don't even think
that much about you.
No offense !
Now you might call us bloodthirsty
dogs, but that metaphor's not very apt.
We're just a bunch of simple
fidget spinnin', goofy dorks
who probably
couldn't find your country on a map.
No, we're not savages or cannibals.
Well, maybe just a really,
really, really small percent.
So I think it would be best if you'd
knock off those missile tests.
Don't turn us into cinder
while we're swipin' right on Tinder.
Don't jump-start Armageddon
or our beds we'll soon be wettin'.
Won't you think this through
for a moment ?
Please, now why would you bomb
our nice celebrities ?
Oh, why in the world would you kill
Tom Hanks ?
'Cause nobody doesn't like Tom Hanks !
So, please don't nuke us, North Korea !
That would seriously ruin our day.
Remember, we're not evil psychotic
monsters,
no matter what the news
may say.
We're just those goofballs
from the USA.
Weird Al Yankovic,
ladies and gentlemen.
That's our show.
Thank you for watching.
We'll see you next week, good night !
WITH JOHN OLIVER
Welcome, welcome, welcome
to Last Week Tonight.
I am John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Sadly, we must begin with the events
in Charlottesville, Virginia,
where one person was killed
and 19 injured after a car
plowed into protesters following
a rally of white nationalists.
It was truly a weekend of horrifying
images.
We saw Nazi flags and marchers carrying
torches, tiki torches, by the way.
Because nothing says
"white nationalist",
quite like faux-Polynesian kitsch.
And look, a protester being killed
in the wake of neo-Nazis
marching in the streets of
an American city is the kind of tragedy
that calls for true leadership
from whoever is in the Oval Office.
Unfortunately, the current occupant
is this guy,
and even after a few hours
to think about it,
the best he could do was squeeze
in this response before a bill signing.
We condemn in the strongest
possible terms this egregious display
of hatred, bigotry, and violence
on many sides... on many sides.
Wait, "on many sides ?"
This was a white nationalist rally.
You have to call that out by name.
There honestly aren't many instances
in modern American politics
where you can honestly think,
"that guy really should
have mentioned the Nazis",
but this is emphatically one of them.
It's like a reverse Godwin's law,
if you fail to mention Nazism,
you lose the argument.
And having made
a wild false equivalence
between "Nazis"
and "people who oppose Nazis",
Trump moved on to his favorite subject,
himself.
It's been going on for a long time
in our country.
Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama,
it's been going on
for a long, long time.
It seems Trump's first response
to anything bad happening
is always to immediately absolve
himself of any personal responsibility.
He's the kind of guy who starts
eulogies at funerals saying,
"Great guy, I didn't kill him, but he's
a great guy and I didn't do it."
And you know who might take issue
with his statement
that the white nationalists had nothing
to do with Donald Trump ?
The white nationalists themselves.
Because here is David Duke,
during yesterday's rally.
We are determined
to take our country back.
We're going to fulfill the promises
of Donald Trump.
That's what we believed in.
That's why we voted for Donald Trump.
He said he is going to take our country
back, and that's what we gotta do.
I've got to say, David Duke and the
Nazis really seem to like Donald Trump,
which is weird, because Nazis
are a lot like cats:
if they like you, it's probably
because you're feeding them.
Also...
Cats are like Nazis,
but that's a whole different subject.
And that kind of connection there
is something that anyone
in their right mind would want to
immediately and repeatedly disavow.
And it's not like Trump wasn't given
the opportunity.
Watch what happened
at the end of his speech.
Thank you, everybody.
Mr. President ! How do you respond
to white nationalists
who say they're participating
in Charlottesville
because they support you ?
They'd like me to sign the bill here,
instead of outside.
So I think we'll do that. Okay ?
Thank you.
You know, for a second there,
as he came back to the podium,
I almost thought, well, maybe
he's about to say the right thing.
But of course not.
He had one last shot before the buzzer
on the racism clock hit zero
and he threw an air ball so far away
it landed in the Third Reich.
And for the record,
even after he signed the bill,
he got another chance.
Mr. President, do you want the support
of these white nationalist groups
who say they support you ?
Have you denounced them
strongly enough ?
A car plowed into a group of people,
would you call that terrorism ?
So here is the problem with that:
a nonanswer in a moment like this
is an answer.
If you had asked me
"have you ever been aroused"
"by the fairies in Zelda:
The Ocarina of Time ?"
and I responded by slowly
and silently walking away from you,
you would know exactly
what I was saying.
And look,
don't take that just from me,
white nationalists seemed pretty clear
about the message
that Trump had sent to them
with his response.
This is from an infamous
neo-Nazi website.
Quote, Trump comments were good.
He said he loves us all.
Also refused to answer a question about
white nationalists supporting him.
No condemnation at all.
When asked to condemn,
he just walked out of the room.
Really, really good.
God bless him.
To which God immediately released
a statement saying:
"I unequivocally condemn
the Nazis who invoked my name."
"Their beliefs and actions in no way
reflect the glory of my creation."
"I mean, what kind of fucking idiot"
"would not immediately
distance himself from them ?"
And look: maybe Trump will,
eventually, take a second swing
at personally condemning
the white nationalists.
Maybe he has since we taped this show.
But even if he does, it'll be too late.
Because his first response is
who he is.
And the truly infuriating thing is
how completely predictable this was.
Nobody, no one in their right mind,
ahead of Trump's response yesterday,
thought, "okay, well,
this is going to go well."
But that still somehow didn't negate
just how painful it was to watch.
Because it simply doesn't get easier
than disavowing Nazis.
It's as much of a presidential gimme
as pardoning a fucking turkey.
It is almost impossible to screw it up.
But that's exactly what happened.
So there is clearly no point waiting
for leadership from our president
at moments like this,
because it is just not coming.
Which means we will have to look
to one another.
Because incredibly,
in a country where previous presidents
have actually had to defeat Nazis,
we now have one who cannot even be
bothered to fucking condemn them.
And now, this.
And now, highlights from Robocup 2017.
And now, highlights from Robocup 2017
vastly improved by Univision Deportes
commentator Luis Omar Tapia.
Goaaaaaaaaaaal !
Moving on.
Our main story tonight concerns
North Korea,
America's number one excuse
for putting off chores this week.
"I could do laundry, but if the world's
about to erupt into nuclear war,"
"what really is the point ?"
North Korea has clearly been
on everyone's minds this week,
and I think you know why.
President Trump and North Korea
escalate the war of words,
lobbing new threats
and sending new tweets.
North Korea now accusing the president
of the United States
of pushing the world to, quote,
the brink of nuclear war.
When Twitter was invented,
I'll bet even they didn't imagine
that it would one day lead us to
the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
It's like if the invention of the Furby
had led to the Sudanese Civil War.
Who knew that that's where
it was headed ?
Now tensions have sharply
escalated this week,
which is a little surprising,
given that the world has been dealing
with North Korea's provocative
missile tests for years now.
Just two weeks ago,
they were doing this.
North Korea fires yet another missile,
but Pyongyang claims this one
will be able to hit the U.S. mainland,
striking cities like Los Angeles,
Denver, Chicago,
and possibly even
New York and Boston.
Wait, New York ? I live in New York !
This shit just got real !
Now, I think if everyone
is really honest,
your level of fear over the North Korea
situation is in direct proportion
to whether or not they can hit
the exact place where you live.
We film this show on 57th Street.
If you told me that the blast radius
stops at 56th Street,
I'd think "well, I hope
nothing happens,"
"but we've still got some time
before things get serious."
Now, it is worth properly understanding
what North Korea
is currently capable of.
Because while their missiles
may be able to reach us,
and they do have
nuclear warheads,
most experts believe that they
don't yet have the technology
to reliably hit
the U.S. mainland.
So that is reassuring.
Although, on the other hand, a recent
Pentagon assessment did suggest
that they could cross
that threshold next year.
So if a job interviewer asks you,
"where do you see yourself
in five years' time ?"
it is now perfectly acceptable just
to scream in terror into their face.
Look, this is clearly a very serious
situation, requiring a deft hand.
And sadly, that's not what it got.
North Korea best not make any more
threats to the United States.
They will be met with fire and fury,
like the world has never seen.
"Fire and fury" ?
The only way that
that is not terrifying is
if you report it the way that one
newspaper actually did in Maine,
saying "Trump warns of fire and furry,"
in which case Trump was threatening
to send this to North Korea,
which is a very different
kind of threat.
Now, in response, North Korea
announced plans to fire missiles
that would land just off the coast
of the U.S. territory of Guam.
Which is frightening,
although not unprecedented.
They have made similar threats before.
But what is different this time,
obviously,
is that we now have a president who has
the general temperament of a wet cat.
And in response to that Guam threat,
Trump promptly doubled down.
Frankly the people that were
questioning that statement,
was it too tough,
maybe it wasn't tough enough.
If anything, that statement may not be
tough enough.
What would be tougher
than fire and fury ?
Well, you'll see, you'll see.
"Yeah, we're gonna go
with that bomb"
"more destructive than the nuclear
bomb. Why ? I don't know !"
"Who cares that it doesn't exist ?
Sincerely yours, Donald Trump."
"I'm not writing a letter, I'm talking.
Says you. Fake news. Goodbye !"
So tonight, we thought we would ask:
What, exactly,
is North Korea thinking ?
How did we get into this mess ?
And what can we possibly do about it ?
And let's start by trying to understand
just a little bit more
about North Korea.
And that in itself is difficult.
It's one of the most isolated nations
on Earth.
If you know anything about it at all,
it's probably just that they have
a wacky, totalitarian leader
who loves military parades
and Dennis Rodman,
and who really didn't like that Seth
Rogen movie about his assassination.
And it can be hard to trust
any information about North Korea,
because lots of it is inaccurate,
for multiple reasons.
First, there's the outright state
propaganda,
which glorifies North Korea's leaders,
the Kim family.
Just last year, we showed you
western journalists
being taken on a tour
of a historic target range,
where they learned something
suspiciously impressive
about Kim Jong-un's father.
Comrade Kim Jong-il shot three bullets
and three of them got bullseye.
They all got bulls-eye ?
And how old was he at the time ?
He was 7-year-old.
- A 7-year-old got three bulls-eyes ?
- Yeah.
That's pretty impressive.
I mean, that is the mm-hmm of someone
who really wants to shut down
a conversation.
She sounds like a parent fielding
questions about where babies come from.
"So, a stork brings the baby ?"
"Mm-hmm."
"It carries an 8-pound baby through
the air in its mouth ?" "Mm-hmm."
"Isn't that dangerous ?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Where does the stork get the babies ?"
"Storks fuck ! They fuck each other !"
"Storks fuck each other and the baby
comes out of the stork's vagina !"
"Don't ask for the truth
if you can't handle it !"
But, here's the thing: inaccuracies
like that are easy to spot.
What is trickier is that
a lot of eye-catching Western
reporting about North Korea
can be shakily sourced, like this one.
The BBC reports all of the men
in the Hermit Kingdom
must now sport the same haircut
as the dear leader, Kim Jong-un.
His look was known
as the Chinese smuggler haircut
not too long ago in the region,
but now it will be known as the haircut
every man in North Korea must have.
Lucky them.
Here's the thing: there is no solid
evidence that that story is true.
But it is seductive,
because it sounds like it could be.
It's like if you saw the headline:
"Trump to NATO: I invented squirrels."
You'd believe it, because it sounds
like something he would have claimed,
even though, as of this taping,
he has not.
And while it may not be true
that all men had to get the same
haircut as Kim Jong-un,
state TV did run a series called
"let us trim our hair in accordance
with the socialist lifestyle".
And it's weird when a verifiable truth
is almost as strange as a wild rumor.
It's like how the "Richard Gere
put a gerbil in his ass" story
is completely false,
but what if the truth was
that he engaged in consensual mutual
anal play with a chinchilla ?
That would still be bizarre.
You wouldn't have to exaggerate that.
And sometimes, the truth about life
in North Korea
can be just as striking
as the urban legends.
For instance, you may've seen claims
online
that "every teacher in North Korea
is obligated to play the accordion."
We could not confirm that,
although in trying to, we did discover
that North Korea does love
the accordion to a surprising extent.
The country is full of them.
Here is an accordion factory.
Here's some schoolchildren playing
the accordion.
Here's Kim Jong-un looking
at an accordion.
Here is an air combat exercise,
where the camera pans across pilots
and guess what ?
Yep.
It's a fucking accordion.
They also have a very popular song
called "Nothing To Envy In The World"
that begins with the line
"the sky is blue, my heart is merry,
let the sound of accordions ring."
And then there is this video
of North Koreans
playing the last song
that you would expect.
Yes, that is North Korean accordionists
playing "Take on Me".
So, beat that, everyone else
who plays the accordion !
By which I mean, exactly two old French
men, and one Weird Al Yankovic.
And if you think that
that is the most amazing piece
of North Korean pop culture that you're
going to see tonight, you are wrong.
Because let me introduce you
to "Pulgasari",
a 1985 movie known
as the "North Korean Godzilla".
The whole thing is incredible, but this
is undoubtedly my favorite part.
You know why I love that ?
It's relatable.
No matter where you're from,
or what your religious
or political beliefs are,
at some point, everybody
has been about to decapitate someone
and then out of nowhere
a baby monster jumps up
and takes a bite out
of your sword.
It works because it resonates.
And look: we're all having fun,
we're laughing about North Korea !
And it can be very funny.
But the very fact that that is true
can be extremely frustrating
to journalists who cover it.
It's always an exaggeration, and
a parody, and kind of a freak show.
Which I think those of us who cover
North Korea find a bit distressing
because it's not actually very funny to
the 24 million people who live there.
She's right.
She's absolutely right.
And even when North Korea
is objectively funny,
like with "Pulgasari,"
it has dark undertones.
Because Kim Jong-il got that movie made
by abducting two of South Korea's
biggest names in film,
and forcing them
to make movies for him for years.
And you know what ?
They did eventually escape.
So I'm going to go ahead and say
and I know this is not going
to be a popular opinion,
but if that's what it took to give us
that baby monster scene,
it was fucking worth it.
Just my opinion, just my opinion.
But the underlying truth
of North Korea is
that it is a dark place,
not just figuratively, but literally.
You can get a sense of how
little development has been there
when you look at it from space.
See that void where there is almost
no lights ?
That's North Korea.
It looks like a divorced dad's
Christmas tree,
where he gave up halfway
through hanging the lights,
got drunk and fell asleep
watching "Ken Burns: Baseball."
And the Kim family is known
for their bone-chilling cruelty
and mismanagement.
They were largely responsible
for the deaths
of somewhere between six hundred
thousand and 2.5 million people
during a famine in the 1990s.
And we know that there are large,
brutal camps
where political dissidents
are imprisoned,
sometimes alongside
their extended families.
Satellite images show their scale,
but for a picture
of what they're really like,
we can only rely
on those who've been there.
Every night someone tries to escape.
Or someone doesn't obey their orders.
For that they strip you naked.
And start the beating...
They beat you all night long.
These sketches are the recollections
of other prisoners who've managed
to escape the camps.
That is truly horrific.
But the existence, the continued
existence of those camps
brings us to a really important point
to understand:
Kim Jong-un is terrified
of losing power.
And while we love to present him
as a madman, many experts believe
that his actions are motivated
by rational self-preservation.
He has seen leaders like Saddam
Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi
scale back their nuclear programs,
only to be overthrown,
either by the U.S.
or by their own people,
and die gruesome deaths.
And it's true that dictators
generally don't end their careers
like disgraced American politicians,
with a stint
on Dancing With The Stars,
although that would've been
an incredible season.
Saddam, that foxtrot was a weapon
of mass seduction.
And Muammar, you worked hard
and it showed.
So, Kim Jong-un has continued
his family's military first policy,
spending huge amounts of money
on what is the fourth largest military
on Earth
and an expensive nuclear program,
in an impoverished country
whose economy has been estimated
to be smaller than that
of Birmingham, Alabama.
And Birmingham is a small economy.
Their most notable export is American
Idol season five winner Taylor Hicks.
Not that I am saying
that's a bad thing.
Soul Patrol forever !
Soul Patrol till I fucking die.
So, how can Kim Jong-un justify
that spending ?
Well, he argues that the huge military
is the only thing
staving off imminent invasion
from a host of outsiders.
And that is where we come in.
Because the most dominant
and useful villain
in North Korea's narrative
is the United States.
And it is not like that comes out
of nowhere.
We sided with the South
during the Korean War.
And while many Americans
may have forgotten
just how devastating that war was,
the North Koreans certainly haven't.
They have an entire museum devoted
to American war atrocities.
And I am not saying
that there were none,
but I don't think any were quite
as over-the-top as this.
In the last liberation war,
during our strategic retreat,
the American hyenas
occupied the land of Shinchon.
They arrested Min Young Shik
and stabbed her muscles
with a three-pronged spear
and sucked her flowing blood.
They also took the flesh
from her thighs using a bayonet,
dipped it in salt, and ate it.
And in case you're wondering:
yes, you can buy coasters depicting
that scene in the gift shop.
But they are 16 dollars,
which is the real war crime there !
And the North Koreans' indoctrination
in anti-Americanism
starts extremely young,
as one defector remembers.
In math book says, you know,
there are four American bastards.
You kill two of them.
Then how many American bastards
are there left to kill ?
And as a child I had to say,
two American bastards.
And that was my education.
Holy shit ! It is fascinating
when a country's culture seeps
even into their math lessons,
although it's not really surprising.
As a British child,
our math questions were,
if Johnny has two artifacts,
and Dinesh has two artifacts,
then how many artifacts
is Johnny about to have ?
The answer, of course:
all the artifacts.
Dinesh's family can come visit them
in the British Museum
whenever they're in town.
And the notion that North Korea
is working on a bomb
that can kill
all the American bastards
is a tremendous
source of national pride.
There have been stamps depicting
missiles hurtling towards
the U.S. Capitol,
and a few years ago,
they produced a video
depicting the destruction
of New York,
set to the least
appropriate song imaginable.
Yes, you heard right, that was
a karaoke version of We Are The World,
set to New York in flames.
And the last time I saw a karaoke song
with background imagery
that inappropriate was
every time
I have ever sung karaoke.
I don't know what LL Cool J's
"Doin' It"
has to do with these two babies
in a field of sunflowers,
but it's making
everybody uncomfortable.
So the North Korean regime
has been very careful
about presenting a threatening image
of Americans to its people.
And some activists have actually
been trying to undermine that
by sneaking information
into the country on USB drives.
We send various content
from stories on human rights,
general information on South Korea, to
images depicting the average American.
Or a fictional version
of the average American:
TV shows like The Mentalist
and Desperate Housewives.
Kang says scenes like this one
from NCIS...
Anything you say can and will be used
against you in a court of law.
...that show police officers reading
suspects their rights are very useful.
You know what, if nothing else,
we finally have our answer
to the decade-long question:
who the fuck is watching NCIS ?
It turns out it's all your mom's
friends, and the people of North Korea.
And if you think about it, that is very
dangerous for Kim Jong-un.
Because if people get a sense
that the image of America
that he has carefully painted for them
is false, he could have huge problems.
And when you understand him
in that light,
as a dictator desperately
hedging against a loss of power,
it is possible to understand
why all his recent threats against
the United States have been reckless,
but, in his mind, also rational.
And that brings us
to the key question here:
what are we going to do
about this ?
Because on the campaign trail, Donald
Trump made it all seem very simple.
They said, would you speak
to the leader of North Korea ?
I said, absolutely.
Why not ? Why not ?
And they come out:
Trump would speak to him !
Who the hell cares ?
I'll speak to anybody.
Who knows ? There's a ten percent
or a twenty percent chance
that I can talk him out
of those damn nukes,
'cause who the hell wants him
to have nukes ?
And there's a chance !
No, no, there really isn't.
Partly because remember:
Kim Jong-un believes they are critical
for his survival,
and on top of that,
Donald Trump is a shitty negotiator.
In his short presidency,
he has failed to get Mexico
to pay for his stupid wall,
he's failed to get a Congress his party
controls to pass a health care bill,
and even when his administration
does get something done,
it way oversells it,
like when the White House announced
a trade deal with China as very big
news, gigantic and Herculean,
and one much-celebrated component
turned out to be
lifting a ban on beef imports
that China had preliminarily
agreed to last September.
So way to fucking go there, Donald !
What a very big, Herculean deal !
Thanks to you,
except not entirely thanks to you,
America is now marginally more able
to export beef again !
And since taking office,
Trump has voiced support
for an even simpler solution.
China is helping us possibly
or probably
with the North Korean
situation.
Okay ? Which is a great thing.
Great thing.
So, in the space
of fourteen seconds there,
he said the word great twice,
he pronounced Chinaaaa with three
syllables,
suggested someone else
should do the work for him,
and then threw in
a possibly or probably,
rendering the whole thing
meaningless.
I think I may have just hit
Trump bingo,
and the prize that I want
is to go drown in a river.
But Trump's idea there
of convincing China to exert influence
on North Korea is not inherently crazy,
China shares an 800-mile border
with North Korea,
and accounts for as much as 90 percent
of North Korea's total trade,
so they do have significant
leverage.
But, some are skeptical about just
what China could, or is willing to do.
Take sanctions.
The UN have tried multiple rounds
of increasingly harsh sanctions,
but North Korea has always found
easy ways around them.
North Korea is a 100% state enterprise,
so these companies change
their names the next day
if they're listed for sanctions.
That way the company stays,
but with different names
whenever there are sanctions.
If I'm included in the list,
my name can be changed too.
Yeah, and that is some pretty weak
enforcement.
Think about it this way:
Let's say HBO decided
they wanted to cancel this show.
Their hand would be pretty weak
if I was just able to get around that
simply by changing the name
to Earlier Times But Now,
starring
Spance Mörgendörffer.
And it is true that China could
increase enforcement of its sanctions,
but they are understandably worried
about where that could lead.
What they worry about is, if they
do that, will the regime collapse ?
What does that mean ? Millions
of refugees pouring into China,
possibly unified Korea
that is then a pro-American country
sitting on their southern border,
which, don't forget, there are 30,000
American troops in South Korea,
which would then be on China's border,
and, by the way, 15 nuclear weapons.
You know that there are a lot of
problems when you end up saying,
oh and by the way: 15 nuclear weapons.
Imagine you were a babysitter
and you heard
okay, you've got his Epipen,
you know about his nut allergy,
he needs his inhaler every hour oh, and
by the way: he has 15 nuclear weapons.
Now, Trump has also been mentioning
military solutions.
But even targeted strikes
against weapons systems
could get out of hand very fast.
North Korea would likely retaliate
and they have an estimated
8,000 pieces of heavy artillery
stationed just north of the DMZ,
which is here.
And that artillery is capable
of reaching Seoul,
which is just 40 miles away,
and is an area with 25 million people.
So even a non-nuclear war
could have horrific results.
And let's just engage
in some truly magical thinking:
what if you could somehow just take out
Kim Jong-un ?
Well, you've probably got an immediate
humanitarian crisis on your hands,
as well as a leaderless country with
a power vacuum and nuclear weapons.
And as we've learned from Iraq
and Afghanistan,
when regimes fall
and there is no plan in place,
that vacuum
can be filled with terrible things.
We do not want to find out
what North Korea's ISIS would be.
Even just the phrase North Korea's ISIS
is absolutely terrifying.
It's like saying 9/11's Bill Cosby.
What would that even be ?
I hope we never have to find out.
So sanctions are no guarantee, and
military action could be catastrophic.
And diplomacy is going to be difficult,
given that you usually need
to have a specific goal in mind,
and Trump seems to be making
all of this up as he goes along.
We are learning stunning new details
about President Trump's extraordinary
fire and fury threat tonight,
multiple sources telling CNN
the president adlibbed those words,
they were improvised on the fly.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
That is just not a good idea.
As I'm sure someone
has had to say
to Wayne Brady
at a funeral more than once:
now is not a good time
to improvise.
Here's a one-word suggestion, Wayne:
mourn. Mourn like a person.
And look, the thing is that's not
a surprise !
Deep down, we all assumed
that he was winging it.
We have become accustomed
to discounting a large percentage
of what comes out of his face.
But North Korea is listening
to what he says.
And the people there have been primed
for decades
to believe that America
is on the brink of an invasion.
Just look at their government's
response to his fire and fury line.
The American commander in chief
remains stuck at a golf course,
oblivious to what is happening,
and talking about such nonsense
as 'fire and fury'.
Since it is impossible
to have talks with people who are
incapable of rational thought,
the strategic armed forces has judged
that we must respond
with absolute force.
Hey, hey, hey, okay, just to be clear:
the president is not stuck
at a golf course.
Unless the cart ran out of gas
and he has to walk.
In which case, yes, the president
is very much stuck at a golf course,
and may need to be airlifted out.
So here is where we are,
we have two nuclear-armed leaders,
who are accustomed to issuing empty
threats to impress their own people,
and they are now currently goading each
other towards Armageddon.
Which is absolutely terrifying.
And I don't really have a solution
to this.
But part of me would love the chance
to speak directly
to the North Korean people.
So on the off chance that this show
is smuggled over their border
on a USB drive
crammed with NCIS episodes,
I would just like to say this:
Hi, North Korea.
You may be hearing some frightening
rhetoric from our president.
But, if it helps at all,
when our president says words,
he doesn't necessarily mean
what those words mean.
It's very difficult to describe to you.
We're still trying to wrap our heads
around it ourselves.
Really, it's our problem, except it is
now kind of your problem, too.
But I want to talk to you
about some misconceptions.
Because we certainly have
misconceptions about you,
but you should know, ideally,
that we are not remotely what
your state propaganda implies either.
We honestly do not spend our days
plotting your destruction.
We spend them sharing cat memes,
and spinning fidgii,
and getting furiously angry
about a singing boy
barely appearing
in our favorite dragon show.
So, for what it's worth,
I would like to give you,
the North Korean people,
a sense of how America
is feeling right now,
in a way that you might understand
and enjoy.
And that is through the international
language of the accordion.
And I have some good news
and some bad news there.
The bad news is,
I do not play the accordion.
The good news is, I know someone
who plays it like a fucking angel.
Ladies and gentlemen,
and the people of North Korea,
please welcome Mr. Weird Al Yankovic.
Would you annihilate us
if you had the chance ?
That's such an anti-social thing to do.
You've got us crapping
our collective pants
May I suggest you take it down
a notch or two ?
We're not exactly sure
why you're upset.
Did that Seth Rogen movie make you
super mad ?
You'd like us if you got to know us,
I bet.
We're mostly harmless, decent people,
hey, we're really not so bad.
My point is...
Please don't nuke us, North Korea !
Right now we're all a little tense.
Believe me, we don't hate you !
Frankly, we don't even think
that much about you.
No offense !
Now you might call us bloodthirsty
dogs, but that metaphor's not very apt.
We're just a bunch of simple
fidget spinnin', goofy dorks
who probably
couldn't find your country on a map.
No, we're not savages or cannibals.
Well, maybe just a really,
really, really small percent.
So I think it would be best if you'd
knock off those missile tests.
Don't turn us into cinder
while we're swipin' right on Tinder.
Don't jump-start Armageddon
or our beds we'll soon be wettin'.
Won't you think this through
for a moment ?
Please, now why would you bomb
our nice celebrities ?
Oh, why in the world would you kill
Tom Hanks ?
'Cause nobody doesn't like Tom Hanks !
So, please don't nuke us, North Korea !
That would seriously ruin our day.
Remember, we're not evil psychotic
monsters,
no matter what the news
may say.
We're just those goofballs
from the USA.
Weird Al Yankovic,
ladies and gentlemen.
That's our show.
Thank you for watching.
We'll see you next week, good night !