2024 Republican National Convention: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver | Transcript

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Season 11 Episode 17
Aired on July 21, 2024

Main segment: 2024 Republican National Convention and myths about immigration and crime in the United States
Other segment: 2025 World Games

Note: A disclaimer is shown at the beginning of the episode saying that the episode was taped the previous day to explain why there is no mention of the news of Biden withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Cheers and applause]

John: Welcome, welcome, welcome to “Last Week Tonight.” I’m John Oliver. Thanks so much for joining us. We’re back! We’ve been away for nearly a month, but luckily, we didn’t miss much. The UK kicked the Tories out after 14 years, France narrowly managed to keep the far right out of power, and Kendrick Lamar released the video for the spectacularly hostile “Not Like Us” on the Fourth of July, and that’s the end of the good things that happened. Because there was also a catastrophic debate where Biden gave a performance that, in any other context, would have prompted a family group chat about grandpa’s mental state so tense it’d rival 2010’s meltdown over the question, “Why don’t we have a vegan Thanksgiving this year?”

Also, notably, Trump got shot in the ear, then Biden said he’d consider dropping out if he had a medical condition just before it was announced that he’d got COVID. The news is moving so fast, we’re taping on Saturday, and who knows where things will be by the time you actually watch this? We don’t even have time to get into the possible attempt at a military coup in Bolivia after soldiers rammed the doors of the presidential palace—an incident that led one local sandwich shop to produce this bold promotion:

This is the moment to make the most of the promo for your list of staple foods. Make the most of this promo. If you place your order mentioning you want to stock up for the next coup, as a gift will add an extra crunchy pork rind!

John: That is real! They launched a coup-themed promotion to sell more sandwiches, a level of “turning national instability into a fast-food opportunity” that should frankly put America to shame. Where the fuck is Pizza Hut’s post-assassination-attempt stuffed crust special? This country is coasting. We used to be good at this!

But we’re going to jump right into our main story tonight, which concerns the Republican National Convention—the worst thing to happen to Milwaukee since Jeffrey Dahmer. This week saw the usual pageant of prominent politicians onstage and abject weirdos in the audience, from attendees wearing bandages on their ears to match Trump’s, to this guy crashing a reporter’s shot in a “Where is the Epstein client list?” T-shirt, to this woman in a “Bride to be” sash, having the most cursed bachelorette party in existence. It feels like she told her bridesmaids she wanted to see a bunch of dicks on stage, and they tragically misunderstood the assignment. Although to be fair, if anything screams “last night of freedom,” it is the Republican National Convention.

There was also Hulk Hogan tearing his shirt off, Kid Rock scream-singing to a crowd that was either not into it or way too into it, and a speech from Perry Johnson, a failed presidential candidate from Michigan, who put his all into rallying the crowd, only to be played off by the band with the best possible song choice.

President Trump is ready to save our country! To make America great again again! I am ready to do whatever is necessary to get Trump back in the White House. Are you with me? Yes, yes, yes, yes! Trump, Trump, Trump! Let’s do it! ♪ Somebody once told me ♪ ♪ The world is going to roll me ♪ ♪ I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed ♪

John: Yeah, he got Smash Mouthed! And while there’s never a good time to play that song, the funniest time for the lyric “not the sharpest tool in the shed” is immediately following a pro-Trump speech by a man who apparently showed both his plastic surgeon and hair stylist a photo of Holland Taylor and said, “This, please.”

Now, going into the week, we were repeatedly told that—in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump—we should expect something very different from this convention.

Trump claims the moment has now changed him. He says he’ll adopt a different tone going forward in this campaign.

This is going to be a different tone.

Speak of the attack on Trump has changed the story line and the tone of the convention with the former president calling for unity.

John: Yeah, but that was never going to happen. Because you expect to see certain things at the RNC—elephant logos, cowboy hats, a massive spike in Grindr usage—but “a message of unity” is not something traditionally associated with that event or indeed, this man. And unsurprisingly, the R-N-C was in no way toned down.

The Democrats’ disastrous record on crime, trade, and regulation has ruined the lives of countless Minnesotans.

Democrats come for your kids! They are indoctrinating them with poisonous attitudes of race and gender.

We’ve become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected in November.

[Laughter]

John: Okay. That was all awful, but that last camera cut is just spectacular. If you’d asked me, “What’s next to this guy, just out of the frame?” and gave me a thousand guesses, there is no way I’m saying, “a lumpy bulldog lounging in an armchair like it’s being interviewed at the 92nd Street Y.” And don’t drag a bulldog to the RNC. Life’s hard enough for them. To have the soul of a wolf trapped inside the body of a wrinkly bowling ball? To be inbred over centuries into the perfect genetic car crash? That dog doesn’t deserve to be made into a prop at the RNC. It deserves a rawhide bone and an apology from humanity.

And that was all before we got to Trump’s bonkers 90-minute-plus speech on Thursday, in which he initially promised he was running to be “president of all of America, not half of America,” but quickly went off prompter to rant about “crazy Nancy Pelosi” and the “China virus,” and repeatedly suggest the 2020 election was stolen. But the big theme he, and so many other speakers kept returning to this week was this:

We have to stop the invasion into our country that is killing hundreds and thousands of people a year.

Biden has welcomed into our country rapists, murderers, even terrorists.

We are facing an unprecedented invasion of millions of illegal aliens across our southern border.

It looks like and it feels like an invasion because it is.

We are facing an invasion on our southern border. Not figuratively. A literal invasion.

John: I do not like that man Ted Cruz. I do not like his toxic views. I do not like his nasty speeches. I do not like the shit he preaches. I do not like him when he fishes. I do not like him when he kisses. Pulling off that beard, he ain’t. That man Ted Cruz looks like a taint. And I will say… I know the Republican party gets a lot of shit for only landing D-list celebrities. But I do have to hand it to them, booking the actual pair from the American Gothic painting was a pretty good get.

And look: it’s no accident Republicans were focusing so hard on immigration—recent polling shows it’s the second most important issue among Americans. But a big reason for that is the relentless, bad-faith fearmongering around the issue by the Republican party itself. Perhaps best summed up by the startling growth this year of the toxic phrase “migrant crime.”

Starting in late January, Fox began using it a lot, and always to build a very specific narrative.

Concerns of a migrant crime wave are growing across New York City.

Every third day there is a story of some kind of migrant crime.

There is a migrant crime spree killing the Americans and the president is an accessory to murder.

John: Yeah. Out of nowhere, there was a surge in talk of “migrant crime,” which went from occasional mentions in December and January, to over 300 mentions in February. Basically, “migrant crime” is a phrase that seemed to come out of nowhere, and then was suddenly all over the place, like “what the sigma” and “skibidi toilet.” And by the way, those are real phrases used by the younger generations. Or, they were until I just ruined them by having them slide out of my old mouth. And as use of that term skyrocketed, there was a correlating spike in concern about immigration, with the number of Americans who viewed it as their number one issue jumping 8 points between January and February. But this wasn’t reflecting anything happening in the real world, because to be very clear: there is no “migrant crime wave” happening right now. In fact, there’s no crime wave at all. Crime in general has been trending downward in recent years, including this one, with murder, rape, robbery, and property crime all decreasing, even as talk of migrants committing those crimes exploded. As for “migrant crime” specifically, experts will tell you that “there’s no evidence for there being any relationship between somebody’s immigrant status and their involvement in crime.” In fact, most states don’t track crime data by immigration status. But in the one state that does, Texas, researchers have found “the illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate is roughly 45 percent below that of native-born Americans.” And yet, despite that, there has been a wave of conservatives claiming there’s a wave of migrant crime—and that wave is almost definitely going to be continuing until November.

So given that, tonight, let’s talk about migrant crime. And let’s start with where exactly the term came from. Because if you listen to Trump—which obviously you shouldn’t—he’ll say it was all his idea.

It’s a new category. I don’t know if you’ve heard this but I came up with this. When migrant crime, crime, violent crime, there is migrant crime. We have a new category of crime. It’s going to be worse than any other form of crime.

John: Okay. Obviously, that’s not a new category of crime, and obviously he didn’t “invent” it because you can’t invent putting two words together. Although, I will say, he has tried to innovate the phrase. At one point this year, he told an audience that “it should be called Biden migrant crime, but that’s too long,” which is true. Luckily, he workshopped a solution to that problem in real time:

Because Joe Biden allowed this to happen, but we will call it for now on “Bigrant migrant crime.” Okay, let’s call it bigrant crime. That’s good. It’s smart. Bigrant crime.”

John: Okay. I’ll give him this: he did coin the term “bigrant crime.” You can have that one, Doniel. It’s the stupidest term I’ve ever heard, but it’s all yours. And I love the fact that he literally pointed to his head when he said “that’s smart.” Almost like he was saying, “I know where thoughts come from, and it’s not here, or here, or here—it’s here. This is where the smart comes from. I call it my smart lump, or ‘smump.’ I came up with that one, too.”

But if you go back and actually look, the event that prompted first Fox, and then Trump, to start pushing the term “migrant crime” was a brawl that happened on January 27 of this year in Times Square. You may even remember the police released this 45-second clip of officers in a scuffle with a group of migrants. It got a ton of play on Fox, where one particular detail about what happened afterward got extra attention.

A gang of migrants broke into the country, pummeled two NYPD officers, and while walking out of jail without bail, flipped a double bird to the country that let them in. The two birds heard around the world. The symbol of the Biden presidency right there.

John: Okay. For the record: the symbol for the Biden presidency is absolutely not “two birds.” As we all know, it’s a bunch of piss-stained Democrats nervously Googling “how old is a person allowed to be?” But that image of the guy flipping off the camera was used constantly on Fox from February through early March. It was used in at least 66 segments during that period, with the man’s fingers blurred out, presumably to protect the eyes of the innocent children who are forced to watch Fox News at grandma’s while they eat their “dinosaurs lived with humans” nuggets.

Fox kept hammering their coverage of that incident, with perhaps the apex being a segment where Sean Hannity did an interview with Curtis Sliwa, the head of the vigilante group the Guardian Angels, live from Times Square. During the interview, Sliwa’s fellow angels suddenly mobilized toward something off-camera. And he later explained they’d had to get physical with a migrant whom they’d seen committing a crime.

He had been shoplifting first. The Guardian Angels followed him, stopped him, he resisted. Let’s just say we gave him a little pain compliance. His mother in Venezuela felt the vibrations but he sucked in concrete. The cops scrape him off the asphalt or he’s on his way to jail for they’ll cut him loose. We’ve got to take 42nd Street back, these illegals, they own this street. They think they own this night. This is our country. If they cannot abide by the rules we are going to kick them back from where they came.

John: Okay, first: “rule the night”? On 42nd Street? I call bullshit. Anyone who lives here knows: the night there is ruled by groups of 13-year-olds leaving “Aladdin” on their way to the Red Lobster one block away. I’ll say this clearly: immigrants are not invading our country, and they are not taking over 42nd Street. But if they are, they can fucking have it. But there are a few other things that feel important to mention. First, you can’t just beat someone up if you think they’re committing a crime. And second, you should never go out in public dressed like that. He looks like Alan Arkin playing one of the “Angry Birds.” He looks like a divorced strawberry. He looks like if the G.I. Joes had an off-hours bowling team.

But it gets worse. Because it turned out, the man they’d beaten up wasn’t actually a migrant at all, and there was no evidence to support the allegation he was shoplifting. It seems like what actually happened is that Sliwa’s goons apprehended a guy for allegedly attempting to disrupt a live interview, which is not a crime, and also not what he did, since surveillance footage apparently shows he was just trying to maneuver through the crowd when the vigilantes confronted him. But Sliwa said he believed the man was a migrant because he was speaking Spanish, something that could be said about roughly 25 percent of the city. Including, by the way, me:

¿Qué vas a hacer, Curtis Sliwa? Soy inmigrante y estoy hablando español. ¿Me vas a mandar tus pendejos, hijo de puta? Tu gorra es demasiado estúpida y tu cara también. Eres una mierda y no creo que tu mamá esté orgullosa de ti.

And it turns out, even the “facts” of the original Times Square incident that started all this fell apart in similar fashion. Because when more camera footage came out, it revealed what had actually happened and made the NYPD look less like unwitting victims and more like the instigators.

NYPD body cam video takes us inside the Times Square brawl that made national headlines. That and new surveillance video police released raising more questions tonight whether the January altercation should’ve happened at all. The two officers approached the group of men.

The crowd was given direction to please disperse that they are blocking the sidewalk.

The video doesn’t support that as people are seen walking by. Most of the group immediately moves, but the last to leave tells police, don’t touch me. When he starts to finally obey, the officers’ officer is pushing the stroller away… The group begins singing a derogatory song. And then this. Immediately after by ruto yells “looks like an ugly betty”…

John: If you watch the wide shot it becomes clear what’s at the heart of this scuffle: one cop choosing to push that guy up against the wall after the other got called ugly betty. And for what it’s worth: this is what the cop looked like, and if you’re thinking, “Well, he only kind of looks like ugly betty,” let me remind you—in Latin America, ugly betty looks like this, and that is a fair hit. And violence is not an acceptable response to someone being insulted that correctly. You think there haven’t been moments when I haven’t wanted to throw someone against a wall because they called me “worst Sheldon” or “a less sexual Screech” or “what would happen if the rat and the chef from Ratatouille fucked?” Sure, it hurts my feelings, mom, but it’s also fair, and it doesn’t justify violence.

But wait—because there’s one more twist here. Remember the guy flipping the double-birds who was on Fox News at least 66 times? The symbol of bigrant crime? Funny story: the Manhattan D.A. ended up dismissing the charges against him because it turned out he had nothing to do with the incident. He wasn’t even there! The NYPD apparently mistook him for a completely different person for a mystery reason that I’m sure wasn’t racist at all. So he was arrested for something he didn’t do, spent two nights in jail, and then had cameras shoved in his face. I personally cannot think of a scenario in which flipping two middle fingers is more appropriate. Honestly, if he could’ve grown another hand in that moment, I wouldn’t have blamed him for throwing up a third bird for good measure.

But the facts that came out afterward didn’t really matter, because by then, “migrant crime” was already out there as a phrase, and ever since, Fox and Republicans have been hammering the idea that migrants are dangerous. And because—again—there’s no data to back up claims of a “migrant crime wave,” they’ve instead had to resort to anecdotes or exaggeration. For instance, the Republican National Committee made a website tracking alleged examples of migrant crime, called BidenBloodbath.com. If you go to it, you’ll find the names of 13 different states, which you can click on to find evidence of so-called migrant crime there. But for four of those states, when you click through, you’ll find all they’re able to cite is those states’ overall rates of fentanyl deaths. And look, those deaths were tragic. But you can’t connect them to “migrant crime,” given that—to the extent fentanyl has been seized at the border—90% of the time it was seized during legal crossings, and 91% of those seizures were from U.S. citizens. Which, of course they were. If you want to move drugs across the border, you’re going to do it with American citizens, because they attract less attention from authorities. I’m not telling you how to move drugs, but if you’re going to, that’s the only smart way to do it. I have just told you how to move drugs.

And as for people crossing illegally, just 0.009 percent of people arrested by Border Patrol last year were found to possess any fentanyl whatsoever. So, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t know if BidenBloodbath.com is the reliable source of news and information that we all thought it was. And look: I’m not saying that there haven’t been individual migrants who’ve committed crimes. Of course, there have. Because migrants are people, and some people do bad things. In the same way, some ABBA fans, and some people with Spongebob tattoos have committed crimes. And if it so happens that there’s someone out there who is a migrant ABBA fan with Spongebob tattoos, the only thing they’re likely to be guilty of is being an utterly fascinating human being. What’s your story, dude? I have so many questions about what brought you to this point.

The thing is, if you want to prevent crime and death, that’s a great idea, and there are absolutely ways to do that. But when you draw a circle around a few members of a particular group—especially one identifiable by race or nationality—then generalize about what this means about all of them, no matter what you say, you’re not having a reasoned debate about crime or safety. You’re being racist. And the depressing thing is, all this fearmongering has been effective. Over 70 percent of Republicans now believe there is a higher risk of people illegally coming to the U.S. and committing crimes. Something which again is demonstrably and provably false.

As we know, immigrants aren’t causing more crime in this country. If they’re leading to more of anything, it’s more good food and more people who can’t believe how mean we are to our moms. And what’s doubly infuriating is that too many Democrats have been willing to go along with this false narrative. Biden has repeatedly been pressured into imposing stricter immigration restrictions—most recently in June when he imposed sweeping new asylum restrictions for the U.S.-Mexico border. Earlier this year, he actually pushed for an even tougher immigration bill, which Trump explicitly told Republicans not to support, arguing it would give the Democrats a political victory, suggesting none of this is about safety at all, it’s entirely self-serving.

And that absurd Times Square incident that supercharged this “migrant crime” panic ended up pushing some Democratic leaders into stupid public statements, like this one, from Governor Kathy Hochul, who had this to say about the migrants who’d been blamed:

Get them all sent back. Don’t touch anyone.

John: That’s true—yeah, it’s true—you don’t touch anyone in New York City. Unless, it seems, someone calls your friend Ugly Betty, or you happen to be dressed as a Parisian tomato and hear someone speaking Spanish, in which case, all bets are off. And the thing is, even after so much of that Times Square story unraveled, some of the people caught up in it have continued to pay a significant price. Two of the people who were there, neither of whom were accused of touching the officers, were detained for months on Rikers Island. And one’s still there.

Look: migrant crime is not on the rise. That’s a fact. What’s also a fact is that people now feel that it is. And that feeling has the potential to cause massive harm. And all of this is making solving the genuine issues around immigration—like dealing with the massive backlog in our immigration courts, and providing cities help in sheltering and supporting migrants awaiting asylum hearings—that much harder.

So, what can we do? Well, I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re currently four months out from an election, so just assume that the underlying “what can we do” for most of our U.S. stories from now until then is going to be “do not vote for Donald Trump again.” That seems like that should be barely worth saying, like “drink water” or “go to the dentist,” but it does bear repeating because… Be honest: when was the last time you drank water? Or, indeed, went to the dentist? Exactly.

And I’m not saying by any means that Biden is perfect, or even good when it comes to immigration. But he—or whoever winds up being the Democratic candidate, because who on earth knows anything about that right now?—is going to be incontrovertibly better than the alternative. And I know this has been a bleak few weeks. And it’s been incredibly depressing to see reports of anonymous Democratic leaders saying things like, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.” Because frankly, fuck that. There’s just too much on the line here to give up.

Trump and the bigots around him plan to use his victory to make immigrants’ lives absolute hell. And he’s not exactly hiding it.

They are sending their murderers to the United States of America. This is going to be very bad. And bad things are going to happen and you’re seeing it happen all the time. That’s why to keep our families safe, the Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.

John: Yeah. He’s saying it all out loud there, to enthusiastic cheers from a crowd, some of whom have cheese on their heads. And he’s not making that up—that’s the Republican party’s official position. Their new platform calls for the largest deportation operation in American history. They even made official signs for people to wave, reading “Mass Deportation Now.” And even if courts slow that attempt down—which is by no means a guarantee—Project 2025 offers them lots of other bureaucratic ways to hurt immigrants, from terminating the legal status of half a million Dreamers by eliminating staff time to review and process their renewal applications, to barring U.S. citizens from qualifying for federal housing subsidies if they live with anyone who’s not a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. Those plans are outrageous, and if Trump wins, they could be public policy.

And Democratic leaders cannot sit back and resign themselves to that. There are so many things we, as Americans, do have to resign ourselves to: airline cancellations, a national anthem with too many high notes, Glen Powell inevitably starring in a Field of Dreams remake. We can’t fight those things. But we can, and must fight this.

And at the end of this week, it should be clear to absolutely everyone: it doesn’t matter if Trump and his party say they have a “new tone” or nominally call for “unity,” or throw a cute dog onstage for some reason. They have told us who they are, they’ve told us what they want, they literally put it on a sign and waved it in everyone’s face. They’re trying to win this election by pointing a finger at immigrants, and the only appropriate response is to take a cue from the so-called “symbol of the Biden presidency” and say fuck that shit.

[Cheers and applause]

John: And now, this.

And now a few more highlights from the Republican National Convention:

You didn’t really expect that, did you?

We were at Mar-a-Lago and someone came up to him and said, Mr. Trump, Rod Stewart just walked in but he said, I don’t care. This is Ben Carson.

Donald Trump, 21 club championships. Joe Biden, 0.

You want to be a rebel? You want to be a hippie? You want to stick it to the man? Show up on your college campus and try calling yourself a conservative.

I soon went from making waffles to making history.

The only speech or poem or song I made my kids memorize when they were young, when they were a little, it was the Gettysburg Address.

You’ll never hear me say I’m on God’s side or God is with me or even I’m with God.

This morning I did walk out of federal prison.

I haven’t even started my hot flashes. Just wait.

♪ No Rogaine in the propane ♪

This is our mission to make America great again!

I was bleeding like a pig and I won the world title right in front of Donald J. Trump.

Thank you, Kid Rock. Sometimes referred to as Bob.

♪ Say fight ♪

♪ Say Trump ♪

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John: Moving on. Finally tonight, a quick word about sports. Everyone loves the big, popular sports in this country, like “real football,” “fake football,” “ping pong, but big,” “let’s see how quickly we need an ambulance,” “waiting for something to happen while standing patiently in a field,” and, of course, pickleball, “the thing that keeps white suburban moms off Q-Anon subreddits.”

As you probably know, the Summer Olympics open in Paris on Friday, and while they’re about to get a ton of attention, I’d like to focus on a different international sporting event that’s actually coming up a year from now: the World Games. I will let CBS News explain what they are.

You may not have heard of the World Games but they’ve been held for nearly 40 years.

34 Sports, most you are probably seeing for the first time. Swimming but with fins. Speed skating using in-line skates. And drone racing through gates around obstacles against the clock.

They are the emerging sports. These are the fasting growing sports under the Olympic movement and this is their proving ground.

These boards are auditioning for a spot on the Olympics?

This is their audition to be on the Summer Olympic platform.

John: Yes. The World Games features a wide array of unconventional sports from drone racing, to angry kayak traffic jams, to swimming while dressed in what I can only describe as fish drag. If the regular Olympics are Disney World, think of the World Games as an alleyway near Times Square filled with four angry Olafs. By the way, I’m not saying that as a bad thing. The World Games are amazing. They started in 1981, and have traditionally involved some sports so obscure, even announcers during the opening ceremonies have had to explain what they are, as they did at the 1997 games in Finland:

Now, to be fair, some sports are more familiar, like tug-of-war, or self-explanatory, like sport climbing. Fun fact: one of that sport’s stars is Adam Ondra, a Czech climber who won the World Games Athlete of the Year award in 2014, and who’s been described as “a bit of a yeller” because he’s known for getting his vocal cords involved when he climbs, like this:

[Yelling]

John: Holy shit! That sounds less like someone climbing rocks and more like Jim Cramer reaching a sexual climax. Other sports are a twist on familiar events, like artistic roller skating—basically, figure skating on roller skates, while wearing outfits that ask the question: “What if Iron Man shared Bob Mackie’s passion for sequins?” But others are less flashy, like orienteering, where you essentially jog through the woods to find checkpoints using a map and a compass. It’s a sport described by a former member of the US national team like this:

There’s weights in the wood with an electronic beeper at the top. Each control you punch in and it goes beep. It’s 3 kilometers long. Could take you 20 minutes. It appeals to a certain type of person. I call them young nerds.

John: Yeah. That makes sense. To be good at orienteering, you have to be young enough to run through the woods without hurting yourself and nerdy enough to be good at using paper maps in the present day—a time when, if you google “where can I buy a paper map?” it just replies, “Why?”

And if you’re only interested in watching a bunch of people fighting over a ball, the World Games has you covered there, too. There’s fistball, which is like volleyball but angrier; floorball, which is like hockey but less angry; and korfball—a mixed-gender basketball-adjacent sport. There are also water-based competitions, like lifesaving, which includes an element called “manikin carry” where swimmers rescue a water-logged dummy and schlep it to safety; and trick waterskiing, which, frankly, just looks like Jesus showing off. And finally, there are air sports, like skydiving, either solo or in a group, and paramotoring which is where you mount a propeller onto your body with a harness and try not to die. And I’m sorry, but even Boeing’s looking at that and thinking: “I dunno, that doesn’t seem like a safe aircraft.” Fun fact: if you google paramotoring, one of the first results you get is, and this is true, a website for injury attorneys.

But it’s not just the World Games events that can be magnificently weird. It’s also the pageantry around them. Because while the Olympics is likely to be lauded for its opening ceremony on Friday, I guarantee you Paris won’t be able to produce anything as unforgettably weird as this moment from the closing ceremony of the ’93 World Games in The Hague, featuring a frog character that’s both lackluster and somehow, wildly culturally insensitive.

The frog goes on a journey. World Games 1993 in The Hague are over and done with. South Africa is the next spot, 1997.

[Music]

John: Okay. I don’t usually do this, but I want you to pause this right now, and write down what you think you just saw. I don’t want to do it for you, just write down what you feel you just witnessed. Then come back and I’ll tell you what I think. Okay, you back? Here is what I think that was. Someone in not not blackface dressed like Eminem from 2008 or Justin Bieber from 2019 is being sealed back up into what was a lilypad-like platform and has now taken the shape of a Georgia O’Keeffe vagina flower cosplaying Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. Audrey the Clit is then wheeled on what is probably one of those little scooters from gym class into a coven of sewn-in ghosts in their lair of what looks like a gossamer placenta, all while two 50’s bellhops and/or Polar Express conductors wave a stoic goodbye. That’s what I got from that. I don’t know what you had, but there are no wrong answers. When it comes to that shift…

Next year’s World Games will apparently be in Chengdu, China, and they’ve already been promoting it with a panda named “Mr. Panda” who’s been filmed enjoying activities like playing tug-of-war, hugging people on mass transit, and seeming to beat the ever-living shit out of someone.

And you might be thinking: “Why are you telling me about any of this right now?” Well, first: I dunno. The world’s a pretty shitty place right now, do you not want to be told about Mr. Panda? Would you rather talk about how someone managed to get a semiautomatic rifle past the Secret Service? Or are we allowed to have some fucking fun for a second?

[Cheers and applause]

John: Please let me have this! But also, that’s not the only reason. Because it also turns out, the World Games website includes a suggestion box, where fans are able to “submit your idea” for literally anything. That’s right: they take requests! And while they apparently already have a list of sports for next year, I’m hoping if we engage now, we can persuade them to add another. Because while I love every batshit event you’ve seen so far, I do think they can get weirder. Perhaps they can include bladesports, a real form of competition where you run around with a sharp blade and chop up random objects. Here’s a taste:

[Audience cheering]

John: Yeah. It’s really good. From the water bottles flashing to a man in jeans elegantly performing a rope bris. It’s basically just celebrating what would happen if a chef went off the deep end, and I think it needs to be on the global stage. Or how about combat juggling? Another real sport that’s exactly as incredible as it sounds:

This is the sport of combat juggling. An aggressive form of object manipulation combined with debilitating attacks. Each player must maintain control of over three clubs at all times. The temptation to smash the other guy in the face must be overwhelming.

John: That is an absolute master class in saying what your entire audience is thinking. “Thanks for rehashing the rules, Dave but I think we can all agree, it’s incredible that the primitive urge to fuckin smash is being restrained at this moment.” And that’s just the start. What about bog snorkeling? Basically, snorkeling, but in filthy marsh water. Or chess boxing, which asks the question “Can you play chess with a concussion?” Or even toe wrestling? Wrestling with toes! It was apparently invented in 1976 in an attempt to find a new sport for British people to dominate. We took the end of the empire hard.

The point is, there are no bad suggestions here. Though I’ll be honest, the one I want to see in the World Games is bladesports. Because who doesn’t want to see people all over the world, in denim, competing to see who does this the best?

John: Yes! I love that so much. So whatever sport you want to see, but definitely bladesports, just go to theworldgames.org, scroll down to the suggestion box, and type “bladesports!” Or “bladesports please” or “bladesports, chop chop!” which is both a directive and a fun description for other bladesports fans, which I’ve been ever since I learned about bladesports about 36 hours ago. Do it right now, and we can have a World Games next year that we want, but do not deserve. But deep down know we do not fully deserve. And what a better way to end this show than in the traditional World Games manner. That is, by having two bellhops escort me toward a swarm of undulating freaks dressed like sentient sheets of wet toilet paper while my bellhops wave me goodbye.

That is our show. Thanks so much for watching, we’ll see you next week! Goodnight! Good night, bellhops! Goodbye! Farewell! I must leave you now. Thank you, freaks. Thank you, undulating sheets. We must go! Farewell! I love bladesports!