Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Season 13 Episode 2
Aired on February 22, 2026
Main segment: Twitter under Elon Musk
Other segment: Arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
John Oliver discusses former Prince Andrew’s arrest and why the Epstein files are causing political unrest in the UK. Then, how an already flawed Twitter got worse under Elon Musk, and why Donald Trump needs to tell the American people whether or not ants have dicks. You read that right. If he was a real leader he’d get in the White House garden and get to the bottom of this.
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Transcript
Note for Students & Writers: This transcript is archived here for educational purposes, critical analysis, and screenwriting study. All rights belong to the original creators.
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[Cheers and applause]
JOHN: Welcome, welcome, welcome to “Last Week Tonight”!
I’m John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.
The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs, and he met with his “Board of Peace,” shortly before going back to pushing the U.S. toward war with Iran.
But we’re actually going to start in the U.K. this week, where Thursday brought some massive news.
This morning, a stunning royal arrest.
Former Prince Andrew taken into custody from his home in the English countryside.
It follows growing revelations about the alleged connections between the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew.
JOHN: It’s true, they arrested former Prince Andrew.
And I don’t know why they’re still going with “alleged connections” to Epstein there, while also running a photo that makes them look like the two closest friends I’ve ever seen.
It looks like they’re brainstorming a new podcast.
It looks like Andrew’s soft launching “Hey, would it be crazy if we moved in together?”
I’m just saying, maybe drop the “alleged” part when you’re dealing with two guys that look so close they they could finish each other’s prison sentences.
And if you’re thinking, “What was the new revelation that did it?
Was it the grotesque new photo of Andrew on all fours over a young woman?”
Incredibly, no.
It was apparently this.
The arrest reportedly linked to emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice, as part of the Epstein files that show Andrew forwarding emails to Epstein while he was trade envoy.
The emails, some dated in 2010, well after Epstein had already been convicted of soliciting sex from a minor, show Andrew forwarding British government files from his trips to places like Hong Kong and Vietnam.
JOHN: Yeah, they got him on “forwarding documents,” which is a little underwhelming.
Though to be honest, when it comes to bringing down monsters, I don’t really care if it’s for a boring computer crime, the same way I’m not that mad if what finally ends a toddler throwing a tantrum is a cardboard box.
The method doesn’t matter, what’s important is you have been stopped.
Now, Andrew’s repeatedly denied all wrongdoing, and has been released, though that doesn’t mean he’s been found not guilty.
All we really have to go on right now is this fantastic picture of him leaving custody.
And you can draw your own conclusions there.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether this makes him look guilty or dead.
And I’ve got to say, even him being taken into custody must’ve been gratifying for some – including anyone who’s ever had to work for him.
Because to hear at least one former officer who was assigned to guard Andrew, he wasn’t the greatest to be around.
Did Prince Andrew have a nickname at that time?
Well, his official code – so, if he was to come in to the palace, we would call out – his call sign was Purple Four One.
But he did have a nickname.
But it’s a bit rude for me to tell you.
Well, I’ll tell you, but – you’re not gonna be able to air it – do you want me to tell you?
Yeah.
It was called the cunt.
JOHN: Yeah!
Yeah.
According to that guy, that was Andrew’s unofficial nickname.
And it’s a little weird he was so wary of saying that word on TV, given he was appearing on Australia’s “60 Minutes.”
And Australians say “cunt” all the time.
I’m pretty sure Bluey has said it at least three times.
But it’s not just codename cunt facing consequences.
Take Peter Mandelson, the U.K.’s former ambassador to D.C.
Investigation for forwarding he’s also under police investigation for forwarding government emails to Epstein – something he’s denied.
And there are questions about how close they were, especially given the number of photos of them together, including this recently-released one of him in his underwear, seemingly in Epstein’s apartment.
And the very fact Prime Minister Keir Starmer appointed Mandelson ambassador in the first place is now a major scandal.
His chief of staff and communications director have resigned.
And it may not stop there.
The fallout is now directly threatening the prime minister.
Prime Minister Kier Starmer has admitted to Parliament he knew of Mandlesson’s past association with Epstein, but that he had not been told the truth about the extent of the relationship.
The admission has sparked a furious backlash, including from members of Starmer’s own party who are openly questioning his judgment and his leadership.
JOHN: Right, because that shows terrible judgment.
A crucial part of leadership is who you pick to be on your team.
If the Raiders decided at this year’s NFL draft to use their number one pick to select Roman Polanski, everyone involved in that decision should probably be fired.
But here in the U.S., there’s been a notable lack of consequences for several high-profile figures who’ve appeared in the files.
Most notably, this guy’s still president.
But also, his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick – Epstein’s former next-door neighbor by the way – has come under scrutiny.
Because he previously said he met Epstein only once in 2005 and was so revolted, he declared, “I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”
But new documents reveal not only were they in touch after that point, Lutnick actually visited Epstein’s island, something he tried to justify like this.
I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation.
My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies.
We were on family vacation.
We were not a part – to suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012 – I don’t recall why we did it, but – we did.
JOHN: Okay, to be clear: there was a lot untoward about meeting Epstein in 2012.
He’d left jail three years earlier as a sex offender, and it was widely known what kind of guy he was at that point.
And it’s not a great look that it seems the end of Lutnick’s sentence “I will never be in a room with that disgusting person again” was apparently, “Unless, that is, I can bring mah kids!”
But Lutnick’s still in his job!
As, by the way, is Peter Attia, who CBS News had only just hired as part of their new roster of contributors when the files were released, and the details about him in there aren’t great.
The celebrity longevity influencer appears in the files more than 1,700 times.
In 2015, Attia wrote the biggest problem with becoming friends with you, the life you lead is so outrageous and yet I cannot tell a soul.
JOHN: Oh, and that’s not close to the worst of it.
Because Attia also apparently wrote to Epstein’s assistant, saying I go into J.E. withdrawal when I don’t see him, and wrote to Epstein directly, saying that, and I quote, “Pussy is, indeed, low carb.
Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.”
Now, Attia’s apologized for those emails, and has stepped down as chief science officer of the protein-bar company David following these revelations, but incredibly – as of taping – CBS News still seems to be keeping him on as a contributor.
And it’s wild that CBS News somehow has lower standards than a protein bar company that markets their products like this and also, like this.
And I’m not sure who at the company thought their bars needed to be “’80s horny” but I hope they’re gone, too.
And look, I’m not saying Attia, or Lutnick, have committed crimes.
But it’s clear just how comfortable far too many people were looking past Epstein’s heinous actions.
And given the lack of accountability in all this, there’s at least some satisfaction in knowing how nervous some powerful men must be feeling right now – a nervousness that’s kind of hard to put into words, but luckily, I think this picture sums it up pretty well.
And now, this.
Announcer: And now, people on TV celebrate National Drink Wine Day.
Today is National Drink Wine Day.
It’s recommended for us to drink in moderation.
At one glass that is this big.
It’s Ash Wednesday.
I’m Catholic.
They serve wine at mass.
Because of length, make sure to eat fish.
I don’t know if this is a hook up guys, but he hooked me up with fish sticks and generic one.
It’s Ash Wednesday P.R. >>
This is interesting.
It coincides with National Drink Wine Day.
Is it?
This is nice rose.
How is it?
It’s very good.
It’s good.
It tastes different at 6:45:00 a.m.
JOHN: Moving on.
Our main story tonight concerns Twitter, or – as it’s been called since Elon Musk purchased it a few years ago…
Twitter.
It’s a site with exactly one good account left: Gerald Stratford, a retired British man who delights followers with his giant vegetables.
I’ve just cut this big cabbage.
It’s a PB for me.
I haven’t got any scales big enough to weigh it.
But I’m not worried about that, it’s a beautiful specimen.
JOHN: Yeah, it is, Gerald!
And I for one am glad you cut that cabbage!
To be completely honest, I haven’t been this jazzed to see a cabbage broken in half since my wedding night.
Twitter’s clearly changed significantly in recent years, and you can pinpoint the moment that started, because it’s the day in October 2022 when Elon tweeted a video of himself carrying a sink into Twitter headquarters, writing, “Let that sink in,” a joke so funny I’m still laughing right now.
And he quickly made it clear the company was going to be different.
He changed Twitter’s name to X, announced an “extremely hardcore” cultural reset, and by his count, said he’d cut about 80% of Twitter’s staff.
And to hear Elon tell it, he did this to protect free speech, and correct for what many conservatives considered a left-wing bias.
In fact, as far as he was concerned, nothing less than the fate of the world was at stake.
The reason for acquiring Twitter is because it was – it was causing destruction at a civilizational level.
You know, like Wormtongue from “Lord of the Rings,” where he would just sort of, like, whisper these, you know, terrible things to the king.
The king would believe these things that weren’t true.
And they were pushing a nihilistic, anti-civilizational mind virus to the world.
JOHN: Okay, for the record, Twitter’s not a good analogue for Wormtongue at all, and I’m guessing I don’t need to explain why, given the Venn diagram between “viewers of this show” and “people familiar with second-tier Lord of the Rings characters” is, I’m pretty sure, a single circle, as round, in fact, as the outermost wall of Minas Tirith.
But what Elon’s embrace of so-called “free speech” has actually resulted in is much darker.
One study found an approximately 50% increase in posts containing hate speech.
And recently, you may’ve heard about the platform’s struggles with Grok’s image editing tool, which has allowed users to create digitally altered, sexualized photos of real people, including minors.
And look, no one’s saying Twitter was perfect before Elon arrived.
It helped platform a lot of ugliness, including but not limited to our first shitposter president.
But it is genuinely worse now.
And you may think you already know how bad it is, or that it doesn’t matter to you because you’re no longer on it.
But I promise, it’s actually worse than you think, for reasons you may not know, and in ways that’ll unfortunately impact all of us.
So given that, tonight, let’s talk about Twitter.
And let’s start with some of the most visible changes Elon’s made.
One of his first involved the site’s verification system – which used to assign a blue checkmark to anyone well-known enough that they might need an official sign they were who they said they were.
Elon replaced that with a system where anyone could get a blue check if they simply became a “premium” user who paid $8 a month.
And that led to instant, albeit very funny, chaos.
All of a sudden, scrollers saw LeBron James asking for a trade, oil company British Petroleum admitting it killed the planet, and drug manufacturer Eli Lilly offering insulin for free.
JOHN: It’s true, fake accounts sprung up all over the place.
Fake George Bush said he missed killing Iraqis, to which fake Tony Blair said “Same tbh,” fake OJ Simpson said “Not gonna lie, I did that shit,” and a fake American Girl doll account said “Felicity owned slaves,” continuing, “I’m not even lying, look it up.”
Now, Elon eventually added new grey and gold checkmarks to help verify some official accounts.
And while I’m not sure which fake tweet made him do that, if I had to guess, it’d be this one from a fake Tesla account that said, “Our cars do not respect school zone speed limits.
Fuck them kids.”
So already, the site was much less reliable, because it was harder to tell who was trustworthy.
But on top of that, Elon took an axe to the site’s ability to deal with harmful content by, among other things, slashing its global trust and safety staff, including reducing its full time content moderators by over 50%.
He also started restoring a lot of accounts that had been banned for violating the platform’s policies on things like abusive behavior and inciting violence.
He memorably brought back this guy, as well as Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, and U.K. anti-immigrant crusader Tommy Robinson – which I believe is known as a “nightmare anything rotation.”
And that was just the beginning.
Twitter accounts belonging to far-right activists and QAnon theorists have been reinstated according to data reviewed by NBC News.
Hundreds of formerly banned users now, back on the platform after Musk’s Thanksgiving tweet that “amnesty begins next week.”
JOHN: Yeah, he basically reinstated a bunch of accounts, including white supremacists, and announced it on Thanksgiving.
Which, when you think about it is actually pretty thematically appropriate for the holiday.
And when you take all that together, it’s no wonder the site became a fertile breeding ground for hatred and misinformation, and much less reliable when it came to tracking breaking news.
One of the first clear signs of that came in the wake of the October 7th attacks in Israel.
Previously, at a moment like that, people might look to Twitter for information from journalists and other credible people on the scene.
But a ton of misinformation circulated there – often from accounts boasting misleading blue checks.
This video of a grieving boy supposedly from Gaza went viral, even though it was from at least nine years earlier and was taken in Syria.
And this clip supposedly of Israeli rockets exploding was actually from a military simulation video game.
The account that posted that, by the way, conveniently titled Israel Mossad, had gone from fewer than 1,000 followers when it first acquired a blue check in September 2023, to more than 230,000.
And that wasn’t the only big change, because Twitter also started paying so-called “creators” on the site.
Currently, if you’re a “premium” user – meaning you pay for a blue check – you can get paid for your posts, and your revenue is dependent on how many other premium users reply to, repost, and like your content.
And that has served some users pretty well, like this guy, who posted as “Freedom Uncut Online,” and was on Twitter a lot.
He says he spends up to 16 hours a day on X, sharing AI-generated pictures like these and streaming.
While some of these posts are obviously satirical, others are less fantastical.
It’s the more provocative content that gets views, he tells me.
It’s kind of interesting because the – the balance between free speech and saying stuff that you know is either untrue or you just say it in a very brash way to egg people on is – is an interesting era that we’re in.
I know people that are making – the – the pay period’s every two weeks, and I know people that are in the thousand-plus range.
JOHN: Wow, it’s not the most important thing, but it’s genuinely incredible to me that people can make money posting Matrix memes of Trump that read “I can dodge bullets,” not least because that something – for what it’s worth – Trump didn’t entirely do.
If we are just going to be sticklers about it.
And look, over a thousand dollars every two weeks is clearly a good payday just for posting.
Usually to make that kind of money online, you need to be running a crypto scam or selling feet pics, and even that’s only realistic for those of us who happen to be born with irresistible feet.
I’d show you, but honey, I don’t do that for free.
And some accounts, particularly on the far-right, have made even made more, like the anonymous “End Wokeness,” which once tweeted, “Wow.
Elon Musk wasn’t kidding.
Content monetization is real.”
With a screenshot showing earnings of over $10,000.
Now, I should say, most accounts don’t make that much.
But even relatively small amounts can be an incentive if, say, you live in another country, where the cost of living is lower.
And that may help explain the somewhat awkward revelations that came last year, when Twitter suddenly allowed people to see accounts’ location information.
The X account MAGA Nation, with nearly 400,000 followers, boasts itself as standing strong with President Trump and America First, with post after post backing Trump.
But one click shows it’s based in Eastern Europe.
Even President Trump himself reposting several accounts that are not from the United States on his Truth Social platform, like this account called Commentary Donald Trump, posting about whether foreign born citizens should be barred from running for office.
The account itself based in Africa.
JOHN: Yeah, and that’s not all – an account called UltraMaga Trump 2028, claiming to be based in D.C., was also listed as being in Africa, the account MAGA Nadine was based in Morocco, and the user at-American was based in Pakistan.
Which is pretty surprising.
Finding out an account called “at-American” is based outside the U.S. is kind of like finding out the person who runs DeuxMoi is David Attenborough.
I mean, sure.
It’s not illegal, and I guess maybe the passion could be real, but it certainly changes how I think about things.
The point is: there is an ecosystem of people, both here and abroad, who’ve discovered you can make money off of pissed Americans staring at their phones.
And to be clear, none of the changes I’ve mentioned so far involved secret tweaks to Twitter’s algorithm – they just involved changing who could post, and what their incentives were.
As for what’s happened behind the scenes, that’s harder to say.
Though some who’ve run experiments on the site have made some troubling discoveries.
Last year, Sky News created a number of accounts emulating British Twitter users.
Three were left wing users, three were right-wing, and three were neutral, designed to show no interest in politics.
And when they tracked the content each was pushed by Twitter’s algorithm, their findings were striking.
The result was that every account, no matter their political orientation, was fed a glut of right-wing content.
Remember our left-wing users.
This shows what they saw on the platform, and more than 40% came from right wing accounts.
Compare that to our right-wing users, and look, they saw much less left-wing content, and a lot of right-wing content.
And then the neutral users, who we designed not to show any interest in politics.
They saw twice as much right-wing content in the pink here than they did left wing in yellow.
JOHN: And that clearly suggests something’s up, even if we don’t know the exact algorithm changes that were made.
It’s like when a Redditor found that, statistically, James Harden’s poor performance during away games correlates with them happening in cities with highly-rated strip clubs.
Now can we make concrete statements about causality there?
Of course we can’t.
But the data is making some loud suggestions.
Now I have to say, x has announced a new update to Twitter’s algorithm, which they’ve described as “purely” AI-led.
Although, given Elon has a history of trying to make his AI chatbot, Grok, less “woke,” leading it to – at one point – call itself “MechaHitler,” I’m not sure how reassuring that is.
Also, Elon’s definitely shown a willingness to tweak Twitter’s algorithm to drive certain kinds of content – sometimes for truly embarrassing reasons.
There’s a notorious incident involving him going to the Super Bowl in 2023 and having a problem with one of his tweets and I’ll let this reporter fill you in.
He tweets out basically his support for the Philadelphia Eagles.
I think his tweet was something like, “Go Eagles,” with a few American flags on it.
Biden, around the same time, posts a somewhat similar tweet.
“Fly, Eagles, fly,” and it’s a video of his wife, Jill Biden, who’s walking with an Eagles jersey on.
The game goes on.
Elon Musk checks his phone.
Weird.
It looks like Joe Biden, who he’s called “a damp sock puppet in human form,” is doing much better than he is in terms of engagement on this very similar tweet.
At 2:36 AM, she says an urgent message went out, and roughly 80 engineers were pulled into work.
And they’re tasked with fixing the issues with the algorithm.
JOHN: That’s true.
Elon’s tweet got less engagement than Biden’s did, so 80 engineers were called in at two in the morning, and told this is high urgency.
And of course his tweet flopped.
It was terrible.
First, don’t use American flags when eagle emojis exist?
But also, “Eagles?”
Why call them by their government name?
Just post “Go birds, eagle emojis, Jalen Hurts can give me a tush push any day” and you’d have cracked a million likes instantly.
Now, reporters later learned that, after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that he, and he alone, benefited from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.
Which seems to be happening, as basically, whatever Elon’s tweeting about, people will see it in their feeds.
When Fortune conducted an experiment to gauge how prevalent Musk was on Twitter, they set up a dozen different test accounts, and in approximately 90% of the sessions they conducted, a post from Musk appeared at least once in the timeline, usually much more often.
And even clicking “Not interested in Elon Musk” didn’t change things.
In fact, after one test account clicked exactly that, posts from him more than doubled.
At this point, it seems like there’s only one option if you never want to hear anything from Elon Musk, and that’s to be his coolest child.
And Twitter thumbing the scale toward Elon’s interest is bad for multiple reasons, not limited to his god-awful jokes, his history of invoking extreme ideas, like the antisemitic great replacement theory, and the fact he was apparently a driver of US election misinformation in 2024.
But perhaps the biggest cause for concern is the fact our current government is troublingly dependent on Elon’s platform.
The Trump administration is painfully online and particularly on Twitter.
J.D. Vance has said that he’s a “Grok guy,” Kash Patel’s repeatedly fumbled FBI investigations by prematurely announcing suspects on Twitter, and this photo of the makeshift situation room during the U.S. military operation in Venezuela showed a Twitter feed with “Venezuela” in the search bar.
And I’m not sure anything could inspire less confidence than that, other than the Google results for “Who is Venezuela.”
And at best, the consequences of doing this are that the government just ends up doing dumb stuff, like when someone on Twitter seemed to convince Elon that the gold inside Fort Knox might be missing.
“The Washington Post” traced it back to this tweet, suggesting he take a look to make sure it was still there.
Musk replied, “Surely it’s reviewed every year,” to which the account responded, “It should be.
It isn’t.”
Just two days later, Musk tweeted “It would be cool to do a live video walk through of Fort Knox.”
And not long after, this came out of the mouth of the president of the United States.
We’re actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there.
Because maybe somebody stole the gold.
Tons of gold.
JOHN: Okay. Well. Let us know, I guess! Honestly, I know it’s probably not a great use of taxpayer money, but I think I’d be okay if he spent the rest of his presidency trying to solve low-stakes mysteries he found on Twitter.
Visiting Fort Knox because someone said the gold was gone or pawing around in the White House garden with a magnifying class because Kourtney Kardashian once tweeted do ants have dicks.
It wouldn’t be the worst use of his time!
Anything that keeps him busy.
But wild gold chases are the best-case scenario here.
Because we’ve talked before about how misinformation on Twitter led to actual spending cuts during Elon’s time at DOGE.
But it goes well beyond that.
A nominee for a senior administration post recently told the New Yorker, “If we have something that’s popular in right-wing Twitter, the White House is acting on it ninety-plus percent of the time.”
And Trump appointees like Harmeet Dhillon – the assistant attorney general for civil rights – will sometimes openly brag about taking work cues from social media.
I have a big social media following from before I joined the DOJ, I have around 1.5 million followers online.
It is a way to find information.
Today, I don’t actually watch television very much.
I’m not, you know, I don’t have the TV on in the background, because TV is like 12 to 24 hours behind what’s really happening.
And when the modern-day journalist heroes who are the Nick Shirleys and, you know, the Matt Taibbis and some of these others who, you know, right or left, they’re the ones who are getting the leads and sharing the stories in real time, those are the ones I pay attention to.
And where we get our attention on something – or Libs of TikTok is also a great source for some of our –
Yep.
Issues involving schools or employment.
We do open up investigations based on internet leads.
And I – I am proud of that.
JOHN: Okay, first, bragging about your Twitter followers is just embarrassing, and it gets even worse when you learn that last December, Dhillon tweeted, “I’ve been stuck at pretty much the same level of followers on this account since I started my government job.
What am I chopped liver over here?
What kind of content do my folks want to see more of to like and share?”
To which I’d respond: I guess I’d love to see a resignation letter, if you’re taking requests.
Also, little hard to hear her complain about a lack of followers, given she routinely pumps out duds like this recent one, “On the road.
Timeline cleanse knitting after a day of hard work.
Cashmere hat for a man.”
And this one, also about a hat, but in which she throws in the R-slur for good measure.
And what the fuck is that?
That’s a hard unfollow for me, for the assistant attorney general for civil rights.
But there are obvious issues with the government taking cues from the accounts Dhillon just described, because some are posting deeply irresponsible rage bait.
Take a guy she mentioned there, Nick Shirley.
He’s the 23-year-old right-wing influencer behind a viral “investigation” of Minnesota day cares posted in December.
They were actually playing a clip of it during her interview.
Shirley posted it on YouTube first, but it quickly went viral on Twitter, where it’s so far garnered over 140 million views.
And it’s worth knowing just how flimsy it was.
For context: allegations of social services fraud in Minnesota – some of it by Somali Americans – have been the subject of federal investigations and mainstream media coverage for years now.
Dozens of people have already been convicted as a result, with some investigations still ongoing.
Still, Nick Shirley decided to do some “investigating” of his own, by showing up at day cares, demanding to see proof kids went there, and in some instances, asking if he could enroll his nonexistent child.
When he wasn’t able to, he concluded the businesses were fronts.
It was a truly ridiculous stunt, as he sort of acknowledged when pressed on it by an actual reporter.
But surely you don’t think a daycare should just be unlocked?
You shouldn’t be able to just walk into a daycare.
There should be a reception.
No.
They – they – every daycare is locked.
Every daycare has – their doors are locked.
And so – okay, you bring up a fair point.
But then, why can’t they give me information on how to enroll a child?
JOHN: First, I love the slight pause after Shirley was told daycares are not typically open to strangers with cameras.
Just the slow realization that a locked door is one of the basic things every daycare should have, along with crayons, interlocking foam tiles, tiny tables and chairs, and so many germs, every part of your insides will be coated with phlegm for the next two years straight.
That’s what day cares are!
But also, if you really want the latest right-wing rallying cry to be “Daycares should have a guest reception for random men without children who just want to poke around and film some shit,” I’d love to see how that turns out for you.
Now, you won’t be surprised to learn that state investigators conducted compliance checks after Shirley’s videos went viral, and found that the daycares he visited were operating as expected, and that kids were present at all sites except for one and that’s only because it wasn’t yet open for families for the day when inspectors arrived.
But the thing is, it was already too late, because Elon absolutely loved that dumb video.
He tweeted, retweeted and engaged with a truly absurd number of posts about it, or the claims it made, in the days after the video went online.
And unsurprisingly, the Trump administration took notice.
The day after it was posted, JD Vance tweeted about it, saying it was “more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 Pulitzer prizes” – which, given one of them focused on tactics authoritarian regimes use to repress dissent in the digital age, feels a bit on the nose.
Two days after that, Kristi Noem posted a clip of ICE agents apparently conducting a “massive investigation” into childcare fraud in Minneapolis.
And the next day, Trump’s then-deputy secretary at HHS posted on Twitter, tagging Nick Shirley, and including this video, that was then retweeted by HHS.
Intrepid journalists have made shocking and credible allegations of extensive fraud in Minnesota’s childcare programs.
We believe the state of Minnesota has allowed scammers and fake daycares to siphon millions of taxpayer dollars over the past decade.
JOHN: Wow. Look, I know it’s distracting because that man is hot as shit, but if you can listen to his words through the smoke show that’s going on there that’s very worrying.
In that post, they announced they’d frozen funding to Minnesota, and then quickly tried expanding that to encompass five Democratic-run states.
And within two weeks, the Trump administration sent thousands of federal agents to Minnesota, to crack down on illegal immigration.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that all the shit you saw in Minnesota was caused, at least in part, by this fucking tweet.
The point here is, Twitter’s become a sewer of misinformation, with the power to bring about troubling real-world impacts.
And to be clear: this is now a problem that goes far beyond this administration, or this country.
Because to see just how dangerous what Elon’s built can be, we actually have to look at England.
In 2024, in a town called Southport, three young girls were killed in a knife attack.
It was horrific.
In the immediate aftermath, there was no public information available about the attacker, but nevertheless, a Twitter account called “Europe Invasion,” known to publish anti-immigrant and Islamophobic content, baselessly suggested the suspect was a Muslim immigrant.
By the time the killer was identified as a non-Muslim British citizen born to parents from Rwanda, it was already too late, as mobs were forming, and after a vigil for the victims, violence broke out near a local mosque, with people throwing bricks, bottles, and other missiles at it.
And the imam there still seems stunned by the speed with which it all accelerated.
We start getting messages from friends and neighbors and saying there is a lot of people accusing the attacker of being a Muslim.
And then it’s moving from there, they said it – he is coming to this mosque.
And then it moved from there very quickly.
We’re talking about within half an hour, it became that we coerced him into doing what he did.
Did you ever expect that it would end up – that hatred would end up outside your mosque?
Never.
JOHN: That’s terrible. And given the killer wasn’t a member of that mosque – or, indeed, a Muslim – of course you wouldn’t expect a hate mob to show up.
It makes literally as much sense as a mob showing up at a Taco Bell to protest the results of an Orlando Magic game.
Hey, guys!
The two things are unrelated, you got some bad intel, go home!
You fucking idiots!
But from there, the riots spread nationwide, with mobs targeting mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers, and leading to what’s been called the worst unrest the U.K. has seen in more than a decade.
And it was significantly fueled by Twitter, with false or unfounded claims about the Southport attacker getting at least 155 million impressions in the days after the attack.
And when the police there eventually made arrests for inciting racial hatred, one of the men convicted happened to be earning £1,400 a month from his activities on the site.
And it’s hard to deny Twitter’s role as, at the very least, an accelerant.
Two of the major voices spreading dangerous misinformation were Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson, who – remember – Elon reinstated to the platform.
And Elon himself was acting as a sort of amplifier, to the point that he replied to one post about the attacks with: civil war is inevitable.
And it’s not like some of the key participants have denied how critical Twitter’s role has been.
Robinson’s far-right movement picked up significant steam in the wake of Southport, and here he is, not long after the riots, giving credit where he feels it’s due.
Look what we’ve achieved in six months.
We’ve gone from – through the roof, thanks to Elon Musk, built a cult movement, ready, inspired many.
And we’re ready.
JOHN: Yeah, not great! And if that wasn’t bad enough, Robinson actually hosted a anti-immigration “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London last year, and you’ll never guess who he managed to get as a special guest.
The huge crowds in Westminster didn’t turn out just for Tommy Robinson.
They were also chanting someone else’s name.
Elon!
Elon!
Elon Musk, joining in from America.
Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you.
You either fight back or you die.
JOHN: Okay, saying “fight back or die” to that crowd is so malevolent I can barely wrap my head around it.
And I’ve got to say, what he’s doing there sure does seem like a strong case of, if I may quote Elon himself, someone whispering terrible things, things that weren’t true, and then pushing a nihilistic, anti-civilizational mind virus to the world.
It is warm tongue coded at least is what I’m saying here.
And look, this is typically where I’d trot out my hit catchphrase what can we do?
You know it – people go crazy when I say that, it’s on T-shirts now and I can’t walk down the street without people begging me to say it to them.
But right now, unfortunately, there’s not much we can push for by way of solutions.
The fact is, a massive media platform has been shaped in the image of its poisonous owner, and it doesn’t seem like Elon’s going to see the error of his ways anytime soon, given his brain seems to be thoroughly cooked by the garbage he consumes on his own site.
To be honest, he still doesn’t seem to have a coherent vision of exactly what Twitter should be – because just watch this recent interview where he offers a pretty grand vision for it, but then gets tripped up by the most basic follow-up question imaginable.
And I promise, this answer is so much worse than you’re prepared for.
I just really want some sort of a global platform that brings together…
It becomes close to a collective consciousness of humanity as possible.
And why is that important, Elon?
Collective consciousness?
To have one platform?
I guess…
Okay, why is that important.
I guess, you could say, like why, hm.
If you consider humans like humans are composed of around 30-40 trillion cells.
And.
Those trillions of synapses in your mind.
But there’s no – the why of it I guess is so we can increase our understanding of…
Increase our understanding of the universe.
JOHN: You know, at first I thought that was embarrassing, what with the full ten seconds where Elon’s brain seems to buffer like it’s loading a video on AOL in 1999, but then I saw the little drawing labeled “30-40 trillion cells,” and it totally made sense.
So it seems like the odds of Elon fixing this are pretty slim.
Meaning all we can really control is how we each interact with Twitter.
And I know there are some who think it’s important to stay on it, to be “part of the town square,” although given that town square now resembles, if anything, this – I’m not sure any good-faith debate is taking place there.
My personal advice is to not post on it at all.
I haven’t done that in over a year, although I will be going back there tomorrow to post a link to this piece before going silent again and prioritizing my OnlyFans.
And look, I know people have their reasons for staying on Twitter.
Though for what it’s worth: a lot of what it does, can be replicated elsewhere.
If you want to stay in touch with friends or contacts maybe try and connect with them somewhere else.
If you spend most of your time sending your significant other memes and funny posts, there are other sites where you can find those, but also, maybe put your phone down and take your wife out to dinner.
It’s been a long time since you went out without the kids.
And if you just want to watch arguments, may I recommend the Real Housewives franchises.
The Shakespeare of the modern age.
All I’ll say is, there are certain areas, like news in particular, where Twitter is now worse than useless.
In fact, for breaking news, it’s an active liability, as people routinely push out false information in the wake of tragedies and crises, often for money, and there don’t seem to be many guardrails to stop them.
All of which is really a long way of saying that the Twitter we may’ve once relied on and the Twitter that was fun and occasionally useful is just well and truly gone.
And collectively, while it might be sad, it might be past time for all of us to, if I may borrow a truly poisoned phrase, let that sink in.
That’s our show.
Thank you so much for watching.
We’ll see you next week.
Good night!
Check out this part parsnip.
Raising it from there to their.
The parsnip has gone from top to bottom.
Really enjoyed that today.
Oh, it’s beautiful.
We love parsnip in lots of different ways.
Cheers.
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