Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Season 11 Episode 29
Aired on November 11, 2024
Main segment: 2024 U.S. presidential election results and forecasting Trump’s second presidency
John Oliver discusses Donald Trump’s reelection, what happens next, and why the whole thing is – arguably – Katy Perry’s fault.
* * *
♪ ♪
[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 very much a week. And obviously, we’re going to get to the election in a minute. But if you’ve been consumed by it all week, you may’ve missed smaller stories that got buried, like the headline, “43 monkeys on the run from South Carolina lab. CEO thinks they’re having an adventure.” Or the news that a message in a bottle had been found in Ontario Lake after 26 years.
Or the death of Elwood Edwards, the voice of AOL’s “Welcome” and “You’ve got mail” notifications, who died just one day shy of his 75th birthday. He was, by all accounts, a very kind man. His last words were, fittingly:
“Goodbye.”
John: Bit of fun! We’re having fun, aren’t we? Of course, we are! We are having a little taste of fun. And I hope you enjoyed that fun, because the rest of the show is going to be about the fact that, on Tuesday, Trump won re-election. Which is, to put it mildly, not what I was personally hoping would happen. And honestly, in Trump’s victory speech, he couldn’t seem to believe it either.
Trump: We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political—look, what happened, is this crazy?
John: Yeah, it is crazy! It’s really fucking crazy. He’s basically one sentence away from saying, “I mean, you guys saw what I did, right? And you still voted for this? That doesn’t make sense!” And I know being a shambling verbal mess is part of Trump’s brand, but it’s still incredible to see the incoming president deliver a victory speech with the same energy as a best man who didn’t realize he had to give a toast.
“It’s a beautiful day, what a beautiful… Beauty. Today, my brother and his girlfriend—wife, sorry… Today, they did the thing, you all saw it. I thought my part was done with the bachelor party, but here we go. Geez, crazy, right? It’s crazy!”
Look, it’s been a rough week. And first, as always, my deepest sympathies—but it’s probably been hard to deal with anything other than this. The tiny reminders this week, where the world was going on like nothing had happened, could be suddenly enraging—whether it was a text from a relative inviting you to Thanksgiving—not now, Aunt Gwen! Or an alert about a recipe for roast chicken—not now, New York Times! Or Hello Kitty actually posting this word search on Twitter on Wednesday, asking followers, “What are you looking forward to this month?”
Hey! Hello Kitty! No fucking “now!” I’d love to tell you what I’m looking forward to, but as I can’t find “drinking my feelings” and “housing some grief-mac-and-cheese” on your stupid puzzle, get the fuck out of here!
People on Twitter even got mad at this teaser for a new Tyla song…
John: That was posted the day after the election, only to flood the responses with “not now, girl, not now” and “Tyla, read the room” with a gif of Lea Michele, before a ton of replies correctly pointing out, “She is literally South African?”
Nobody’s happy that Trump won, including me, but she is literally not an American. What do y’all want from her? Look, people in other countries are allowed to buff their jeans shorts. They didn’t get us into this situation. We did! And honestly, if you’re watching right now and thinking, “You know what? I’m not actually ready for this,” I totally get it! It is understandable not to want yet another guy in a suit doom-squawking at you.
So if you’re too angry, depressed, or worried to watch the rest of this show, no problem. I’ve been in each of those places this week, and they’re all a correct reaction. Because look, we did a show like this after the election in 2016, when no one expected Trump to win. This time, though, his winning felt like a real possibility all year long. Lots of people mobilized to stop it, but it happened anyway, which feels somehow worse.
You’ve probably seen people really struggling this week, and my sympathy goes out to all of them, with one exception, that is Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen. He’d claimed that he’d leave the country if Trump won, only to appear post-election on a livestream where he got trolled by viewers in a very funny way.
Cohen: Can we stop with that? I appreciate it. I don’t like the stupid turkeys. Knock that stupid shit off just please. All right? I said I was leaving, and then the following day—get that through your dumb heads—the following day, I turned around and I said that there’s no chance in the world that I’m leaving my country, thank you very much. All right? Not leaving anywhere. You leave! This is my country, and I have every right, every single right within which to turn around—could you stop so we can? All right. Two seconds, I’m going to end up blocking this idiot.
John: I love it. Everything about that is very good, from the “I don’t like the stupid turkeys” to the “I’m not leaving” with perfectly timed Elvis hair. I have no problem with—oh, no, hold on. No, it’s not okay when it happens to me. Get it off me. That doesn’t make it any better. No, come on, I’m trying to make an important point about—you know what, just leave it. I’ve been becoming more birdlike and, frankly, this week nothing feels more appropriate than presenting me as a bird who is fully and truly cooked.
What it means for abortion rights, the environment, Ukraine, Gaza, the demonization of minorities, and mass deportation is terrifying. The GOP spent at least $215 million just on anti-trans network TV ads. That’s over $134 per trans person in this country. And yet, Trump is about to be president again.
All the answers—and some of the questions we do have—might not be particularly satisfying, but let’s at least try and answer a few of them. Specifically, How did this happen? What comes next? And What do we do now?
Let’s start with how did this happen? The truth is, it is too early to have a definitive answer to that, but that has not stopped people from taking big swings at blame. The pundits have already begun:
“It was Kamala Harris!”
“The progressive era should be over if they want to start winning again!”
“Did Kamala Harris move too far to the center and alienate some of the base?”
“It was Joe Rogan.”
“It was Elon Musk getting out those young male voters.”
“They didn’t have a message that attracted working-class voters!”
Everyone’s pointing fingers in all directions—from Latino voters, to young men, to Joe Rogan. Basically, you can spin your own personal wheel of blame and generally make sure it lands on whoever you were mad at in the first place. And I get the appeal. Fun to blame people! But let’s be clear: Trump was literally just re-elected on a platform of doing exactly that.
Personally, I like to imagine everything that happened on Tuesday is Katy Perry’s fault because at Kamala’s election-eve rally, she did this ill-advised cover:
♪ I decided long ago ♪
♪ never to walk in anyone’s shadow ♪
♪ if I fail, if I succeed ♪
♪ at least I’ll live as I believe ♪
♪ no matter what they take from me ♪
♪ they can’t take away my dignity ♪
♪ no! ♪
John: I mean, you are right that they can’t take away your dignity, but only because you just surrendered it willingly. I know she’s trying to do a nice thing there, but why would you try cover Whitney Huston? The voice! Say what you will about Lee Greenwood, which in my case is about 18 minutes of rigorously fact-checked insults, but at least at Trump rallies, he wasn’t trying to do Freddie Mercury’s part in Somebody to Love. Now, did that karaoke night performance doom the whole Harris campaign? Probably not. But it feels good to think so because it’s an easy answer to a difficult question, which is a lot more appealing right now than actually finding the difficult answers.
And look, I am not saying the campaign didn’t make mistakes. But the reason why specific groups vote the way they do in elections tends to take time to analyze once all the data comes in. The tactical decisions by the Harris campaign will, I’m sure, be picked apart endlessly. But it is telling how quickly some are jumping to predetermined conclusions that don’t match the campaign that just wrapped up.
For instance, some Democrats are loudly claiming the party needs to move to the center, with New York Congressman Tom Suozzi arguing, “Democrats have to move away from the far left,” citing trans rights as one example, saying, “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.”
And a few things about that: first, if what you wanted was a centrist campaign that was quiet on trans issues, tough on the border, distances itself from Palestinians, talks a lot about law and order, and reaches out to moderate Republicans, congratulations! That was exactly the candidate we just had, and she lost. Guess how many trans speakers there were at the DNC? I’ll give you a hint: it is a very round number.
Also, I’m not sure how you reach out to moderate Republicans more than appearing with Liz Cheney multiple times, unless you literally dig up Henry Kissinger’s corpse and prop it up at a rally in Michigan while Katy Perry sings Rolling in the Deep. It’s okay not to have the range for a song, Katy!
And finally, regarding “youth sports”: there were a lot of attack ads on that issue, and it was frustrating to see the Harris campaign fail to formulate a response. Especially because it’s pretty easy to do. I’ll do it for you right now: As we’ve discussed before, there are vanishingly few trans girls competing in high schools anywhere. Even if there were more, trans kids—like all kids—vary in athletic ability, and there’s no evidence they pose any threat to safety or fairness. It’s very weird for you to be so focused on this one issue when there are other pressing problems in high school sports, like the assistant volleyball coach who keeps liking their photos on fucking Instagram.
The bigger point is that, at least based on what we know now, anyone pointing the blame for the election result at one specific demographic is missing the mark. Because there was an across-the-board shift to the right on Tuesday—Trump improved on his 2020 margin in more than 90% of counties nationwide. And his victory was driven by gains among seemingly every possible group of Americans. In fact, the only groups where I can be absolutely sure not a single person voted for Trump are the Avengers and people who post poems to their Instagram stories, which, all due respect, has gotten a bit out of hand this week.
One thing that did become clear was that the economy was a massive motivating factor for people. It ranked number one among issues voters cared about, with 52% saying it was “extremely important” to them, and it was frequently mentioned among those who voted for Trump:
Voter 1: Everything’s too expensive. My wife, she actually works two jobs just to have extra money. So, I mean, we’re voting for Trump.
Voter 2: I’m voting Trump. He had catapulted us into a better lifestyle.
Voter 3: While he was the President, everything was nice and smooth, and I still had money left in my pocket.
Voter 4: I would describe myself as being resigned, I suppose, to voting for Donald Trump. I just—I can’t vote for the status quo. And I was absolutely better off during Donald Trump’s presidency than I am today.
John: Yeah, to hear voters tell that the economy is why a lot of them went with Trump because, in their eyes, he was the “economy guy.” Which is why he basically wound up winning with the same mantra as Bill Clinton did in 1992: It’s the economy, stupid! Also, by the way, I happen to be good friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
And look, while a lot of those people were probably going to vote for Trump anyway, the truth is, there was understandable frustration about the inflation that took place during Biden’s term. As we discussed at the time in our exciting and youthful comedy show that explained inflation for 24 human minutes, there were global factors behind it. Many U.S. allies also saw big price increases, in part because global supply chains seized up during COVID.
This has led to a wave of “change” elections all over the world, where voters have thrown out incumbent governments due to high prices. And the thing is, I get not wanting to vote for the status quo. And Trump—in his fucked-up way—did offer a change, especially as—even while Harris was blanketing swing states with ads talking about grocery prices—she was also vague on what she would have done differently than Biden.
And while you could argue that Biden’s policies to shore up the economy were actually one of his major successes, I do get that when one side is saying “milk is expensive” and the other side is saying, “Okay, yes, milk is too expensive, but we’re working on it, and also it’s not that expensive when you take a macroeconomic view of America’s recovery in contrast to other Western economies,” it’s not a great position for an incumbent party to be in. And it makes for a pretty shitty lawn sign, too.
The irony here is, the U.S. economy has definitely improved, and the impacts are now being felt. The Wall Street Journal even ran this headline before the election: “The next president inherits a remarkable economy.” Which, I guess, is yet another thing Trump will now inherit without having to actually work for it. Along with money and, of course, good looks.
And listen, you can point to the economy and still find it unbelievable that Trump was elected. Because we just chose a man who oversaw a fiasco of a response to the pandemic, fomented an insurrection, and since leaving office has been convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records and found liable for defaming and sexually abusing a woman. Not just that—his campaign was an avalanche of lies and fearmongering, when it wasn’t just pure chaos. Especially toward the end, when he was miming a blowjob on a microphone, dancing on stage for 40 minutes talking about the size of the Arnold Palmer‘s dick, and getting completely distracted even in the middle of one of his signature rants demonizing migrants.
Trump: These are rough, vicious… rougher than anything you can imagine. I say it all the time, if you were making a movie on some of these people—if you wanted to do a movie—there’s no actor in Hollywood that could play the role. There’s nobody that can play these guys. These actors, you know, they’re a little bit shaky. They can’t play the role. They’ll bring in a big actor, and you look, and you go, “He’s got no muscle content. Got no muscle. We need a little muscle.” Then they bring in another one, but he’s got a weak face, he looks weak. No, these guys have the whole package, unfortunately for our country.
John: Yeah, at one point, his complaint seemed to be that they’re not chiseled enough? And while there are a lot of notable lines in there, my underdog favorite is, “And I say it all the time.” Do you? Do you say, “We need a little muscle,” in that voice, all the time? I mean, maybe you do, I don’t know. Jesus Christ, I cannot fucking believe you’re going to be the President again.
And look, I know what many of you have been shouting at your screens throughout this segment: It’s not news that Trump’s overt white supremacy and anti-immigrant rhetoric appeal to many of his voters. It’s also not news that many of them like to hide that by claiming all they’re worried about is the economy. But clearly, for others, there’s a willful denial going on about him.
Because Trump lies so constantly, people have assumed you can pick and choose which things he actually believes, and create a version of him that suits you. And that can be the case even when his intentions are very clear. The day after the election, one reporter spoke with migrants outside ICE’s field office in Atlanta. The first person they spoke to, a woman from Nicaragua, said, “We’re fucked,” which is not surprising. What is surprising is the reporter then posted an update saying, “Several of the migrants I’ve been speaking with say they would have voted for Trump themselves. They don’t believe Trump will deport them because they are here to work and are ‘not criminals.’”
Which is pretty heartbreaking, because he’s made it painfully clear that he absolutely wants to deport migrants for any reason that he possibly can, including, but not limited to, “unreasonably sculpted abs.” And maybe those migrants are right. I hope they are, for everyone’s sake. But unfortunately, either way, we’re about to find out.
Which brings us to our second question: What comes next? Because as we speak, Trump is assembling his Cabinet. And the early glimpses into his process haven’t been great.
There are already thousands of people lined up for potential jobs. The question is who Trump picks for those positions. And right now, just to give you a sense of how much the jockeying is already underway, Palm Beach is teeming tonight with potential Trump staffers who were here at his election night party at either Mar-a-Lago or the convention center and changed or delayed their travel plans after last night’s victory, deciding to stick around because that’s how quickly they believe he can make these decisions.
John: Okay, first, let me state the obvious: that chart fucking sucks. It looks like a choose-your-fighter screen where the only thing they’re fighting is the arc of the moral universe. It looks like an advent calendar where every single flap opens up to a tiny piece of literal shit. It looks like a game board for Guess Who: Oops, All Assholes. There is a lot in there.
But let’s start with the lower-right-hand corner with these two guys [Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk] whose potential jobs are listed as question marks. Like, even the chart itself isn’t sure why they’re there. And honestly, chart? Same.
We’ve already talked about RFK Jr.—enemy to all animals, friend to all measles—and Trump’s plans to “let him go wild on medicines.” You know, really get in there and fix things up like a worm in a frontal cortex. But Elon Musk is on there too. One idea floated in the campaign’s closing days was that he’d be appointed to cut waste out of the federal budget. Here he is at Madison Square Garden, hyping his plan with the co-chair of Trump’s transition team:
Interviewer: How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Biden budget?
Musk: Well, I think we can… we can do at least $2 trillion.
Interviewer: Yeah!
Musk: Yes!
Interviewer: Two trillion!
Musk: Your money is being wasted and the Department of Government Efficiency is gonna to fix that!
John: Ok, put aside that he’s dressed like the least intimidating bouncer at a strip club, that’s a concerning amount of money to be cutting. And it’s likely to come from slashing government programs. Musk has said elsewhere, “We have to reduce spending to live within our means,” and “That necessarily involves some temporary hardship.” Hearing a man worth 300 billion dollars telling the country to “endure hardship” and “live within their means” fills me with a feeling that, apparently, I cannot say out loud for legal reasons.
And even if you think a promise to cut $2 trillion sounds good, here’s former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers pointing out the obstacles to cutting a full one-third of the federal budget:
Summers: Respectfully, I think it’s idiotic. It’s not a serious statement. Where are they going to cut it out of? They think—these people think… Here’s the problem: only 15% of the federal budget is for payroll. So, even if you took all the employees, every single person who works for the federal government, out, you couldn’t save anything like $2 trillion.
John: It’s true. You could fire everyone who works for the government and still not hit that number. Also, I want to compliment the phrase, “Respectfully, I think it’s idiotic.” He’s really stretching “respectfully” there to the breaking point. “With all due respect, that’s a dumb idea for babies.” “Whilst meaning no offense, what ding-dong dreamt up this half-assed fuckfest?”
And look, ultimately, I don’t see Elon Musk going through the federal budget line by line, because he’s just going to get bored and go back to something more his speed, like finding a place to do another big-boy jump. But the same cannot be said for some of the other people Trump’s looking at.
Among potential Attorney General candidates is Texas AG Ken Paxton, who’s been under federal investigation for alleged bribery and misuse of office, and who gave a speech at Trump’s rally on January 6th saying, “We will not quit fighting.” Ahead of the election, he notably did not join 51 other AGs in signing a letter condemning violence and urging a peaceful transition of power, regardless of the outcome. And when it comes to qualifications for running the DOJ, I’d argue that “hoping for another insurrection” should not be one of them.
For CIA Director, Kash Patel is apparently an option—a man so devoted to Trump, he even has a series of children’s books called The Plot Against the King. The first of which tells the story of a wizard named Kash who sets right the sinister machinations of Hillary Queenton. One Amazon review said, “10 stars. Super fun book. I think I enjoyed it more than my seven- and nine-year-olds,” and I am positive that is actually true.
Patel was actually in Trump’s first administration, working in a number of positions while having an official government photo where he looks like someone who just realized he accidentally texted a dick pic to his mom. “Oh, god, she gave it a thumbs-up. I think that’s worse. I think the thumbs-up makes it worse.”
But there are serious questions over Patel’s qualifications for the job, and frankly, it says something that during Trump’s first term, when he floated making Patel Deputy Director of the FBI, Bill Barr apparently said, “Over my dead body.” Well, Bill Barr isn’t there to stop him anymore, and if Patel gets in at the CIA, he’s told Steve Bannon he’s got some serious plans:
Patel: We will go out and find these conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out, but yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.
John: Well, I don’t love the sound of that. From threats to go after the media, to the hoodie he’s wearing there—from his own merchandise line, by the way, because nothing says “I’m a serious patriot” like a Punisher skull with Trump hair. Which, first… very, very cool. And second, all I really see on that skull is a swooping pixie cut, so to be honest, it could just as easily be Dame Dianne Wiest. And I’m just going to choose to believe he’s wearing a spooky Dianne Wiest hoodie.
But that is just scratching the surface of the deep bench of idiots, freaks, and wannabe tough guys eager to get into the White House and start breaking things. And come January, things could get very bad, very fast. Which brings us to our last question: What do we do now?
Well, that really depends on who “we” is. For starters, there are things Biden could do before leaving office. He could grant or extend Temporary Protected Status to some immigrants currently in the U.S., to protect them from deportation. Also, he and the Senate could fill the nine open Inspector General positions at key agencies like the NSA, IRS, and Treasury—which feels very important, because oversight is certainly not going to be a priority for Trump. He could also commute the sentences of federal prisoners on death row to life in prison, so Trump can’t repeat his agonizing execution spree of his first term.
Now, as for the Senate, it could pass the PRESS Act, a federal shield law that already passed the House unanimously. It would protect the confidentiality of journalists’ sources and their personal devices from federal law enforcement. And while I am definitely not a journalist, there are many great ones who work here, and the only time anyone should be invading their phones is when I text them research requests like, “Have two presidents ever kissed?” or “If I die on the show, do I die in real life?” or “Did Tucker Carlson’s mom really only leave him $2 in her will?” By the way, the answers to those are, respectively: twice, unclear, and no—she only left him $1, which explains an awful lot.
And finally, the Senate could—and absolutely should—confirm Biden’s remaining judicial appointments. There is a lot of important stuff left to do, which makes those infuriating news stories saying things like, “After their losses, some Democratic Senators might want to wrap up remaining business quickly and move on from Washington as the holidays approach,” presenting attendance problems for votes. Which is so maddening to me! These last weeks count. You can’t just fuck off early because you lost. I believe Kimberly Kardashian might have said it best:
Kim Kardashian: Get your fucking ass up and work.
John: Yes, yes, Kim. Get your fucking ass up and work. [Cheers and applause]
And the thing is, even if Biden and the Senate do all these things, it won’t stop the fact that on January 20th, Trump is getting sworn back into office. And that is very depressing. So what do the rest of us do next? Well, for the next few days, I’d say, “whatever you want.” I am not going to judge you for how you get through the next week, for two reasons: one, I’m not going to see it. I am in the TV. This is far away from where you are. And two, because there is no right reaction right now.
Lots of us are grieving—and grief has stages, which take different amounts of time for different people. The stage I’m currently locked in is anger, I am mad for trans people who are being threatened. I’m disgusted at the prospect of mass deportations. I’m furious at Biden for not dropping out earlier, and that the egos and inaction of two men older than credit cards themselves have led us to this point.
And I’m mad that women have to hear, “Your body, my choice” from right-wing dipshits. I’m mad that Elon Musk is apparently sitting in on meetings with the President of Ukraine. I’m mad about the myriad of damage Trump will do that can’t easily be undone—like setting back efforts to fight climate change and appointing more Supreme Court justices.
And I’m mad at the prospect of four more years of people saying, “So, is your job, like, so much easier with Trump as president?” No! It fucking isn’t! Fuck you so much! Fuck you!
So whether you are angry right now, or despairing, or Googling “new country, no fascists, how move?”—do what you gotta do. Drive to the nearest body of water and scream into a well. Punch a tree. Curl up in a ball and watch The Princess Diaries all the way through, and then at the end, when Miracles Happen starts playing, fucking shout, “No, they don’t! Don’t lie to me! People can be shits!”
But try not to completely obliterate yourself in despair. And I know that is hard. Right now, on the hope meter, most of us are probably pretty close to the bottom. But we just can’t afford that. You can’t drink bleach, even—and especially—if this guy [Donald Trump] tells you to do it again. Despair doesn’t help anything. It only makes everything worse.
And I’m not trying to push you into false hope here, either. If your hope meter is way up here, what is wrong with you? Are you a fucking child? Things are very bad! So I’m not going to tell you, “Everything’s going to be okay,” because frankly, it isn’t. It wasn’t last time, and it won’t be now.
Here’s what I guess I’m trying to say: just a week ago, we mentioned elections are really just about choosing who to push, and where you’re pushing them from. Well, unfortunately, we now know we’re going to have to push much harder and from further away than where we just were. Which is an exhausting thought. But I think a lot of times, movements burn out by focusing exclusively on how far we have to go without celebrating the small victories that happen along the way.
For instance, even amid the GOP’s massive anti-trans ad campaign, on Tuesday, Delaware elected the country’s first openly trans member of Congress. And around the country—[cheers and applause]—trans and otherwise gender-expansive candidates won races in places like Montana, Hawaii, and Kentucky, where Emma Curtis was elected to the Lexington City Council. And that is a big deal. Curtis is hoping this result will set an example for others in the same boat:
Emma Curtis: If I could say anything to younger self, it would be the same thing that I would say to any trans kid who’s watching this now, which is that you can succeed because of who you are, not discriminatory politicians tell you you have to be. And you’ve got a future. This city, it belongs to you, too.
[Cheers and applause]
John: Fuck yeah, it does! It is a powerful thing to have a group saying, “I don’t think you should exist,” and to be able to respond with, “I’m literally an elected official.” Her being elected is now my favorite fact about Lexington, just after the fact that its tourism website confidently proclaims it “the horse capital of the world.” The URL for that, by the way, is visitlex.com/thingstodo/horses. And let me be the first to say, “Don’t mind if I do.”
And that’s not all. Seven states voted to either overturn abortion bans or add protections to their state constitutions. Florida approved an amendment protecting abortion access, even though it fell just short of the supermajority, the 60% that it needed to pass. It got 57%, which is remarkable to be the losing side of that vote. And the abortion measures that did get passed did so thanks to relentless organizing at the state level from activists like this woman in Arizona:
Activist: This is the best and only way to make sure that our state preserves abortion access.
Journalist: Chris Love helped create the measure and get it on the ballot. She says the overwhelming support from both parties now puts rights back in the hands of women.
Activist: This is a resounding victory for the people of Arizona, especially people who can become pregnant. Providers who provide abortion care, they can rest easier now knowing that we passed Prop 139.
John: That is great.
[Cheers and applause]
And although I would emphasize that she said “rest easier” there, not “rest easy,” unfortunately, as we know, there is no resting easy during a Trump presidency. Anything can happen, and not in a good way. And I know that focusing on the good news this week feels like finding $20 in your pocket in the middle of a bear attack, but it is important to take your silver linings where you can find them.
And also worth noting, Arizona went to Trump—as, interestingly, did over half the states that voted to protect abortion. In fact, Missouri voted not only to overturn its abortion ban, but also to increase minimum wage and require sick leave, while re-electing both Trump and Josh Hawley, suggesting Democratic policies are still popular even in a year when their candidate wasn’t.
Look, for the next few years, we are not going to see much in the way of gains at the federal level, at all. But at the local level, these policies are clearly resonating. Political organization, at the grassroots, is working. And we’re lucky to have groups working tirelessly to help the people Trump threatens the most. We actually spoke to a bunch of them this week, and one small positive thing they told us is they actually got a head start on planning for a Trump administration because Project 2025 essentially gave them a 900-page roadmap for what they need to be ready to strategize against. Which is something.
But they’re also going to need help. And, you know, Fred Rogers famously told us, in times of emergency and despair, to “look for the helpers.” It’s really good advice, but I will note: it is advice for children. And if you’re a child watching me right now—first, you either have terrible or fantastic parents, but second, this next part isn’t actually for you, so just fuck off for a second, will you?
If you’re an adult in the coming crisis, we are going to need a lot of helpers. And that help can take many forms, and there are people already doing it. You can use the National Network of Abortion Funds to find ways to support people. You can support trans and other LGBTQ+ people by donating time or money to centers and organizations in your area. And if you want to help migrants, there’ll be groups where you live already providing everything from legal services to donated supplies. If you want to support them, you can literally just Google, “How to help migrants in…” and add the place where you live.
And remember, you can organize politically around the issues you care about—at work, at school, and in your community—to elect a more responsive government. If I may quote Lexington’s newest council member: “Your city belongs to you, too.”
That is all really important work to be doing over the next few years and beyond. And look, I don’t want to do this shit again, and I’m guessing you don’t either. You might well be exhausted, confused, scared, and running on fucking fumes right now. Which is understandable. But you might be surprised just how far you can still get even on fumes.
And don’t just take that from me. Take it from one of the world’s greatest-ever singers, being covered by a different singer.
♪ If I fail ♪
♪ if I succeed ♪
♪ at least I’ll live as I believe ♪
♪ no matter what they take from me ♪
♪ they can’t take away my dignity ♪
♪ no! ♪
John: Thanks, Katy. I couldn’t have sung it better myself. That is our show. Thank you so much for watching. We will be back next week. And we’ll see you then. Good night!
[Cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
Oh no! I don’t want to be a fucking turkey! I’m not leaving! You leave! I’m staying here!
[Cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
