Last Week Tonight Library: Season 4: Full Episodes

[Music] what welcome welcome welcome to last we tonight Andel oliv thank you so much for joining us and we begin tonight with President Trump the person who most deserves to look like that and and I know right now all anyone can think about is the reported indictments coming from Robert Müller please let it be Jared please let it be Jared please let it be Jared but a lot A lot has happened this week before that including Trump addressing America's opioid crisis which claims 140 lives every day or as one newscaster put it good evening I'm Anthony Mason and by the time this broadcast is over three people will be dead holy the only thing creepier than that is if he specifically names the who those people are three people will be dead Jason Cola of walam Massachusetts Diane forant of Spokan Washington and you now combating America's opioid crisis was one of Trump's Central campaign promises but I have to say a lot of his Solutions were underwhelming including one of the key announcements on Thursday it's really really easy not to take them and I think that's going to end up being our most important thing really tough really big really great advertising so we get to people before they start so an ad campaign I mean sure it is important not to start abusing opioids but that doesn't really help the people who are already struggling with addiction it's kind of like seeing someone neck deep in quicksand and then putting up a don't do quicksand sign also the whole ad Blitz strategy has famously been tried and failed before with Nancy Reagan's just say no campaign and yet it still seems to be Trump's preferred approach going by what happened at one of his rallies last year don't take drugs okay raise your hand raise your hand I promise Donald J Trump I promise Donald J Trump I will never take drugs I will never take drugs I don't want to say no alcohol but take it easy on the Alcohol what are you doing why are you walking back the Pledge as you go he would be a terrible wedding officient do you take this woman I don't want to say forsaking all others there are going to be others but take it easy on the others and don't let them call you at home no still still you got to say it is good that the president is calling attention to the open opioid crisis the problem is attention is pretty much all he's giving it because he didn't put out a detailed strategy and his splashiest step declaring at a public health emergency doesn't actually do very much it will streamline some access to addiction treatment but provides few new resources financing comes from the public health emergency fund which has a balance of just over $56,000 the federal government estimates the crisis costs $75 billion annually it's true Trump has finally chimed in with his two cents about how to tackle this crisis and involves a lotting for the 2.6 million Americans addicted to opioids literally about 2 cents each so Trump's fix for our opioids epidemic essentially boils down to here's two pennies go throw them in a Mo Fountain and wish your addiction away but for now let's turn to Alabama the souths the south on on December 12th they are holding a special election for the senate seat left open by current attorney general Jeff sessions a position that I assume he will be leaving any day now for his regular holiday job now now this this special election has gotten a lot of Buzz because the Republican candidate and front runner is former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore and he is a lot he's called American Indians Reds and asian-americans yellows he's called Islam a false religion he said homosexual activity should be illegal he reportedly said in February that the 9/11 attacks might have been punishment for America's turning away from God and on Monday he caused a stir by waving a gun I believe in the Second Amendment during a campaign rally oh that's not all he also personally kicked a panda in the balls and he once called Tom Hanks the nword and and just just in case you thought he couldn't get any worse MO is also an aspiring poet just listen to him recite a poem that he calls America the Beautiful America the Beautiful or so you used to be land of the Pilgrim's Pride I'm glad they're not here to see babies piled in dumpsters abortion on demand all sweet land of liberty your house is on the sand okay okay okay look I don't support everything that Roy Moore says but I think we can all agree that is objectively good poetry I I I would go so far as to say that that's the best use of dumpster baby imagery since Robert Frost's famous stopping by a dumpster full of babies on a Snowy Evening whose babies these are I think I know his babies are in the dumpster though he will not see me stopping here to say holy this dumpster is full of babies and speaking of poetic listen to Roy Moore's feelings on homosexuality because as bad as you assume they are they're actually worse he favors criminalizing sodomy and if you ask him about that things get weird fost sonomy is against the law of nature okay let's take another one is there a right in the Constitution for bestiality yeah look you're asking I I don't well there is no right in the Constitution to commit bology there's nothing says a man can have sex with a donkey or woman can have sex with a donkey right it's not in there okay so say what you will about Roy Moore he is a man who believes that a woman can a donkey every bit of well as a man and that is something # tap that ass # feminism mo mo has also stoked fear of Muslims even once suggesting that Keith Ellison's Faith should prevent him from serving in Congress now luckily due to everything that you've seen so far Republicans in both the house and the Senate have roundly condemned Mo and his views and have even gone so far as to I'm obviously kidding he just entered into a fundraising agreement with the RNC and multiple Republican senators are actively fundraising on his behalf and if you're wondering why they would do that I'll let Texas Senator John Corin explain you if You' seen any of these comments when he said that homosexual conduct should be illegal do you agree with that I don't have to uh I don't have to agree with somebody to uh support them over the Democratic nominee so this is a I support the nominee of my party but that kind of blind Loyalty means there is nobody you would not support if the Republican Party nomin ated a swarm of small poox infected bees presumably John Corin would say look we disagree on a lot of things but Senator all those bees is a reliable vote on tax cuts I support the nominee of my party and even the Republican Senators who are not publicly supporting more are hardly condemning him here are a few of their reactions after being asked to comment on his campaign Senator Dean hel of Nevada who won I wasn't paying attention I'm just worried about taxes Senator Rob Portman of Ohio he's going to be for tax reform I think I don't know I don't know him him Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina I'm not going to comment about anything I haven't read about I literally have not followed that race I haven't followed that one come on this is your own party Senate candidate not Ray Donovan I haven't been following that one what is his character the poster gives me nothing is he an assassin a Somalia uh an uncle showing up drunk at a christening is he a member of the wallberg family it's imposs possible to know and I'll never find out and if any of that has made you feel at all sad about the state of our democracy spare a thought for Australia not in fact the birthplace of Outback Steakhouse but very much the Outback Steakhouse of countries now Australia is currently in the midst of a major vote of its own at the moment 16 million Australians are being asked to vote in a postal survey on same-sex marriage it's true the Australian government is conducting a postal survey on whether same-sex marriage should be legal which is an odd thing to do because polls already exist showing around two-thirds of Australians support it so Parliament could simply pass it into law but instead they are inexplicably holding a non-legally binding voluntary postal vote at a public cost of $120 million which is the weirdest waste of Australian money since every baz lurman movie ever made now the ballots are due by November 7th and the campaign has been truly toxic with members of parliament delivering delivering ridiculous arguments against marriage equality like this there are all sorts of affectionate relationships I have an affectionate relationship with you Sam um but that's not the same no that's right we're not married right I have an affectionate relationship I have an affectionate relationship uh with my cycling mates who we go cycling on the weekends but that's not married yeah I mean we do you know we we finish we finish cycling we slowly peel our cycling clothes off by the side of a bucolic Country Road and we but that's not marriage that's your cycling mates that's different your cycling mates it's not marriage it's just them as you you cycle you you cycle yeah fact it's not marriage though and and he is not the only one hung up on semantics one activist seemed unusually obsessed with terminology ladies and gentlemen if I may still use that term in these gender fluid times I speak for marriage speaking against samesex marriage is Sophie York from from Lobby group marriage Alliance which says unions of same-sex couples shouldn't even be called marriage I think that that idea of having a different word has been floated and I'm sure it still will be and and and someone else put forward the word garage as as a possibility garage that is a stupid word except in the very rare case of a wedding between two men named Gary in which case obviously they should be getting married and and look as stupid as that is it is the sort of argument that you would expect but the no campaign has also had some surprising members like this couple I used to be a a supporter of samex marriage I mean I proposed to been 5 years ago um I just explained to him I said I I don't think it's my you know cup of tea even if same-sex marriage is legalized Mark and Ben won't be walking down the aisle if it's yes we we'll be like okay then we'll congratulations everyone can get married but we personally will not be getting married we'll stand by our commitment to each other you know we don't need marriage in our lives definitely not whoa two things Ben you are coldblooded and Mark you can do so much better than him you deserve someone as committed to you as you are to them you listen to me Mark you listen to me this relationship is going nowhere don't stay together for the dog he knows you're unhappy too you respect yourself Mark and you leave get yourself on Australian grinder and swipe I'm presuming the exact opposite direction that we do in fact this whole debate got so heated over the past few months it even spilled over into Australian rugby version of the Super Bowl an online petition is calling on the league to stop American rapper M lore from performing his gay rights song Same Love as part of Sunday's Grand Final entertainment okay so that is put me in a bit of a tough position because I do support gay marriage but I refuse to ever say let melmore perform his his music belongs in one place and one place only and that is the Pandora station now that's what your mom calls rap music also also let's not pretend that Australia has relentlessly high standards of who performs at their sporting events not after this memorable performance at the 2011 AFL Grand Final oh I won't do anything more oh I will do [Music] anything anything for love but I won't do that I won't do [Music] [Applause] step aside Buddy Holly Richie valin and the big popper there is a new the day the music died in town and look fighting the debate with words and songs is one thing but in some cases it's actually got physical the pr gay marriage head of Quant got pied in the face while the anti-gay marriage former Prime Minister Tony Abbott a man whose very smile says smell that I just cut one he he had an unfortunate incident when he was walking down the street uh G sang out um hey Tony I turned around he said I want to shake your hand uh I saw him coming towards me I held out my hand he grabbed my hand and it turned into a headbutt it's true Tony Abbott was headbutted by this man a Tasmanian a Tasmanian Anarchist who goes by to the names Astro and even better DJ Funk knuckle although it turn out that according to DJ Funk knuckle the the attack actually wasn't connected with the gay marriage issue at all has absolutely nothing to do with marriage equality that was just coincidental that someone had stuck a sticker on my jacket I was thinking there's Tony Abbott I'm going to head buddy so so here's here's the important thing I am in no way condoning Tony Abbott being attacked what I will say is thinking to yourself there's Tony Abbott I'm going to headbutt him is entire natural it's an automatic human response it's like there's a puppy I'm going to pet it or there's Shawn pen I'm not going to see that movie so the point is this has been a dispiriting ultimately pointless process and at the end of the day I think there are only two good things that could come out of it one is if Australia's Parliament legalizes gay marriage at the earliest opportunity and two that mark heeds my words and puts himself out there and meets someone who deserves him because Mark you can find someone who would do anything for love including that and now this and now if it makes Australia feel better here's meatloaf butchering America the [Music] Beautiful his oh not good C welcome Z new [Music] sh moving on our main story tonight concerns floods they are clearly catastrophic traumatic events although they have also been responsible for one of the most memorable Clips in the history of Broadcast News good morning well obviously we're getting a nice break from from the rain but not the flooding this is essentially now a part of the pic River in this neighborhood that's it James Cameron and Titanic because that is now officially the greatest boat disaster ever captured on film It's Over Now floods were everywhere this summer think of them as the despacito of natural disasters persistent ubiquitous and absolutely no fault of the Puerto Rican government and floods are always threatening 90% of all natural disasters in the US involve a flood which is I assume the reason that FEMA's website once referred to flooding as America's number one natural Hazard exclamation mark which is a pretty weird tone to take when describing something horrible it's like saying boils America's number one staff infection or Parks America's number one place to die unnoticed and floods are only going to get worse due to climate change and I know that there are people who will dispute that and we just don't have time tonight to litigate whether extreme weather events are exacerbated by climate change so for now let's just say they are yeah they just definitely are I mean sure sure sure it is it is a complicated issue and we may not have definitive proof until the late 1980s but but while floods are often referred to as natural disasters the truth is the damage they do is often to some extent within our control because we have made certain decisions that put and keep people people and property in the path of flooding and that is what this story is about and before we go any further let's acknowledge that people live near water for all sorts of reasons for some it's where their families have Liv for Generations or a necessity for the work that they do for others it's a luxury and and living next to the water is undoubtedly attractive despite the risks like flooding or stepping on pointy seashells or mistakenly giving a tosto to a seagull without realizing that that means that you will now spend the rest of your life haunted by a Tostito addicted seagull the point is whatever the reason to live by the water many do oh for sake you've got to be kidding I don't have any Tostitos I've been telling you that for 6 years look no Tostitos no toso get out of here get out of here you flying Beach rat sorry the point is the dangers of Waterfront living are real but many people like this man who lives on the water in Tampa Bay feel the benefits outweigh the risks Mark knows that life here is tenuous but he doesn't dwell on it every morning when I walk out to get the paper I see dolphins frolicking in the bayou and Rosie H spoon bills walking around the edge of the Bayou so tends to make you forget about all those sorts of things sure I I can imagine that seeing a ros8 spoon bill would take your mind off things because you're spending your whole day trying to figure out how a flamingo could have gotten its stupid bird face stuck into a panini press I'm just saying even people who like birds don't like this bird the audabon society an organization whose entire purpose is to Champion Birds says they are quote gorgeous at a distance and bizarre up close which is like the American Kennel Club saying we celebrate all dogs and honor them as man's best friend but the Dandy dinmont has a trash personality and looks like a Scotty Phil Spectre and look look if you are literally overlooking a bayou like that guy you are probably aware that flooding is a risk but not every flood prone area is directly along the coast and sometimes aggressive development can exacerbate the risk of flooding even considerably in land just look at Houston uh which was recently rocked by Harvey the Metro area's development has exploded one study found the Houston area has added 25% more pavement over 15 years replacing soil Rich Wetlands that could absorb water with concrete covered Suburbia exactly and that made Harvey's damage significantly worse concrete isn't good at absorbing water that is why people don't dry off at the beach by rolling around in the parking lot but but it's not just global warming or unchecked growth that have put more people in Risky flood prone areas it's also the fact that it's frequently only possible for people to take that risk because they have flood insurance just look at buying the beach it's a house hunters type show for people who want to live near the water and one episode featured two brothers named Mitch and Daniel arguing over a particular beach house which led to this exchange what do you think about the island house Mitch well I think there was a lot of good and a lot of bad on it right off the steps into the beach can't be beat we are really close to the water that's just another thing that's got me concerned well that's what insurance is for that's what insurance is for that may be the most Reckless statement ever said on a boat and I'm very much including I can definitely make this shot work and hey let's feed these girls some Tostitos I don't have any all I did was said the word get out of here no toos no toast detos but Mitch no toos but but Mitch Mitch isn't wrong that if they bought that house they could get flood insurance and surprisingly cheaply and it's worth taking some time to understand why that is the case because unlike other forms of homeowners insurance flood protection is actually underwritten by the government through the nfip or national flood insurance program it started nearly 50 years ago after historic floods wiped out many people's homes in the 1960s and the government back then realized that there was a real problem insurance companies wouldn't cover floods at an affordable cost because it was too risky so because of that the government was spending way too much on disaster relief so they stepped in and created the nfip which offered significantly discounted Insurance to encourage people to buy it and that sounds great but crucially the aim at the time was not that people would be staying in atrisk homes permanently as the program's current administrator explains they presumed that if we told people they were at risk they would move they presumed that over the life of the program those discounts wouldn't need to be uh continued and they presumed they wouldn't need to be continued because once people knew they had the risk they would move out that has not proven true no but of of course it hasn't because that's not how people work we will gladly accept huge risks to our personal safety for the sake of a discount that was the entire premise behind the McDonald's dollar menu and that is just one of the many flaws with how this well-intentioned program was designed because everything about it from who participates to where the money goes to the incentives it creates needs fixing and let's start with the fact that eligibility for the program is determined through flood plane Maps you are required to BU by flood insurance if you have a federally backed mortgage and FEMA Maps show that you live in a risky area unfortunately the Mandate has been poorly enforced meaning that lots of people don't buy insurance who should and the maps themselves can be both out ofd and wildly inaccurate in fact just days before Harvey struck a study of Houston area flood maps was published and the results were alarming over the course of a decade researchers at Rice University and Texas A&M Galviston studied one section of South East Harris County they found FEMA flood plane Maps missed about 75% of the damages from the storms 75% at that point you might as well predict floods by having blindfolded six-year-olds pin little cardboard puddles onto city maps at birthday parties but even if all the maps were perfect there would be another flaw with the nfip which is how it's administered you see typically the government doesn't directly insure you instead it pays private insurance companies a fee for every policy they sell but not just that the federal government is then responsible for covering any losses which is a pretty sweet deal for those companies they take none of the risk and yet they get all the rewards but it gets even worse because they also get paid for each claim they handle and when Frontline crunched some of the numbers and presented them to a former head of the program they found something shocking there was one number that really jumped out with all the claims in the wake of Sandy the profits were more than 4 00 million because they're handling a lot of claims that year and they get they get make a lot of money when they handle claims when a big storm hits then they make more money yeah at the very time you need them to make less money if anything because because of the burden is going to be born by the taxpayers they make a killing that's true for insurance companies the bigger the disaster the more they stand to profit and that is a business model not usually seen outside of Nicholas Cage's career and while the insurance industry May dispute exactly how much profit they make the fact remains that the government and the taxpayer are definitely the ones eating the losses which is one of the reasons why even before these latest hurricanes the program was $25 billion in debt and there are not enough ros8 spoon bills in the world to take your mind off that and just to be clear there are exactly enough ros8 spoon bills in the world I'm just saying do we all really need more of this hey kids come see the dirty Pink Dinosaur is noisily devouring its young and look there is a good argument to make that helping people stay in their homes after a disaster is what government is for but remember a big chunk of that money is just going to the insurance companies and another shockingly big chunk of that money goes to very few homes for instance along the Gulf Coast in Florida just 1% of properties covered by the nfip have accounted for a quarter of flood claims these are called uh so-called repetitive loss properties now they are homes that can flood over and over and over again getting payments each and every time and and some of them are costing us a fortune just recently an article in the Washington Post highlighted a home in point cap Parish that has flooded 40 times while the house is valued at just $56,000 the nfip has doled out nearly $430,000 to cover flood claims so that is just stupid because if nothing else if your house floods 40 times Mother Nature is sending you a pretty clear message and that message is hey would you mind leaving some weird fish would like to in here now and some parts of the country have particularly extreme examples of this now you remember Mitch and Daniel the pastel death trap that they were looking at is on a place called Dolphin Island where over the past two decades homeowners have paid just $9.3 million in premiums into the nfip but they've received $72.24 right in the water it wasn't close to the beach it was in the ocean the waves are just right here it's literally in the ocean this is insane yeah it is insane but what's even crazy is at the end of the episode they decided to buy that house but but even if you were able to overlook the repetitive loss properties which you shouldn't there is another issue and that is that nearly one out of every five homes covered under the nfip is a second home and because the program isn't means tested the benefits frequently go to some wealthy individuals vacation homes one such property belonged to John stel A Fox News personality and partially hydrogenated Tom celic and and I'll let stel who really answers the question what if Freddy Mercury quit singing to become an assistant floor manager at Men's Warehouse I'll I'll let him tell you all about it cuz even he knew it was ridiculous years ago I built this beach house that's Young me there the house was on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean a risky place to build but I built anyway cuz a federal program guaranteed my investment eventually a storm swept away my first floor but I didn't lose a penny thanks I never invited you there but you paid for my new first floor okay so now stel is clearly just baiting people because under no circumstances does anyone want to be funding the Reconstruction of the world's smuggest man's KC prison and there is lots to be confused about there not not least of which that photo of stel posing shirtless in skintight white swim trunks from hundreds of feet away who took that photo it can't be another human who wanted it so here's my guess I think that he put a camera on a long delay timer then Sprint it for a full 45 seconds back to the deck of his house Whispering hurry hurry hurry to himself the entire time and got in position just in time for that photo to happen that is the only scientifically possible explanation we debated this the entire week and it's the only scenario that we could all agree on and look look here's here's the thing if if you choose to build something in a risky place like John stel salt battered bottoms only Beach mistake you should absolutely be allowed to do that but you shouldn't expect the government to repeatedly help you rebuild when things inevitably go wrong however the vast majority the vast majority here of nfip beneficiaries are not wealthy or second home owners they often really need this program and cannot afford for it to go under and for those stuck in repetitive loss properties it is easy for anyone to just say they should move they should just move but it's much more difficult than that as this Kentucky woman whose home has flooded repeatedly will tell you we couldn't sell our house who would want to buy a house that's had this many repetitive floods in it who would want to buy a house we have neighbors that have had their houses up for sale for two and 3 years and haven't even had anyone come and view the houses we need a bath from from FEMA or from whoever it is that is responsible for this right and her decision to try and leave that home could not have been easy because you don't want to throw out the baby with the flood water but at a certain point the responsible thing to do is to get a better more water resistant baby which is incidentally also the title of Britain's best-selling book on teaching children to swim now unfortunately our buyout programs are hugely underfunded and prohibitively slow it can take years for buyouts to get approved by which point homeowners have probably had to rebuild their house at the government's expense and it may have already flooded again so essentially a government program that was supposed to help people in flooded homes is sometimes trapping them inside them indefinitely and trapping people in structurally sound homes isn't what the government is for it's what buying the beach is for look there just has to be a better way here and there are some key things that we can do to improve this program we can do things like means test it and eventually get rid of discounts for second homes and gradually increase the insurance rates on some properties so that they reflect actual risk unfortunately the last time the Congress tried a major reform of the nfip with the bigot Waters Act of 2012 the result was that many people's rates SC rocketed overnight and politicians were so spooked by Angry constituents they significantly scaled back many of the reforms and I'm not saying that this will ever be politically easy because even if you do properly fund and streamline a buyout scheme there are still going to be cases where people just want to stay put right here in New York there is a lowline community called Broad Channel where the streets can flood twice a month its residents fought against those rate increases a few years ago and many of them have no interest in leaving no the neighborhood's too great then listen my whole house got destroyed by Sandy and I you know I redid my whole house I you know people are like you're crazy you should move I said absolutely not but you're standing in water right now maybe the people telling you to move were saying at the very least can you move up 5 in to dry land but the hard truth here is even expensive interventions are likely to only buy that Community a little more time and people in Broad Channel will eventually be leaving whether it's by moving truck or by boat because environmental conditions are going to get worse heavy downpours have increased in the last 50 years and sea levels have been climbing steadily and I not saying that that is because of climate change even though it is yeah it just is it just it just is precisely the nfip is actually due for reauthorization this December and I would argue that is time to take another shot at serious thoughtful reform because without it we have an unstable unsustainable program that is indirectly harming some of the people that it was designed to help and I I don't have any I've chose the last time I don't have relax I'm not here for tosos really yeah hold on you you you can talk of course seagull can talk we just choose to listen most most of the time oh that's that's actually very nice and I heard what you were saying about flooding and you are right I've seen it I'm a seagull some people in highrisk areas will need to move and we should give them the help that they can do that with because while leaving your home is hard being forced out when it's uninhabitable is 10 times hotter right and after all your home isn't just walls on a roof it's where the people you love are oh seagull I got to say that was absolutely beautiful yeah not bad for a flying Beach rat oh oh no no no no no don't don't don't don't talk like that about yourself no don't it's okay I know it's true you know it's true everybody watching knows it's true hey I eat french fries out of garbage yeah you're right you make a good point you're absolutely disgusting but but you know what I am truly sorry for misjudging your motives in coming here that's okay Johnny uh just one more thing sure anything you have any Tostitos you no I do not have any to stos they're all gone get the out of here get out of here and now this and now this and now a few of the things Tucker Carlson is not against this is the way that America is is heading there's no doubt and I'm not I'm not against Gates I'm not against people getting married I'm really not I'm not against learning about gay people nothing against transgender people I'm not against gay cowboys I'm not against female firefighters but I'm not against all federal employees I mean look I'm not against immigration I'm not bashing immigrants I like immigrants I like immigrants I'm actually like immigrants I've liked I think every Mexican person I've ever met and I actually like the country I like Sweden I'm not against Sweden I'm not against people from Som I played squash with the Canadian this morning I like the Canadians I think they're excellent Little People Canada is a sweet country it is like your cousin you see it Thanksgiving and sort of Pat him on the head I went to the Million Man March 10 years ago and I had nothing against it at the time and I don't have anything against it now look I'm not against Art I'm not attacking Oprah I certainly respect her ratings I'm not against George CL I actually like Morgan Freeman I have nothing against Jane fond personally I'm not against Matthew con I I don't know anything about the guy I don't even understand your story but I know I'm against it but I like it that's our show thanks so much for watching see you next week good night okay I have a t okay there you go there you go that's it you count down here I'll put that's it I I got another trusty just take it take it easy take it easy take it easy there there just time now that's my look just pck it you there yeah just have the back I'm the back oh oh [Applause]