John Oliver explains Trump versus the world on Last Week Tonight

Last Week Tonight explains why the rest of the world can’t take the United States seriously anymore. Try to act surprised when you learn the reason why.

It would be practically impossible for Last Week Tonight to return from its break and somehow not talk about Donald Trump. After all, it seems like we can’t go a day, much less a week, without some sort of national embarrassment on our hands. That is, unless you are one of those increasingly rare Americans that feel good about our place in the modern world. However, chances are you are in a distinct minority.

At any rate, John Oliver and everyone else at Last Week Tonight don’t seem particularly cheerful about what’s going on in the White House these days. That has a lot to do with Donald Trump.

Trump was elected in large part because he was such a departure from the career politicians that often make it to the presidency. If we are generous, someone who voted for him may have looked at the state of current U.S. politics — which is admittedly a mixed bag, regardless of the political party or individuals in question — and wanted a shakeup.

Here’s the full clip. Warning: some explicit language.

Well, we got a shakeup, but it’s one that very few people are enjoying. Take Trump’s remarks about Africa, Haiti and El Salvador. Oliver played some responses from people in those countries, who were understandably upset.

“The same worms will eat him, too,” said one man.

It is a darkly comforting sentiment and one which, according to Oliver, would look good cross-stitched on a throw pillow.

Trump has vociferously complained that America doesn’t get enough credit. “The whole world is laughing at us” he has said in various forms and in various speeches throughout his time in the public sphere.

The real reason the rest of the world is backing off

Indeed, it often is, but Oliver claimed that this is more often the result of Trump’s own antics, rather than a slow, perhaps even dignified decline. Dignity cannot be factored into the president’s Twitter account, after all.

If you would prefer some statistics to back this up, world approval of U.S. leadership has dropped from 48% before the November 2016 election to 30% today. That’s nothing to scoff at, not least because we still have to work with people from across the globe.

“The rest of the world continues to exist, whether Trump acknowledges it or not,” said Oliver.

This all centers on “soft power”. You might as well get your lame jokes out of the way now. Go ahead — even Oliver couldn’t help himself.

Better? In a more serious vein, soft power is “the ability to get others to do what you want them to do without using carrots or sticks.” That can often be a country’s ideals, its culture, its films, literature, and more.

Diplomacy is a significant part of a country’s soft power. That’s why the State Department is a big deal. Even Secretary of Defense James Mattis supports the diplomatic efforts and continued funding of the State Department.

The Trump administration, however, has been cutting budgets left and right, including those in the State Department. Even worse, key positions in the state department and ambassador posts are still empty. Those include empty ambassador offices in key countries like Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

The ambassadors who are posted are just really bad at their jobs, like Pete Hoekstra. He claimed that there are politicians being burned in the Netherlands, for one. He later denied that when talking to a reporter, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Dutch reporters did not take kindly to Hoekstra’s tactics.

Whose opinion matters?

Perhaps this doesn’t matter to Trump. He has often claimed that his opinion is the only one that matters, anyway. Yet, for that strategy to work, he would have to be fantastically on top of his game. Frankly, however, his off-the-cuff, often ill-informed approach leaves much to be desired. It is so sloppy that other world leaders are shocked or darkly amused by Trump’s idiosyncrasies.

Take last summer’s NATO G7 summit, where Trump flatly said that Germans were bad (remember that Chancellor Angela Merkel is a key European ally) and practically broke Emmanuel Macron’s hand in a blustery attempt to dominate him via a handshake.

Towards the end of the summit, Angela Merkel said that “we Europeans must really take our own fate into our own hands.” This was after apparently being shocked by Trump’s erratic behavior, so much so that she hinted at a near-total lack of American support.

Oliver pointed out that Trump’s poor strategies have created a leadership vacuum in the world. The United States, at least in the eyes of practically everyone else, just isn’t up for the job anymore.

So, who’s set to take its place? Germany, perhaps, but few have fond memories of European-wide German leadership from the first half of the 20th century. China might also move into the vacant spot with some rather aggressive diplomacy. However, that isn’t a very palatable scenario either, given China’s authoritarian government and frequent human rights violations.

There’s no such thing as isolation

It’s an uncomfortable scenario. At least, it should be as such to U.S. leaders. Many of them have trumpeted the “America first” policy without regard to the larger world. We do not exist in isolation. In fact, creating those relationships takes sensitive and thoughtful work that can take quite a long time. At the very least, we could stand to fill vital ambassadorial posts and refrain from calling other countries nasty names.

While the future remains especially uncertain, Oliver still isn’t ready to give up on the United States. Trump does not represent all of us, he reminded viewers.

This is a complicated country, he said, one with an ugly streak and beautiful ideals. The great and terrible are all mixed together, said Oliver, much like greasy, yet delicious Popeye’s chicken. Yes, it’s true that Americans elected Trump and concocted Mountain Dew. Yet, they have also created Batmobile-shaped beds and those joyfully ridiculous inflatable T-rex costumes all over YouTube.

Next: John Oliver looks at the tactics of the Trump presidency

To back up his point, Oliver brought out the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus. Once arranged behind the desk, they sang a surprisingly beautiful cover of Smash Mouth’s “All Star.” This “terrible, stupid song being sung absolutely beautifully,” is the summation of America, said Oliver. “This should be our new national anthem.”

Maybe it should? Perhaps at this strange, sometimes heartbreaking point in American history, the pomp and bombast of “The Star-Spangled Banner” doesn’t quite fit. At the very least, we could try this new version on for size, if only for a little while.