Last Week Tonight with John Oliver talks Trump, ‘drain the swamp’ motto
So what was the subject of Oliver’s main segment? Well, it started with the message of “drain the swamp” and Donald Trump. This is a motto that he used throughout the President campaign and it took on a very special meaning to him. It represented him cutting out traditional politicians … but that actually hasn’t ended up being the case. There are many “swamp creatures” (per Oliver) still in the cabinet, but apparently, many different Trump supporters don’t actually seem to care. They are actually more than fine with wealthy businessmen being a part of the Trump cabinet.
Yet, here is the problem: Even if some of Trump’s cabinet members are not necessarily typical politicians, they are still tied to special interests and lobbyists. Take, for example, one member of the cabinet openly admitting that getting money from lobbyists helps to secure meetings. We also learned a great deal tonight about the off-shore oil industry and the clear corruption and complications that are going on there. There’s a lot of feeding off of regulations in order to benefit special corporations; basically, think in terms of designing the rules to benefit specific organizations previously ran by the people now at the top of the food chain. There are problems all over there in the administration, including a former coal executive now running the EPA.
What was the main message of the series tonight? It’s really not altogether complicated. Trump has a habit of shouting “drain the swamp,” though to be fair it seems like it’s a little less commonplace at this very moment. Yet, it’s still one of the most memorable sayings of his campaign and it’s fairly clear at present that it does not actually have all that much meaning. What it does successfully is get people’s attention, but because it is just a cheeky phrase, it doesn’t need to function as anything else.
Also, because of the fact that there is so much attention being paid elsewhere at the moment, these particular problems in government are not being addressed. Maybe that changes under the new House of Representatives, but even they have a number of other issues that they are going to need to acknowledge and look at closely. Everyone at the moment seems to have their hands quite full tackling a wide array of different issues and that’s not changing anytime soon.
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