Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow

John Oliver

The August 11 episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver kicked off with a lot of potential news to discuss. Let’s start with gun control as Oliver went over a number of the issues that were at hand, including Donald Trump’s hospital devents, demands for politicians to do something, and also the NRA.

If you did not know, the NRA has been at the center of headlines for quite some time, and for a wide array of reasons. Not all of them even have to do with policy — John went through some of the allegations of misspending, especially when it comes to the habits of the people in charge. As he pointed out, this hasn’t been a great past few months for the NRA in terms of the state of the organization — Oliver actually thinks that there could be some change coming on gun control. Yet, there are no guarantees.

The main segment – Turkmenistan. Seriously, we’re talking about a country a lot of people have never heard about. This country is one of the most politically oppressed in the world, it’s not one that gets a lot of headlines, and there is a leader in Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow who seems to do everything that he can in order to keep hold over the country. He is also a huge fan of playing certain kinds of music and having a huge population of horses at his disposal.

Oliver’s point here is that the leader of Turkmenistan is weird … really weird. This is one of the weirdest segments that we’ve seen of the show over the years, but we’re kind of happy that Oliver focused on it. Where else would we ever learn about something like this? It’s not something that is going to air on any other show, and while Gurbanguly may be a comedic figure in terms of his favorite things (think in terms of his obsession with horses and world records, of which he has many), he is still someone who rules a country with an iron fist … and also one that is feared by a lot of people. Laugh at the weird, but also pay attention.

Oh, and the show ended with Oliver standing next to an enormous, “record-breaking” cake.

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