Last Week’s Tonight’s John Oliver continued his weekly assault on lies last night with this hilarious segment about politicians putting words in the mouths of our country’s Founding Fathers. The first offender was Ben Carson, no stranger to saying false things, who quoted Thomas Jefferson on gun control despite that phrase not existing until the 1960’s.
Oliver also set his sights on Carson’s fellow 2016 GOP hopefuls by pointing out several articles on Buzzfeed News highlighting misquotes from Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee. These examples are even more heinous, as they came from books, while Carson’s was just a televised interview. Normally, one could assume books would be fact checked, but that appears to be too much work for Paul or Huckabee.
Next, Oliver proves the phenomenon isn’t only seen in fringe candidates, but in several former Presidents as well. A trio of clips shows Presidents Reagan, Obama, and Clinton sharing different misquotes of Abraham Lincoln. Maybe Carson is on the right track after all?
While this is an epidemic among politicians, Last Week Tonight also points out how the proliferation of Facebook memes makes it easy for anyone to unwittingly make the same mistakes. Oliver points out how he has even been the subject of a popular gun control/airport security quote that he had never said. One of them reads:
““One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we will take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns,” – (Not) John Oliver
Last Week Tonight’s final conclusion is this joke website, Definitely Real Quotes. Oliver reasons that if we just don’t care about quotes, why not make them fun? The site’s a fun little timewaster, with such gems as these:
Hello, 911? I think I just glued a Cabbage Patch doll to my penis. Her name is Addison Earlene. – (Not) Benjamin Franklin
Watch below for the full segment. You might be surprised how much of what you read on a black and white photo is complete bull. And you can quote me on that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu_bmX344nY
