Last Week Tonight's John Oliver did a masterful job taking apart the ridiculous arguments by Republicans who are claiming that the Syrian refugees aren't being vetted during his final show of the season this Sunday.
After first reminding everyone that these wingnut governors who were threatening to keep any refugees from coming into their states don't have the power to prevent people from moving between states once they get here, Oliver moved onto the Republican Presidential candidates. Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio want to keep them all out, while Jeb! and HuckaJesus just want to get in the Christian refugees.
After mocking Jeb!'s explanation for how you're supposed to tell the difference between a Christian and non-Christian, Oliver moved onto the Democratic Mayor of Roanoke, who justified his actions by invoking the actions of FDR and the internment of the Japanese, which was one of the more shameful eras in our recent history, along with sending scores of Jewish refugees back from Germany.
Today's Republicans don't seem to remember their history, and as Oliver noted, they don't seem to have the first idea what we're doing either. After playing a few clips of the likes of Marsha Blackburn, Devin Nunes and Peter King all lying and saying there's no possible way to vet the Syrian refugees coming in now, Oliver went through the very exhaustive process the very few refugees we're taking do have to go through and how long it takes for one of them to get in here that I mentioned here, and that Time Magazine also laid out in great detail here.
After running through the list of hoops these people have to jump through just to start the process, Oliver proceeded to take apart Mike Huckabee, who compared letting Syrian refugees into the country to giving your children poisonous peanuts.
Oliver had his staff actually do the math on what is more dangerous, peanuts, or the ratio of Syrian refugees who might be terrorists, and they figured out that peanuts are actually more dangerous to your health than allowing Syrian refugees into the country.
OLIVER: Peanuts themselves have killed far more people in the last decade than terrorist refugees. I'll go one step further. Men named Mike have killed more people than terrorist refugees and I don't see us rounding all of them up. And that's kind of the point.
Because as reasonable adults, we accept tiny amounts of risk baked into our everyday lives. We drive cars despite knowing around 30,000 of us die in them each year. We go swimming despite the fact 10 people a day die from drowning.
20 Americans every year are killed by cows. But no one is saying we should expel all cows from the country. We're happy just taking them out one at a time, thinking, well, we got them before they got us. This is what freedom tastes like.
Any rational person knows you cannot completely eliminate risk. You can only manage it. We do it with peanuts and cars and swimming and hamburgers and men named Mike, because we rightly think they're worth the risk.
And I would argue for the tremendous good we could do and the low level of risk involved, refugees are worth it too. And you may disagree, but it is worth noting that as we devise new ways to close our doors this week, France, which has just suffered a terror attack and has far less ability to police its borders, did this.
France refused to give into the fear and will still welcome refugees into their country. Oliver wrapped things up by noting that a serial adulterer who has left two wives for younger versions of the previous ones is now acting as the moral compass for our politicians here in the United States.
