A tourist is in big, big trouble after he was caught carving his name,
along with his girlfriend's name into the Colosseum.
But why?
Why do they do this?
You know what?
I hope the Italian authorities throw the book at him.
Okay, let's watch.
>> Seriously?
>> I love the guy filming.
The perpetrator here is like, seriously?
It's like no, he seems pretty proud of what he's doing here.
So the Culture Minister for Italy shared,
now viral footage of the incident to Twitter just a few weeks ago.
The gentleman doing the carving ended up getting caught.
And let me just give you a statement from Italy's Culture Minister.
He says, quote, I consider it very serious, unworthy and
a sign of great incivility that a tourist defaces one of the most famous
places in the world, the Colosseum, to engrave the name of his fiancee.
Now, they did identify the guy.
They did find him eventually.
He is 27-year-old Ivan Dimitrov, and he lives in Belgium, no, Bristol, my bad.
He lives in Bristol.
The Guardian reported that it took five days for the police to find him,
and he was, in fact, traced by the Italian police to England.
>> And I've got a lot to say about it.
But do you know what the maximum penalty is?
>> You know what?
Actually, I don't.
What is the maximum penalty?
>> I think it's five years.
Yeah, here it is.
Dimitrov could face up to $16,000 in fines and five years in prison.
And so it's funny you said those exact words,
because normally Ana runs a production meeting
cuz she's the executive producer of the show, so she makes the decisions, etc.
But today she had a meeting.
And so when we discussed this in the production meeting, I said, quote,
they should throw the book at them.
>> Yes. >> [LAUGH] Okay.
>> Yeah, come on, man.
>> So, word for word, I said the same exact thing and
not knowing that that's what you were thinking, maybe we're good partners.
So, anyways, in this case, though, not five years.
>> Five years.
No, five years in prison?
>> Listen, if this was just any old property, right,
and you shouldn't deface people's property.
Okay, let's just get that out of the way.
However, I would not call for prison time for that.
This, though, is different.
It's the freaking Colosseum.
Thousands of years old.
>> I hear you.
>> How about you don't do that?
Listen, I get that he's a young guy, but he ain't that young.
You're 27 years old.
What are you doing?
>> Yeah, well, I got a question for you on that too.
>> There's just no respect for history.
None, no respect.
>> So, look, $16,000 fine is pretty heavy fine.
I don't think I'm gonna put somebody in prison for it, but maybe, maybe, okay?
And so now let me give you both sides.
The reason why I said throw the book at him in the morning before I found out
[LAUGH] it was a five-year prison sentence is because there's a little bit of Taliban
to it, right?
And I know that people who deface stuff like that don't think that there's
a Taliban.
But the Taliban destroyed historical artifacts.
>> Yeah, disgusting.
>> Yeah, we can't get those back.
We can't get them back.
And once you did, it's too late, right?
Now, this is not the same because he didn't destroy the entire Colosseum, but
he's defacing it in a terrible way, right?
>> So brazen about it too.
Look at him, so proud of himself.
>> And when he does that, the other problem, of course, as you all know,
is that he encourages others to do that.
And next thing, everybody's carving up the Colosseum.
>> Have you ever come across a big,
beautiful tree that has been defaced by morons carving into it?
>> Yes, many times, yes.
>> Yeah, that infuriates me too.
I wouldn't call for a five-year prison sentence, but what are these people doing?
Why? No one cares about you.
No one cares to see your name carved anywhere.
>> Okay, I'm gonna come back to the irony of this story in a second.
And there is a hidden irony here.
But is there any part of you that if someone that you love did that for
you because they cared so much about you and they wanted to say,
here's me loving Ana, and I'm gonna write it on the Colosseum.
>> Just take out the trash baby, I'll be happy.
>> [LAUGH] So you'd rather bother doing any of this.
Just literally, take out the trash.
>> Gases up my car every Monday, so I have a full tank for the week,
that to me communicates true love.
Carving my name into a building is lame.
Not into it, zero percent.
>> Okay, fair. So here's the hidden irony.
They're like, this Colosseum is sacrosanct, okay?
I cannot believe you would deface people here.
I mean, this is the place where we fed the Christians to the lions and we would bring
in people that would murder each other for entertainment and everybody would love it.
So many people have been murdered here just so
that other people could kinda laugh at it.
How dare you violate the sanctity of this place?
>> But it's not about that.
>> [LAUGH] >> It's about history.
It's about protecting ruins.
How angry would you be, cuz there are ruins in Turkey, right?
How angry would you be if, I don't know, an invasion happened and
they destroyed those ruins?
I mean, they're already ruined but really ruined the ruins.
>> [LAUGH] No, no, of course that's why my instinct was throw the book at him.
And so I'm just noting the irony.
That doesn't mean you should face the Colosseum.
That's mental, okay?
And Turkey, I mean, you use a curious example cuz Turkey is cray-cray man.
So in other countries, they protect their ruins like crazy, right?
Turkey is like, yeah, there's this temple of Artemis.
Just walk into anything you like.
People walk, you're supposed to walk on the ruins.
Sometimes the ruins are in the water and people walk in the city in the water.
>> That's amazing.
>> Okay, so Turkey has more ruins probably than any country.
I don't know that as a fact, but it's dozens and dozens of ancient Roman and
Greek cities cuz that used to be the Holy Roman Empire,
it used to be the Greek Empire, etc, etc.
But in Turkey, though, be careful.
They're actually gonna throw the book at you.
So you can walk all over them.
They're not really guarding them too much, but
you try to take something home from one of those artifacts, and
you're going to a Turkish prison, and they're not playing.
>> Which book would they throw at them?
Would it be justice is coming?
Would it be a book written by a Turkish-American?
>> It could be.
Could you imagine?
They're like the punishment for
trying to take a Turkish artifact is you get beaten by Cenk's book.
Justice is coming.
In fact, justice is [SOUND] right there [LAUGH].
You too can do that @tyt.com/justice if you preorder.
Don't actually beat anyone with my book, just to be clear.
>> Okay, but we gotta give you Ivan's apology.
>> Okay. >> Okay, so Ivan says,
through these lines, I would like to address my heartfelt and
honest apologies to the Italians and to the whole world for
the damage caused to an asset which in fact is the heritage of all humanity.
Yeah, so that was his apology.
But Dimitrov also said in his letter, his apology letter,
that he wasn't aware of the ancient monument's age or
the seriousness of the deed committed.
[LAUGH] Sorry,
I had death on my mind after your spiel about Christians being fed to the lions.
>> [LAUGH] So the clown goes over there to check out one of the great
ruins in world history by a lot, right?
Doesn't bother to figure out, dude, it turns out it's really old.
I didn't even figure that out cuz he was too busy carving his girlfriend's name
into the place.
>> But it makes me feel a little better that it's not unique to America
that you have people who don't have an appreciation for history.
>> Of course, are you kidding me?
I mean, guys- >> Way to go, UK, way to go.
>> [LAUGH] Sometimes we're the ugly Americans.
But don't worry, other countries have plenty of ignorant folks as well.
Keep it real.