John Oliver, like his fellow late-night hosts earlier than him, is ringing the alarm on president Donald Trump‘s authoritarianism.
The Final Week Tonight host wasted no time getting all the way down to brass tacks, addressing the Los Angeles protests that had been spurred by the White Home deputy chief of employees Stephen Miller-led escalation of ICE raids, with brokers concentrating on a Dwelling Depot parking zone occupied by day laborers to satisfy elevated deportation quotas final week.
Referring to a clip of Trump’s Fort Bragg speech, the place POTUS claimed the Metropolis of Angels could be “on hearth” akin to the devastating Palisades and Eaton blazes earlier this 12 months if he hadn’t mobilized 1000’s of Nationwide Guard troops and a whole bunch of Marines, Oliver remarked: “I do know I’m not saying something new proper now, however he’s such a dick. There may be simply no cause to deliver up the traumatic fires which are nonetheless very a lot on individuals’s minds in L.A., for a similar cause you shouldn’t open a toast at a retirement celebration with, ‘Wow, solely milestone left after that is demise.’ Yeah, everybody is aware of that, and we’re all making an attempt not to consider it.”
Noting that 1965 was the final time the Nationwide Guard was deployed with out approval of the corresponding state’s governor, the political comedian stated that “regardless of lots of sensationalist information protection,” the protests had been confined to a small space in downtown L.A. Whereas some Waymos had been set on hearth and the occasional rock was thrown, Oliver remarked the habits was “under no circumstances consultant of the protests as a complete.”
He continued, “Setting a driverless automotive on hearth shouldn’t be the identical factor as assaulting somebody, except we’re by some means dwelling within the Pixar Automobiles universe, the place burning one is homicide, and also you’d be condemned to hell by the Automotive Pope — an actual character from Automobiles 2, by the best way — implying there’s automotive Catholicism, automotive Jesus and, presumably, a decades-long automotive coverup of automotive sexual abuse.” (Certainly, Pope Pinion IV is the chief of the Cartholic Church.)
With an estimated $134 million value to taxpayers, Oliver quipped, “Often, when that a lot is spent on one thing utterly pointless, we at the very least get to see one of many Avengers in it,” flashing photographs of the slew of MCU movies made in recent times.
Including that the “supposed peacekeepers” had been certainly those largely spreading violence — with journalists shot by authorities and the handcuffing/tackling of Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) — Oliver stated he was unsure what else would possibly go down between the lag time of taping on Saturday for the Sunday present’s airing.
Nevertheless, he might say one factor with surety: “When everybody was warning a few slippery slope to authoritarianism below Trump, that is it — as a result of masked authorities brokers grabbing individuals off the road and deporting them with out due course of is authoritarianism; sending within the navy to crack down on protests towards these actions is authoritarianism.”
Regardless of this, Oliver stated he felt hopeful, with the No Kings rallies drawing 5 million attendees nationally, even in Minnesota, which noticed a terrifying outbreak of politically motivated violence with the assassination of a lawmaker and taking pictures of one other, each of them Democrats.
“We’re dwelling by way of a time in American historical past that will likely be remembered for acts of unbelievable cruelty, however I hope it’ll even be remembered for acts of braveness and defiance,” he stated.
Throwing it again to an earlier headline from the night time — a few runaway zebra in Tennessee that was not too long ago captured — Oliver concluded: “Consider this administration like a free zebra within the suburbs; it shouldn’t be there. It makes you shout, ‘Oh, no!’ rather a lot. However perhaps if all of us work exhausting sufficient, we will include it till the fantastic day we get to look at it fly off into the f—ing sundown.”
