John Oliver Exposes What Trans Sports Bans Are Really About

It’s Been a Busy Week

It’s always fascinating to see which news stories get passed over on Last Week Tonight. As John Oliver makes clear in his top-of-show rundown each week, it’s not that some of the more hot button happenings in a given week don’t deserve a main story treatment. It’s more that zooming in on a more specific issue often exposes much larger ones.

This week Oliver ran through, for example, Democratic Senator Cory Booker’s record-breaking 25-hour speech opposing the Trump administration on issues ranging from unconstitutional power grabs to targeting social services like Medicare to civil rights. (On that last score, Booker broke the record held by segregationist mummy Strom Thurmond, who infamously made his record by reading from the encyclopedia while filibustering the Civil Rights Act.)

Oliver also spared a few moments to mock Donald Trump’s widely derided tariff plan for “shooting America in the d*ck.” Noting that Trump’s claim that his farcically calculated isolationist tariffs (including a heavy tax on nonexistent goods not imported from two Antarctic islands inhabited solely by penguins) constituted a new “American golden age,” Oliver conceded that, if you’re talking about “the last decade before an old person dies,” then maybe.

Playing an audio clip of one CEO finding out what Trump’s typically blunt and boneheaded plan was doing to his stock in real time, Oliver noted how the exec’s shocked sign off, “Oh, really? Oh sh*t. Okay,” is pretty much the correct response to everything the administration does.

Our Main Story Tonight

But back to Last Week Tonight‘s story priorities, as Oliver’s main focus this week was on trans athletes. Now, is the nationwide conservative assault on the rights of trans athletes as wide-ranging or impactful as a global trade war? No, but that’s part of Oliver’s point, as the host examined how the right-wing attacks on trans people’s participation in athletics both vastly exaggerate the scope of the issue and harm a tiny population of people for cynical political gain.

First, Oliver came for the messengers of this particular subject, suggesting that maybe Donald Trump and Lance Armstrong aren’t the men to represent concepts of fairness in sport and women’s empowerment. Oliver showed Trump pausing during his announcement of a trans sports ban to creepily tell the assembled female athletes on stage (some of whom were underage) how physically attractive they were. While Lance Armstrong’s hypothetical about Rafael Nadal suddenly deciding to beat Serena Williams in tennis by switching genders not only illustrated how dumb hypothetical examples are, but also brought up the fact that choosing “the world’s most famous sports cheater” to speak about competitive fairness is pretty rich.

Oliver also took on several of the most high-profile cis female athletes currently celebrated as standard-bearers for women’s rights in sports, focusing especially former swimmer Riley Gaines, whose fifth-place tie with trans swimmer Lia Thompson catapulted her to her current career as conservative speaker and anti-trans activist. Oliver showed Gaines smiling and nodding as Donald Trump, citing the natural superiority of men over women, stated unequivocally that he, a 78-year-old junk food addict, could beat Gaines, a former Division 1 college swimmer, in the pool. As Oliver put it, “I don’t agree, but I would like to see it… I’d like to bear witness to that event and whatever happens after it as a result of it occurring.”

Several times during his story, Oliver went out of his way to concede that there are good-faith arguments to be made about trans athletes in competition, but that concepts surrounding the issue require nuance and subtlety, which are not exactly what’s dominating the conversation. Oliver noted how there are already rules in place mandating that trans athletes prove that they’ve been undergoing hormone therapy for extended periods before competing, how different sports confer different advantages, and cited one expert patiently debunking the conservative talking point that people are transitioning to win medals.

(On the topic of medals. Oliver also exposed how the oft-cited Fox News talking point that “over 900 medals” have been “stolen” from female athletes comes from a deeply suspect report that cites self-reported anecdotes spanning decades. It also relies quite heavily on the apparently gender-weighted sports of poker and disc golf for some reason.)

He showed House Speaker Mike Johnson glibly citing the Bible while denying the very existence of trans people, eliciting one of Oliver’s signature hypocrite-torpedoes in return. “That’s right, Mike,” agreed Oliver, “As scripture tells us: Men are men and women are women, and God is his own son, and some mothers are virgins, and some mothers-in-law are pillars of salt, and some daughters are sex partners, and colorful coats are dream tellers, and brothers are murderers but also brothers are backup husbands for wives, and babies can be for splitting in half.”

As Oliver noted, conservatives are on record as pivoting to the trans sports issue after their similarly fact-averse attacks on gay marriage failed, spending millions on campaign ads and pumping up the supposed safety and fairness issues while ignoring the systemic inequality prevalent in the women’s athletic programs they claim to be championing. Zooming in on Kentucky Republican Steven Rudy, Oliver showed how that state legislator repeatedly tried to ram through a trans sports ban in schools (despite there being a single trans athlete competing in the state) while at the same time tabling a bill that would make it harder for sexually predatory coaches to switch school districts because legislators were missing dinner. “So it seems this is how the Kentucky state house works,” noted Oliver, “When there’s one kid who wants to play field hockey, it’s Pearl Harbor. But when there’s a longstanding pattern of sexual abuse, it’s ‘Sorry, we’ve got a 6:00 pm reservation at Cheesecake Factory.'”

Oliver showed how conservatives have taken up the trans sports banner as they harassed teenage athletes on social media, how Florida legislators undertook a 500-page report in which they asked elementary school children if they’d ever seen their trans teammate changing, and how others have publicly cast suspicions on not-trans high school athletes for not looking “female” enough. It’s as if—and bear with Oliver here—the issue really isn’t about fairness in women and girl’s sports at all, but an attempt at complete erasure of trans people. As the host put it, the all-out focus on trans athletics means that, for anti-trans bigots, “you can basically say anything you want about trans people, as long as you tag on ‘in sports’ after it.”

As for his customary “what’s to be done?” wrap-up, Oliver noted that things are pretty bleak at the moment, citing Trump’s executive orders and various state legislatures enacting blanket bans on trans participation in scholastic sports. He did give a shout-out to Maine Governor Janet MIlls, who memorably stood up to Trump threatening to withhold federally mandated assistance to her state if she didn’t knuckle under to his demands with a steely, “See you in court.” Oliver, who’d made fun of Maine earlier in the episode, could only retreat, cheering, ” Yeah, you get him, Maine! And you know what? I take back everything mean I ever said about you, like that you’re lobster-stuffed lighthouse perverts that the rest of the Northeast loves to forget.”

Oliver went on to say that the most heartening examples of courage come from the trans athletes themselves and their cis teammates, who have openly supported their classmates in the face of demonization from some of the most powerful people in the country. Showing a school-wide walkout of Florida students after their classmate was kicked off her team thanks to that 500-page report, Oliver noted that while there are complex issues at hand here, the basic principles are actually very simple.

Showing one girl’s heartfelt plea for fairness, acceptance, and love for her trans teammate, Oliver said admiringly, “She just encapsulated the argument I’ve been trying to make for over half an hour, but with a vibe both more emotional and also substantially more chill.”

And Now This…

Watchers of TMZ (everyone’s favorite site for videos of tired celebrities being harassed at airports) know just how often founder Harvey Levin brags about his former career as a lawyer. After a montage of Levin dropping that fact over and over, viewers’ focus is inevitably pulled to TMZ Live co-host Charles Latibeaudiere, who has clearly 100 percent heard about it all before. Clips showed the stoic Latibeaudiere being less and less able to stifle his “this again?” exhaustion at his colleague’s go-to rhetorical subject, suggesting that he’s one more law school anecdote away from leaving the long-winded Levin to report on the latest celebrity hair disaster on his own.

Cardus Endus

Yes, that’s Elon Musk wearing cheese on his head, as this week’s title card mocked the billionaire DOGE-merchant for donning Wisconsin’s signature headgear in his unsuccessful attempt to buy that state’s Supreme Court election. Musk’s chosen candidate, right-wing ideologue Brad Schimel lost badly to Democratic justice Susan Crawford, despite Musk literally bribing Wisconsin voters with hundred dollar checks and a $1 million “lottery” for their ballots and pumping over $20 million of his own money into the race. Musk infamously called this battleground court election a fight for “the future of Western civilization,” so bad news there for South African oligarchs with a penchant for Hitler salutes.

Last Lines Tonight

“It’d be like trying to figure out the square footage of your home by dividing your phone number by your dog’s age. Or taking your temperature by measuring your head’s distance to the sun. It’s not gonna get you the answer you’re looking for.”

on the exposed meaninglessness of trump’s tariff formula

“Okay, to be completely fair to Trump, I will say his understanding of women’s issues is comparable to his understanding of foreign policy, domestic policy, trade, the economy, the concept of consent, human empathy, and all but one of his children’s names.”

“Now clearly, when it comes to questions of right and wrong in sports, Lance Armstrong might be the last person you’d call, just after the 1919 Chicago White Sox and the ear chunk that Mike Tyson bit off.” 

“And if you’re experiencing a weird sensation after that clip you can’t quite place, it’s because it was nice. It was happy kids talking about how they’re able to be themselves, and you don’t usually get nice things on this show, which is honestly mainly ‘dense statistics, sad facts, and occasional Pikachu porn.'”

after clips of trans kids expressing what sports means to them