It’s Been a Busy Week
So busy, in fact, that John Oliver essentially skipped this segment entirely this week. Except to note how awkward it is when you show up to your rich person celebrity Halloween gala and see that someone else has also spent thousands on an elaborate, movie-accurate animatronic E.T. costume. Heidi Klum and Janelle Monáe: two fashion icons proving that great, goofy minds think alike.
And Now This…
Halloween has come and gone. And while the festering national infection that is MAGA meant that we were subjected to news about a Pennsylvania town’s Halloween parade featuring a float where Kamala Harris was paraded through the streets in chains as a slave, this week’s much-needed And Now This segment was all about one of John Oliver’s favorite pastimes—lightly mocking local newscasters.
As John Oliver and his crack team of local news-combing researchers showed, the annual parade of your beloved local newscasters making complete asses of themselves for your “entertainment” is one of the tastiest treats of the season. Is it entertaining while you’re blearily downing your coffee and preparing for another workday to watch your local weatherpeople doing a two-person hula do-si-do? Or for an anchor to irritatedly pull off his store-bought Wolverine claws do pick up his news copy? Or to hear one half of the Mario and Luigi news team complain that he can’t do a Scarface impression these days, even though Mario and Luigi are Italian and not Cuban stereotypes?
Such are the questions wordlessly posed by the Last Week Tonight staff through the carefully culled montage of local news professionals using Halloween as opportunity to ineptly cosplay in front of green screens and attempt to segue from human interest stories about the world’s greatest grandma to the Menendez brothers’ latest appeal for clemency.
All that said, that weatherman’s Oscar the Grouch costume kicks all manner of ass. Shine on, you crazy Muppet.
Our Main Story Tonight
By the time you read this, it will be the day before Election Day. So John Oliver had just one last show to make a final pitch for voters who haven’t yet voted in the record-breaking early voting rush to not reelect Donald-f**king-Trump. (Just picturing John Oliver saying that phrase in his contemptuously clipped British accent should be enough to convince most viewers, but here we are.)
Oliver and Last Week Tonight, like most comedy shows even tangentially concerned with politics, have spent nearly a decade attempting to summarize all the various ways that supporting Donald Trump for anything but reality show host or prison library trustee is a truly bad idea. Seriously, as Oliver noted in his closing pitch to those few voters still on the fence, “There’s one final thing I’m going to be genuinely excited for on Tuesday. And that is, if Donald Trump loses this election, he’s basically finished.”
Speaking for all those exhausted in body and soul of thinking, talking, joking, and writing about this racist, misogynist, gay-trashing, traitorous, grifting, abusive, crude, stupid, bloviating buffoon and sex creep, Oliver simply floated the tantalizing thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where he’s no longer an active threat, just an annoyance?”
It’s a truly compelling, outside-the-box final push, honestly. But Oliver’s never been one to rest on snappy zingers or even blissful visions of a world without Donald Trump when there are some cold, hard, occasionally hilarious facts to be uncovered. And so Oliver’s true last pitch to pre-Election Day voters took a two-pronged approach. One was a predictable, if comically mortifying, final examination of just how crooked Donald Trump’s business ventures and constant self-promotion are, complete with chilling warnings about how Trump’s embrace of a pair of untested new financial markets would open up whole new avenues of graft, corruption, and foreign influence in our lives and the economy.
The second was a lot more complex, nuanced, and somber. So let’s focus on the cheap con man part first.
Donald Trump is and has always been a low-rent hawker of everything from mail-order steaks (venture failed), fraudulent universities (venture failed, forced to pay $25 million), tacky casinos (failed), vodka (failed), an airline (failed), bottled water (failed), magazine (failed), the USFL (personally bankrupted), charities (shut down for fraud), various hotel ventures (never completed), and the list goes on.
In his post-presidency grifting career, Trump has really dived into the “fleecing the rubes” market, hawking cheap, Chinese made crap with his kisser on it like sneakers, watches, and NFT digital trading cards of himself as everything from a laser-eyed superhero to a soldier (which he assiduously avoided actually being), to a well-adjusted suburban dad barbecuing next to his adoring dog. That last one, according to Oliver being the least plausible of all, although the host reserved special contempt for the gaudy Trump-branded, $100,000 watches, whose gold-plated yellow-ness put Oliver in mind of everything from “your wrist having a midlife crisis,” to “like it was made from melting down King Charles,” to “like you just fisted C3PO.”
And don’t get Oliver started on all the Trump-branded products the twice-impeached, 34-times-convicted felon and legally adjudicated rapist hasn’t officially endorsed. Not that Trump wouldn’t put his name on a horrifying talking fish wall decoration if there were two nickels in it—he just didn’t think of it first. “We all see it, right?,” Oliver asked trepidatiously after playing a commercial for the talking Trump fish plaque with the gaping mouth, “Please tell me we all see it—they want you to put your d**k in that, right?” That’s between MAGA Americans and the company’s “no questions asked” 60-day return policy.
But it’s in Trump’s ventures into both social media and cryptocurrency that Oliver sees the most danger. For one thing, both spaces are basically wide open in terms of government regulation and the potential for massive manipulation and fraud. Trump was shown basking in the bloodthirsty cheers of a conference full of crypto bros once he floated the idea of firing SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who has proposed regulating crypto like any other industry, Trump’s approval-staved soul practically glowing through his shirt (like E.T.’s) at the thought of being able to actually be in charge of a fledgeling money-making industry should he be reelected.
That’s because Trump, despite formerly calling crypto “a scam,” has gone all-in on the environment-destroying favorite financial scheme favored by your least favorite dude relative. Founding his own crypto company, World Liberty Financial, is Trump’s first real foray into the grifting pool. Although “founding” is, as with all Trump’s businesses, merely a facade, as Trump and his sons hold wordy, vague titles in a company actually founded by two of the most easily mocked human beings ever featured on Last Week Tonight.
WLF co-founder Chase Herro is the self-proclaimed “dirtbag of the internet,” who segued from selling colon cleanses to promising potential investors that—and we’re quoting—crypto is basically selling “sh*t in a can, wrapped in p*ss, covered in human skin.” (He was in favor of the skin-covered, p*ss-wrapped, sh*t, in case you were wondering.) Then there’s Zak Folkman, other founder and guy Oliver made merry sport of for his previous guise as a bearded, disheveled pick-up artist teaching sad incels how to lure women back to their apartments with promises of super-cool YouTube videos.
Apart form the fact that Trump is now in business with two shady dong-dongs (and another World Financial board member known only as “Ogle” from something called “Glue,” and who’s represented on the company’s home page by what looks to Oliver like “a 12-year-old’s Fortnight character”), Oliver points out that all this grifting offers unprecedented ways for foreign governments and business interests to hold unregulated financial sway over a President both crippled by mounting legal debts and looming penalties and unbound by any semblance of respect for ethical guardrails.
Oliver notes that the old guardrails to presidential corruption relied on something called “a human soul,” so when it was pointed out to Trump that he didn’t legally have to release his tax returns or put his businesses in a blind trust once he took office, he just didn’t do those things. (A 2016 clip shows Trump marveling at the voluntary nature of those old school rules, his heart—once again presumably lighting up like E.T.’s—bursting at the suddenly open vistas of unbridled greed and corruption now open to him.)
As Oliver notes, there’s nothing stopping Trump in a second term from not only firing anyone proposing regulations on online and crypto money-grubbing, but also having crypto bros write the regulations themselves, with Trump reaping all the cash. Or keeping a foreign government from pumping up Trump’s inherently worthless Truth Social “meme stock” (which even a Fox News analyst is shown warning buyers away from), and holding their investment over Trump’s head as they conduct advantageous foreign policy. Or, just hypothetically, a company purchasing ten of those $100,000 Trump watches and thus buying a million dollars of unregulated and untraceable business influence over a future head of state with no moral compass whatsoever.
As Oliver concluded this half of his “for the love of God, do not vote for this a-hole” final message, with these two new companies in industries Trump would be in a position to manipulate, “Trump’s prior conflicts took advantage of preexisting loopholes, but with crypto, Trump appears to be promising to create the loopholes.” And, look, as Oliver notes, this last exposé of Donald Trump being a soulless, unethical greedhead is hardly the most important reason to vote against him. Oliver cites as perhaps more pressing, “his policies,” “his personality,” and “the fact that we should never, ever have a President who’s inspired this f**king thing.” [Holds up the talking Trump trout, which he described ably as “a Bass Pro Shop-sponsored fleshlight.”]
Food for thought certainly, although, after taking a deep breath, Oliver then got into some real stuff. Noting how the margins for this election for all the American democratic marbles are inexplicably razor-thin in the battleground states granted disproportionate importance by the stupid Electoral College, Oliver made his actual last appeal to a singularly conflicted group of undecided voters.
The powers that be at HBO/Warner Media, presumably at Oliver’s request, even broke with recent tradition and posted this segment of the show to YouTube ahead of its now-usual Thursday release.
Noting how Muslim-Americans’ anger over the United States continued support of Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza is not only justified but shared by him, Oliver yet made a heartfelt plea for that community and its allies to vote for Kamala Harris. Recognizing the incredibly delicate nature of this issue, Oliver was in full sincerity mode. Okay, first he took time to mock Trump’s social media appeal to the Puerto Rican voters furious over his Madison Square Garden hate rally, which employed a fawning Cuban band’s pro-Trump anthem, because 100 percent Donald Trump can’t tell Spanish-speaking brown people apart.
But then it was time to get real with another righteously pissed-off voting community whose patriotism as Americans is in a wrenching battle with the fact that their actual families are being slaughtered thanks to the Biden-Harris administration’s unfettered military and financial support.
It’s an impossibly fine line to walk, but Oliver gives it his best try. Certainly a better one that, as he notes, Harris sending Bill Clinton to Muslim-populated battleground states to “scold” Muslim Americans by saying essentially, “Hey the other guy is worse.” Donald Trump unquestionably is worse—Oliver quotes him telling Netanyahu to “finish the job” and Trump’s former ambassador to the region advising the Israeli leader to just go ahead an annex the entire West Bank—but for people wrestling with one monster of a moral dilemma, simple sneering is not an effective or empathetic strategy.
Oliver, stressing his position as an immigrant to America himself, made the argument that democracy isn’t a question of always getting what you want with your vote. He joked/not joked that he never dreamed his first vote as an American would be for “Joe-f**king-Biden,” for what that’s worth. But the host went on to argue that when you buy your ticket to America, you take the often disillusioning voyage that entails.
“Look, “Oliver noted, appealing directly to pro-Palestinian voters faced with a tough choice, “I know this isn’t inspiring to hear, but politics isn’t always inspiring. It’s transactional. It rarely matches our greatest hopes and dreams.” Oliver went on to note that two of the most vocal leaders of the “Uncommitted” movement that left Biden’s name off of primary ballots this year, Abbas Alawieh and Georgia State Representative Ruwa Romman, have both come forward to tell their fellow voters of conscience to vote for Kamala Harris.
He played a clip of Romman, the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia House urging those justifiably furious at Kamala Harris unwillingness to make more of an effort to include Palestinian voices in her campaign to still vote Democratic across the board, noting that not only would Donald Trump be unfathomably worse for the cause of peace in Gaza, but her experience has shown that there are forces within the Democratic Party far more willing to engage with the conflict.
(Romman also berated those supposed allies preaching that “just because things are bad, it’s okay to let them get worse,” calling out those without literal skin in the game for “virtue-signaling to convince you that the threats we’re facing aren’t that big a deal.” Not that the esteemed Representative would say it, but as message to the hashtagging entitled white internet brigade, it’s pretty clear)
Winding up, Oliver continued his plea, noting, “The struggle for justice isn’t just about what happens on Election Day. It’s a fight waged constantly, day in, day out. In protests on the streets, meetings with legislators, and in the thousand small actions that cumulatively move the government forward an inch at a time.” Oliver once more quoted Romman, saying, “My vote is a promise. A promise that I and those that stand with me will not stop demanding the end of mass slaughter and violence everywhere.” Chiming in in agreement, Oliver noted, “And that is the point. Elections alone aren’t sufficient for large-scale change. But they’re absolutely necessary for that to ever happen.”
Backing that up, Oliver reminded viewers that a second Trump term would mean Donald Trump getting to appoint two new, younger Supreme Court justices (retirement age Clarence Thomas having turned down Oliver’s apparently legal bribe to quit), and that Trump had promised to arrest and even deport pro-Gaza protesters. (Trump has also been illegally negotiating with Netanyahu to delay any peace talks or plans until after a Trump victory, a literal Palestinian blood for votes scheme that would be too evilly mercenary to believe but for the two people involved in it.)
And then there’s Oliver’s opening pitch if all this is not enough. “Look, I love this country. I’m an immigrant—I chose to be here… And I’d argue that there’s nothing more American than having a healthy adversarial relationship with those in power, even if you voted for them.” All that said, Oliver then reiterated the relief—nay the unparalleled joy—dangled by the prospect of a post-election world where you simply don’t have to give a sh*t about anything that comes out of Donald Trump’s gaping fish-mouth.
Cardus Endus
Seriously, just listen to the card. It’s in fake Latin and everything.
Last Lines Tonight
“All I’m saying, ladies, is if your husband asks you for a Trumpy Trout this Christmas, it is over.”
We all do see it, right?
“We’ve talked all year about the many reasons not to vote for him. His mass deportation plans, his reshaping of the courts, Project 2025, everything he said or did before his presidency, everything he said or did during his presidency, everything he said or did after his presidency, and the fact that it should be unconstitutional to have a Vice President named J.D.”
summing up a season
“Now does having nearly half a billion in penalties hanging over his head make the greediest man to ever live even greedier? Maybe, maybe not. After all Trump is always operating at maximum greed the same way the ocean is always operating at maximum wet.”
contemplating the capacity of a bottomless thing
“Not long after leaving office, Trump started Trump Media. You may know of its flagship product,Truth Social, the MAGA version of Twitter. A phrase which is now totally redundant.”
on the 1,174th most popular website in the world
“That is perfect. I only wish they’d gone harder on the butt-names there. Derriere, caboose, booty, badonkadonk, cakes, sweet cheeks, glute-chute, wagon you’re draggin’, meat seats, back porch, devil’s canyon, moons over. my-hammy, cinnabuns, Stanley Tushy, Pillsbury Dough-Butt, Jumbles McSqueeze, and trouser hams. I don’t ask for much, just an endless amount of butt names while you hawk hemorrhoid cream alongside Trump’s even sh*ttier Twitter.”
on the truth social/newsmax marketing strategy
“Trump will do anything if it gets him applause. He’s like Tinkerbell if Tinkerbell also kind of quoted Hitler and called Neverland a sh*thole country.”
on trump basking in claps from crypto bros
“We’ve admittedly talked less about Kamala Harris and her proposals. But that’s for a pretty clear reason. Picking apart policy proposals when the alternative is Trump is a bit like debating which color to paint the living room when your house is on f**king fire. You kind of have to prioritize the imminent threat.”
on Last Week tonight’s priorities this election season
