John Oliver Slams Trump’s ‘Over-the-Top’ Response to ICE Raid Protests
During the longest-ever episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, host John Oliver spoke at-length about how Donald Trump has responded to protests against recent raids by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
After showing footage of ICE detaining people in Los Angeles, Oliver said, “That is awful. Someone yelling ICE is almost never going to be a positive thing. Best-case scenario, you’ve somehow time traveled back to 2014 and have to do an ice bucket challenge, something, by the way, that [Trump] did because he was nominated by, this is true, Mike Tyson, Vince McMahon and Homer Simpson. It was a simpler time.”
The talk show host specifically referenced the protests in Los Angeles, which led to Trump sending in the National Guard to, as the president put it, “protect federal law enforcement from the attacks of a vicious and violent mob.” He also pointed out that Trump defended his decision by mentioning the fires that swiped through California earlier this year. “If we didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a Los Angeles,” Trump said in a clip. “It’d be burning today just like the houses were burning a number of months ago.”
Oliver called the president “suck a d**k” for bringing the fires into the conversation. “There is just no reason to bring up the traumatic fires that are still very much on people’s minds in L.A. for the same reason you shouldn’t open a toast at a retirement party with, ‘Wow, [the] only milestone left after this is death.’ Yeah, everyone knows that and we’re all trying not to think about it.”
He said Trump’s response to everything “felt completely over-the-top, especially when you consider troops will apparently be there for 60 days at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $134 million.” He then joked, “And usually when that much is spent on something completely pointless, we at least get to see one of the Avengers in it.”
The entire episode was 49 minutes long, making it the longest in Oliver’s 12-season run on Last Week Tonight. Following the conversation about the ICE raids, Oliver discussed the juvenile justice system in America. His 38-minute talk about the “flaws” of the justice system took up a majority of the episode.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Sundays, 11/10c, HBO
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"European vacays every few weeks" vs. "a shopping trip to Europe." And we see again the issue is an inability to count. The state of American schools is truly unfortunate.
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Yes, "American arrogance" is certainly nothing you're familiar with. More to the point, per Wikipedia, NBC News, and various fact checking sites, Obama took ~328 days of vacation over two terms. Trump took ~378 in his first alone, and is speedily racking it up in this one. Yet again, counting is your foe.
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You know that presidential travel is a matter of public record, right? So here in the Real World we can see that that didn't happen. Seems a shame that you'd rather live in the Land of Make Believe.
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You're assuming people did watch. Doesn't seem to me like too many people did. Most Americans were, um, busy.
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And how much did all the free stuff California give to illegals add up to? Anyone with common sense doesn’t give a crap about what a supposed comedian thinks……
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Making fun of the fact that Oliver wears glasses?? What are you, eight years old??
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$134 million..... yeah, so much for cutting down on fraud and waste. Add that to the $45 million for the Parade That Nobody Came to See, not to mention the $3.5 million each of his weekly golf trips cost. And before anyone calls that number into question, the number comes from the government itself: "According to a 2019 Government Accountability Office report examining the first four trips Trump took to Mar-a-Lago during his first administration, each one costs $3,383,250 — a sum based on 2017 dollars that is likely higher now."
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