Last Week Tonight host John Oliver began his show Sunday by ripping into two of Donald Trump’s most controversial moments of the past week.
The first was Trump’s answer during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, where he declared that Kamala Harris had “all of a sudden made a turn” on her Indian heritage and “became a Black person,” apparently for political gain.
“I mean this in the most disparaging way possible: that went about as well as could be expected,” Oliver said. “Putting Trump in front of a Black audience and asking him to speak on race was never going to get more elevated than, ‘the lady said she was both Indian and Black. That is cheating.’”
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Oliver continued, “So, none of this needs saying, but Harris didn’t ‘make a turn’ into being Black like it’s an interstate off-ramp. Her father’s black, and her mother was Indian.”
Oliver shifted focus towards the Paris Olympics: “Sadly, there were also some incredibly stupid controversies. There was a wildly transphobic uproar over this Algerian boxer supposedly being trans, despite the fact she isn’t. And there was even anger over the incredibly French opening ceremony.”
He recapped the many controversial moments of the ceremony, but focused on a drag queen performance that was interpreted by many Christian groups as a mockery of the Last Supper.
Oliver showed footage of Trump’s reaction, in which the former president told Laura Ingraham, “I thought it was a disgrace… I mean, they can do certain things, I thought it was, uh… terrible.”
“It’s always strange to watch Trump act like he cares about religion,” Oliver joked, “because to echo something I heard someone say recently: ‘I didn’t know he was a Christian until a number of years ago, when he happened to turn Christian. All of a sudden, he made a turn and became a Christian person.”
