When we last heard from John Oliver, the British comic (who has American citizenship) stopped by Seth Meyers’ show to poke fun at the U.K.’s “10 days in forced mourning” for late monarch Queen Elizabeth II—something he’d also done on his Emmy-winning HBO series Last Week Tonight, with some digs at King Charles III and Prime Minister Liz Truss for good measure.
After a week off, Oliver returned to Last Week Tonight desk on Sunday and kicked things off by taking a few shots at Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine for his embarrassing but overblown sexting scandal, saying, “We also learned that Adam Levine is as bad at sexting as he is at coming up with meaningful tattoos.”
Oliver saved more ire for President Joe Biden over his recent declaration that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“Which isn’t just irresponsible—it’s complete bullshit,” exclaimed Oliver. “You can’t just declare something and make it a reality. If I declared, ‘The queen is alive,’ that doesn’t make it true. We all know she’s in the afterlife right now looking up at Diana.”
Then Oliver shifted things to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an odious, opportunistic man who recently sent two planes filled with around 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, using helpless people—including a number of small children—as political pawns prior to the midterm elections.
“If this seems like a stunt made for Fox News, you are absolutely right. But it also may have been made by Fox News,” Oliver explained. “Because just two months ago, Tucker Carlson did a segment pointing out the whiteness of Martha’s Vineyard, and he had this fun proposal.”
He then threw to a segment where Carlson said of Martha’s Vineyard on his Fox News show, “They are begging for more diversity. Why not send migrants there—in huge numbers? Let’s start with 300,000 and move up from there.”
“It seems DeSantis just took that idea and ran with it. So, I guess it is true what they say: Good artists borrow, great artists steal, and racist governors get their ideas yelled at them by the human equivalent of the boat shoe found at the scene of a hazing death,” joked Oliver.
Oliver continued: “This stunt was both grim and deeply cynical—especially given that the migrants were reportedly lured there with empty promises of jobs and housing, and even handed brochures listing government assistance that they were not eligible for.”
And, as Oliver pointed out, the fake brochures that DeSantis’ team cooked up and misled the migrants with even included a “fake” Massachusetts state flag that a random person had made online because “the current one blows.”
“Nothing says, ‘I’m against illegal immigration and human trafficking,’ quite like making fake documents to smuggle people across a border,” cracked Oliver.
