On Sunday night, John Oliver kicked off the latest edition of his acclaimed late-night show, Last Week Tonight, by addressing the ongoing brutalizing of Black Lives Matter protesters by President Trump’s federal agents in Portland, Oregon.
“The protests in Portland have actually been going on daily for nearly two months now, since the killing of George Floyd,” said Oliver. “But the deployment of federal agents was a sharp escalation of questionable legality, and yet, to hear the president tell it, he had no choice and it was a terrific idea.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Yes, in a press conference with reporters, Trump announced, “We’re doing a great job in Portland. Portland was very rough, and they called us in, and we did a good job—to put it mildly.”
“OK, first: It’s never good when Trump says he’s doing a ‘great job,’ given that he thinks his administration is doing a ‘great job’ dealing with the coronavirus, and he once proclaimed Ben Affleck would do a ‘great job’ as Batman. Clearly, this man has no sense of what a ‘great job’ actually looks like,” explained Oliver, adding, “And for the record, those agents were very much not called in.” (Both the governor of Oregon and the mayor of Portland have said Trump ordered the federal agents in against their orders and that they want them to leave.)
Plus, according to Oliver, “Masked individuals throwing people into an unmarked van is never a good idea if you want to de-escalate a situation. It’s not even a good idea for a surprise bachelorette party.”
The HBO host went on to claim that “thing were not particularly dire in Portland” and that “Protests had been mostly peaceful there… it’s about one block that was actually starting to see fewer confrontations between protesters and police before federal agents moved in.”
However, if you watch Fox News: “It’s the end of America as we know it.”
Oliver then threw to Sean Hannity’s coverage of the Portland clashes. The Fox News host aired a graphic blaring “VIOLENCE IN PORTLAND” followed by a scroll of buildings that have been damaged there, including a supposed “fire-bombing,” deeming the chaos “insane.” (Hannity was recently accused of sexual harassment to boot; Fox News claims it did not happen.)
“Yeah, it is insane—because that tone does not honestly reflect the conditions on the ground,” shot back Oliver. “That ‘fire-bombing,’ for instance, seems to be a reference to either a firework or a small fire that was set, which is significantly less dramatic than he’s trying to make it sound. And that rolling list next to Hannity’s head is mostly graffiti! In fact, graffiti is listed 12 times in a row there under the headline ‘VIOLENCE IN PORTLAND,’ which is a huge overstatement.”
Oliver concluded: “Look, the troubling thing here is: Portland seems to be being used as a staging ground by the president to put on an authoritarian show of force, and this could end very badly—especially as he’s now apparently threatened to use federal force in other cities as well, which is absolutely outrageous.”
