On Sunday night, after one of the more chaotic weeks in recent memory, John Oliver returned to the stripped-down set of Last Week Tonight to recap the madness.
“All week long, protesters have continued to fill the streets in all 50 states in the wake of the horrific murder of George Floyd by the police,” he said. “And in response to those protests, which have been a stirring pushback against institutional racism and brutality, it’s been frankly sickening to see them met with this.”
The comedian then aired a montage of police using military-style tactics on protesters—drowning them in tear gas, beating them with batons, and showering them with pepper spray, in many instances for the high crime of light heckling.
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“If police are trying to convince the public they’re not guilty of displaying excessive force, it’s probably not a good idea to repeatedly display excessive force on national television—including in this city, where Mayor de Blasio praised them for their “tremendous restraint” and Governor Cuomo threatened to send in the National Guard,” explained Oliver. “And I’ll say this: Having recently said I couldn’t wait to go back to hating Andrew Cuomo again, I didn’t think an opportunity would come quite this soon.”
Then there was the matter of President Trump, who has a history of promoting police brutality and playing the role of tough guy, yet hid in a bunker when protesters gathered outside the heavily fortified White House.
“Now as for the president himself, he initially hid from the protesters in a bunker, later claiming he wasn’t hiding, he was just “inspecting” it,” cracked Oliver. “Then, his attorney general had police gas protesters outside the White House so that Trump could have an inexplicable photo op at a nearby church while holding up a Bible like it’s the ticket for his sandwich order that was just called. He also, in announcing jobs numbers on Friday, invoked George Floyd’s name, saying, “This is a great day for him,” which is utterly fucking disgusting.” (Trump later retweeted a tweet attacking George Floyd’s character.)
Oliver also took aim at the media and members of the public for focusing so much attention on looters instead of the unarmed black people being massacred.
“If you said the name ‘Macy’s’ more than you said the name ‘Breonna Taylor’ this week, you can very much fuck off,” he said. “Likewise, if you’re asking why a spontaneous decentralized protest can’t control every one of its participants more than you are asking the same of a taxpayer-funded heavy-regimented paid work force, you can also, in the words of this generation’s Robert Frost, ‘Suck my dick and choke on it. Fuck you.’”
