John Oliver roasted Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday night when he sat down with Stephen Colbert, saying the MAGA tech bro “wants to be funny” but “money can’t buy you that.”
“I think one of the things is he clearly loves comedy,” Oliver told Colbert on The Late Show. “Deep down, he’s never going to be funny and that must be eating him alive, because he’s trying so hard to be funny.”
Oliver made the remarks after Colbert asked about the Last Week Tonight host’s ongoing feud with the world’s richest man, as the pair have been trading jabs since at least December of last year, when Oliver issued a scathing takedown of Musk on his show. “History is littered with titans of business who were s--tty or broken people, from Thomas Edison from Henry Ford through Steve Jobs. The difference is, by and large, they didn’t open up their brain to let the whole world have a constant look inside, but Elon does—and the glimpses we get can be terrifying,” he said at the time.
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Musk responded more than once, taking to X to call the late night host “weak sauce” and comment that Oliver is “not very funny these days because he is too keen to pander to wokeness.”
Colbert likened their feud to “Kanye and Taylor” and “Cardi B and Nicki Minaj,” as he asked Oliver why he thinks he “bugs Musk so much.”
That’s when Oliver explained his opinion that Musk is privately fuming at his own inability to make people laugh. “Every time he tries, it must make it seem further away from him,” Oliver said as he roasted the mogul. “That laugh that he’s always chasing but will never catch up with. That is going to be a vacuum of the center of his soul for a long time.”
Oliver also commented on a viral clip of him pleading with voters to “to vote against Donald Trump,” as he shared, “I am voting for Kamala Harris. And I think you should, too.” The moment got a lot of attention, as Oliver seemed to get emotional over the remarks. Colbert asked him about the viral moment, which Oliver ultimately addressed this way: “I wasn’t crying. I’m British. I’m dead inside.”
