As many celebrated Halloween, the end of the month also marked the suspension of SNAP benefits for many Americans amid the government shutdown.
On Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver called out Donald Trump for continuing to blame the shutdown on Democrats as he went to a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago before his administration froze the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on Nov. 1.
“Yeah, not only is that pretty insulting,” he said. “I’m guessing it’s also pretty infuriating to whatever exhausted high school freshman just wrote a 4,000-word essay about Great Gatsby as a grim meditation on the disillusionment of the American Dream, only for CNN to tell them, ‘You know what? It’s really just a book about rich people partying.’”
Oliver continued, “And for what it’s worth, the actual theme of that event was, and I quote, ‘A Little Party Never Killed Nobody.’ And I guess that is true. Although, it is also true, that as we are all finding out right now, a ‘grand old party’ is capable of killing a whole lot of people, and unfortunately, they don’t seem to give a single marble and gold-encased shit about that.”
The suspension of SNAP benefits to over 42 million Americans by the Trump administration on Nov. 1 has proved to be a political lightning rod during a pretty low-key shutdown. In some of the ugliest examples of the MAGA mindset, the Department of Agriculture has determined in October it can’t use the billions in contingency funds long set aside for SNAP, due to legal considerations.
That decision has led to a series of court challenges by states, cities and others amidst an expected surge at food banks.
Two federal judges this week ruled the administration has to tap into the $6 billion available. However, despite Trump posting late Friday it would be his “honor to provide the funding, just like I did with military and law enforcement pay,” the administration is demanding the courts provide guidance on how to pay out — a process that will still delay SNAP recipients from receiving benefits for weeks in the very best case scenario.