John Oliver took aim at — who else? — President Trump in the opening segment of Sunday’s Last Week Tonight.
The host started out by showing images of the White House demolition project that Trump has ordered on the East Wing so that he can construct a $250 million ballroom.
“Those images are distressing, especially when you know it’s all to build a giant ballroom in a style best described as ‘Med Spa Versailles,’” Oliver quipped. “And yet, the demolition of the White House, a metaphor that, if anything, is too on the nose, was just the tip of Trump’s iceberg this week.”
Oliver then showed a news report about Trump’s push to get paid $230 million from the Justice Department as compensation for federal investigations into his behavior.
“I should say, Trump has said he’d donate any settlement to, in his words, ‘charity or something,’” Oliver noted. “But incredibly, we’re still not done, because Trump also posted an AI video of himself dumping shit on No Kings protesters, abandoned trade negotiations with Canada after seeing a TV ad he didn’t like and authorized a $20 billion bailout to Argentina to ensure that [their] experiment with libertarianism works out.”
Oliver said the “most shocking” move Trump made in the past week, however, was approving deadly military strikes against boats allegedly smuggling drugs to the United States. So far, 40 “so-called narco terrorists” have been killed, “even though the administration has not provided public evidence for its claims,” Oliver said. “Even if they have some, I’ve watched enough JAG to know [that] the typical approach to drug boats is to intercept them and arrest the suspects, not murder them with no due process, and all of this is bad enough before you learn” that Trump is planning strikes on cartels by land as well.
“Yeah, he apparently plans to launch strikes on suspected drug traffickers in Venezuela without congressional approval, saying, ‘We’re just going to kill people. They’re going to be, like, dead,’” Oliver said, quoting Trump. “You know, the kind of chilling statement you expect to hear from a serial killer or the mastermind behind Panera Bread’s Charged Lemonades, but not ideally the President of the United States.”
Oliver wrapped up his opening segment by noting that his show tapes Saturday, so “who knows what’s happened in the last 24 hours, but this has already been a lot, because between tearing down the White House, trying to use the Justice Department to pay himself and proudly sharing AI footage of him literally shitting on Americans, the president’s now also appointed himself judge, jury and executioner of foreign citizens. And it is infuriating that neither Congress nor the courts seem to be interested in putting a stop to any of this because we are supposed to live in a country of checks and balances.”