Last week tonight Host John Oliver believes the Democrats’ strategy of calling Donald Trump and JD Vance “weird” is “getting on his nerves.” Moreover, the Republican Party is doing itself no favors by fielding even stranger candidates in the Senate primaries in Minnesota, Virginia and Wisconsin last week.
“You know it’s bothering him,” Oliver said, noting how Trump tried to fend off the label of “weird” by claiming he was anything but. “You tried to buy Greenland. You stared at the sun during an eclipse. And you did that,” Oliver said, showing photos of Trump hugging and kissing the American flag. “That’s not something a normal guy does.”
Oliver added: “The ‘weird’ label is particularly hard to shake off because Republican candidates further down the ballot keep reinforcing it, including some who won the primaries just this week.”
In Minnesota, Republican voters in the primary backed Senate candidate Royce White, a 33-year-old former professional basketball player and “diehard Trump supporter, as he’ll tell you,” Oliver said. He then played a clip of White telling the camera, “Donald Trump could walk up on stage, pull down his pants and take a shit at the top of the podium, and I would still never vote for you damn Democrats again,” adding, “Let that sink in.”
Oliver had questions. Namely: “Is there a place Trump could poop that would make you vote Democrat again?” A carousel? In a gumball machine? On White’s own toilet seat? Oliver said White also questioned whether a plane flew into the Pentagon on 9/11 and once posted a map claiming to show crime scenes in Minneapolis but actually showing locations of drinking fountains.
In Virginia, Oliver said Republican Senate candidate, retired Navy Captain Hung Cao, is “also a very strange man,” evidenced by a clip in which Cao expressed concern about Lovers Point, a place in Monterey, California, that he claims has been taken over by witches. “If Monterey is actually overrun by witches – which it isn’t – I’m frankly angry that there wasn’t a witchcraft story. Big little lies!” shouted Oliver.
And in Wisconsin, Oliver referred to Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s Republican challenger, banking chief Eric Hovde, as “Ned Flanders without the raw sexual charisma.” A video Hovde released in February of himself bathing in a frozen lake to tout his Wisconsin credibility did him no favors, Oliver claimed. “Challenging someone to meet you in a frozen lake to score political points is pathetic. I’d say it was a dick-comparison contest, but I suspect at the temperature of the water, yours just disappeared into your body.”
“Look,” Oliver added. “I understand that Republicans want to avoid accusations of weirdness. But the way to do that is to stop being so damn weird. Because imagining your party’s presidential candidate taking a shit in front of you? That’s weird. Warning everyone about the influence of the Witches of Monterey? Weird. Inviting your female opponent to go with you on a frozen lake? That’s very weird,” Oliver said. “And I apologize for laughing at those people. Partly because I know it’s not nice, but mostly because, as we all know by now, JD Vance believes that every time someone laughs somewhere in the world, a child loses their groceries for some reason.”
Last week tonight is now off for two weeks, Oliver’s usual summer vacation, and will be back on September 8th.
