The news that President Joe Biden was withdrawing himself from the 2024 election took America, and most of his staff, by surprise Sunday afternoon—but perhaps nobody was more put off by the timing of Biden’s announcement than John Oliver, who recorded his weekly HBO show Last Week Tonight on Saturday this week.
As the show wryly admitted on X, formerly Twitter: “‘Hey, let’s switch our taping day to Saturday, no big news ever happens on a Sunday afternoon.’ — some idiots.”
Oliver didn’t hastily add a new segment to address Biden’s announcement; instead, they simply ran a graphic card before the credits that read “This show was taped on Saturday, July 20th.” And Oliver, in his first show back since June 16, noted in his introductory recap:“the news is moving so fast. We are taping on Saturday and who knows where things will be by the time you actually watch this.”
Even without a hot take from Oliver about Biden dropping out and Harris cleaning up endorsements to assume the position as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the comedian still had plenty to offer, not just in zingers about the “abject weirdos” at the Republican National Convention, which he called “the worst thing to happen to Milwaukee since Jeffrey Dahmer”—but also a serious warning about how Trump and the Republicans plan the largest mass deportation in American history if he wins this November.
Oliver went in-depth last month detailing the potential consequences for America contained in Project 2025, and noted that last week’s RNC doubled down on those intentions.
“Trump and the bigots around him plan to use his victory to make immigrants’ lives absolute hell, and he is not exactly hiding that,” Oliver said. Following a clip of Trump promising mass deportation and images of RNC delegates waving “Mass Deportation Now” signs, Oliver could only add: “Yeah, I mean he’s saying it pretty much all out loud there.”
After a lengthy investigation into Fox News “fear mongering” versus the facts regarding crimes committed by immigrants, Oliver turned to us and asked aloud: What can we do between now and Election Day in November?
“Just assume that the underlying What Can We Do for most of our U.S. stories from now until then is going to be ‘Do not vote for Donald Trump.’ Again, that seems like it should be barely worth saying. Like drink water. Or go to the dentist. But it does bear repeating because, be honest, when was the last time you drank water or indeed, went to the dentist? Exactly,” Oliver said.
“I’m not saying by any means that Biden is perfect or even good when it comes to immigration,” he continued. “But he or whoever winds up being the Democratic candidate—because who on Earth knows anything about that right now?—is going to be incontrovertibly better than the alternative. And I know this has been a bleak few weeks, and it’s been incredibly depressing to see reports of anonymous Democratic leaders saying things like ‘We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.’ Because frankly, fuck that! There’s just too much on the line here to give up like that.”
It’s one thing to resign yourself to airline cancellations, he said. “But we can and must fight this.”
“And at the end of this week it should be clear to absolutely everyone it doesn’t matter if Trump and his party say they have a new tone, or nominally call for unity, or throw a cute dog onstage for some reason. They have told us who they are. They’ve told us what they want. They literally put it on a sign and waved it in everyone’s face,” Oliver added.
“They’re trying to win this election by pointing a finger at immigrants and the only appropriate response is to take a cue from the so-called symbol of the Biden presidency and say Fuck That Shit.”
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