John Oliver Skewers Clueless JD Vance for Mispronouncing “Haiti”

John Oliver compliment JD Vance? As if. The Emmy winner took shots at the Republican VP candidate on the most recent Last Week Tonight, lambasting Vance for making racist and baseless claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, by invoking the classic ’90s film Clueless.

Leading up to the presidential debate, Vance began peddling a rumor that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were devouring cats and dogs. The lie grew in prominence after his ticket mate, Donald Trump, doubled down on the claim during his debate with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “They’re eating the dogs…. They’re eating the cats,” said Trump, in the now heavily memed line. Moderator David Muir fact-checked the claim in real time, finding it to be unsubstantiated. Per The Wall Street Journal, Vance’s team was informed days before the debate that the claim was false by Springfield’s city manager, Bryan Heck.

“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” Heck said. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”

But like a dog with a bone, Vance can’t stop talking about Haitian migrants. Oliver played a clip in which Vance, while discussing the bogus conspiracy theory, seemed to pronounce the nation of Haiti as “Haitia.” Oliver pounced on the mistake, comparing Vance to none other than Cher Horowitz from the iconic ’90s film Clueless, a character played by Alicia Silverstone. “First, there is only one Haiti-related mispronunciation we recognize in this house,” said Oliver. “And it’s Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, delivering the iconic line: ‘And so if the government could just get to the kitchen, rearrange some things, we could certainly party with the Haiteeans.”

In an interview with Looper in 2022, Silverstone revealed that she genuinely didn’t know how to pronounce the word, explaining that director Amy Heckerling found her mistake to be cinematic gold. Heckerling even stopped the script coordinator from correcting Silverstone: “She was like, ‘Stop,’ and she didn’t let anybody go near me because she loved that I was saying it wrong.” Silverstone was a teenager and not running for elected office during her gaffe—which makes her clueless-ness a tad more acceptable.