It would have been a disappointing season finale for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver viewers if it hadn’t been scathing about President Donald Trump.
The sarcastic British talk show host John Oliver dedicated the last episode of this season of his show to summing up Trump’s presidency and ways in which he is allegedly violating the norms of presidency and American democracy.
“Trump’s presidency is like one of his handshakes – it pulls you in whether you like it or not,” said Oliver, before criticising several of Trump’s actions this year.
The comedian decided to take a step back from the “daily Trump-induced chaos” to break down the strategies Trump uses in his speeches to push his agenda: “delegitimising the media, whataboutism and trolling”. According to Oliver, these also happen to be old Soviet propaganda tools that Trump employs to debase, debate and create false moral equivalencies.
He also took a look back at some of Trump’s speeches. “That is not a functional use of language, that is a drunk driver crashing a pick-up truck full of alphabet soup. Trump’s actual speech patterns sound like when you write a long text by choosing only the predictive text your iPhone suggests for you,” said Oliver, adding, “An iPhone would be a more coherent president of the United States.”
Oliver went on to stress the importance of seeing through Trump’s techniques in order to have honest debates and hold one another accountable, and ended with a glimmer of hope as he turned the focus on the recent small victories against the President’s politics in the US.
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