John Oliver dedicated a significant portion of Last Week Tonight to unpacking President Donald Trump‘s tariff fiasco and the “financial armageddon” he is hell-bent on bringing about, beginning the segment by deeming the past several news cycles an “emotional rollercoaster” since the taxes’ implementation “with the help of the single dumbest chart in human history.”
Running through the laundry list of headlines, the political host addressed POTUS’ Panican tweet, a term he used to describe “a new party based on weak and stupid people.” Oliver jumped in to quip, “Though, I’d argue the weak and stupid demo is, if anything, way overrepresented in government right now,” flashing on the screen images of Mike Johnson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and JD Vance.
Addressing Trump’s claim that “countries are kissing my ass” with regard to approaching the negotiating table, Oliver replied, “I’m sure some have been pretty nice to him, the same way you try to be nice if you suddenly found yourself in the same room as a monkey with a gun.”
With the tariffs now paused at a 10% rate (save for China, which is seeing a 145% tariff and has recently retaliated with its own 125% rate), Oliver acknowledged that as of taping on Saturday night, he wasn’t sure how current his segment would be, given the ever-evolving nature of trade escalations thus far.
Playing a clip of Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick explaining how the goal is not to make goods unable to be produced or manufactured in the U.S. (such as mangos) more expensive, Oliver said, “The best way to ensure Trump does something is to tell him not to do it. He’s like a toddler, both because his brain is unable to grasp negations and also because he has a short torso, huge head, always looks like he’s about to fall over and won’t let anyone brush his hair.”
Oliver also got in a zinger against Vance for his “peasants” comment regarding Chinese laborers, calling him a “cursed Cabbage Patch bitch” whose words were “incredibly insulting, especially coming from the man who is next in line to run the country if anything were to happen to Elon Musk.”
Doubling back to his original comments, Oliver ridiculed Chuck Schumer’s liberation day tweet, saying, “We dodged a bullet, but the monkey still has a gun,” and calling for someone to throw the Minority Senate Leader’s phone “into the f—ing ocean.”
