John Oliver used the opening segment of Last Week Tonight to mock Donald Trump‘s economic strategy of implementing global tariffs.
To kick things off, Oliver showed a video clip of Trump saying, “This will be indeed the golden age of America. It’s coming back.”
“If you mean ‘golden age,’ the way we tend to describe the last decade before an old person dies, then yes, it feels like we are very much in the golden age of America right now,” Oliver responded. “Thank you.”
The late-night host followed with a second clip of Trump showcasing a small chart of his tariffs, explaining he originally had a bigger one but the wind made it challenging because it “had no chance of standing.”
“That is smart, and it shows they really thought of everything that might go wrong while announcing their plan to shoot the economy in the dick,” Oliver said. “Although, I will point out, if wind was a problem there, and we checked with experts on this, the White House does have an ‘inside part.’”
He continued, “Unfortunately, that chart is ridiculous for a number of reasons. For one thing, it features an estimate of tariffs charged to the USA by other countries that no one could figure out until a financial journalist realized it was just how much we export to that country minus how much we import from them, divided by how much we import, which is just stunningly dumb because those things have nothing to do with tariffs. It it’d be like trying to figure out the square footage of your home by dividing your phone number by your dog’s age, or taking your temperature by measuring your head’s distance to the sun. It’s not gonna get you the answer that you’re looking for.”
Oliver pointed out that Trump’s tariffs plan “gets even dumber” as it includes remote places like the Heard and McDonald Islands, which contain only penguins. “Oh my God. Imagine going back to 2015 and telling your younger self, ‘President Trump will enter a trade war with a remote island of penguins,’” Oliver mused. “You’d have a lot of understandable questions like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
Elsewhere on the show, Oliver discussed the president’s his anti-trans legislation that takes aim at women in sports.
“To be completely fair to Trump, I will say, his understanding of women’s issues is comparable to his understanding of foreign policy, domestic policy, trade, the economy, the concept of consent, human empathy, and all but one of his children’s names,” Oliver said. “Trump leads every conversation with a psychosexual energy that makes The White Lotus look like the Teletubbies. Oh, I’m sorry, did the incest storyline bother you? Donald Trump joked about dating his own daughter on The View. He said that on a f—ing morning show. At least The White Lotus has the decency to air in the evenings, right here, on the incest network.”
Oliver also addressed J.K. Rowling’s recent tweet, in which she attacked the host at length for supporting trans people. “It feels a bit weird to catch that much heat from the creator of Harry Potter, especially when I clearly look like what would have happened to him if they left him in that cupboard for the rest of his life,” Oliver replied, adding “I stand by everything I said.”
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