John Oliver reflected on the recent controversy around Mel Gibson on Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight. The late-night host recapped the news about U.S. pardon attorney Liz Oyer, who wrote in a column for Rolling Stone that she was fired after refusing to allow the right-wing actor to have guns.
After playing a clip of Oyer on CNN saying she thought that “Mel Gibson might be my downfall,” Oliver commented, “Wow, that is, frankly, incredible. She got fired because she didn’t think Mel Gibson, best known for his work in screaming, should have guns.”
Oliver then urged viewers to look at Gibson’s Wikipedia page “if you’ve forgotten the specifics of his various scandals.” He added that Gibson’s father’s Wikipedia page is also worth reading for the “opening paragraph alone [which] is spectacular.”
The host read, “‘Hutton Peter Gibson was an American conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, writer on sedevacantism’ — which is a belief that there hasn’t been a valid pope since 1958 — ‘a World War II veteran, the Jeopardy! grand champion for 1968, and the father of 11 children, one of whom is the actor and director Mel Gibson.”
Oliver replied, “That is a fascinating man. And imagine having so many terrible views that producing Mel Gibson is not the worst thing about you.”
During his monologue, Oliver also discussed Mahmoud Khalil‘s detention, noting that Donald Trump’s claim that the arrest was to crack down on antisemitism is “pretty rich, given the top DOD press secretary was recently found to have a history of racist and antisemitic tweets.”
“[Elon] Musk and JD Vance both recently supported Germany’s AFD, a party with ties to neo-Nazis,” Oliver said before showing an image of Musk’s now-infamous salute. “And of course, there was this shit. And that was all before you get to the efforts this week to make sure that this fucking guy [Gibson] — whose views on the Jews are let’s say a matter of public record — got his guns back.”
Oliver further reflected on the situation with Khalil, comparing his own experience with U.S. immigration. “Maybe you feel differently about the Israel-Palestine conflict than Khalil, maybe you don’t agree with things that I’ve said about it, but if someone can be deported as a green card holder for speech in support of Palestine or anything else this administration objects to, that should chill you to the bone,” he said. “And I’ll be honest, anyone who’s been through the U.S. immigration process has probably had a lot of anxious feelings stirred up this week. I came here to start working at The Daily Show on a visa; when we started this show, I had a green card and five years ago, I became a citizen. I know what it’s like to live in constant fear of being kicked out of somewhere you see as your home.”
He concluded, “Rights, like freedom of speech, are a fundamental part of living in this country and if we do not protect them, then unfortunately like the Teslas inexplicably for sale on the White House lawn this week, they could be going, going, gone.”
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