'Last Week Tonight': John Oliver calls Jared Kushner an 'alt-right Pinocchio', tells him not to show his face in NYC
John Oliver is back to what he does best - ask those who in power to be responsible for their actions.
After making a return last week following a break due to the coronavirus pandemic, Oliver took to Sunday night's (April 5) 'Last Week Tonight' to express his disappointment with regards to how the COVID-19 outbreak was being treated in the US. He had earlier said that filming the show during the shutdown had been difficult because of technological issues.
It has been quite the long and difficult week, as Oliver acknowledged on his show. He squarely blamed the president of the United States of America as he said "the federal response under Trump has made things worse," criticizing the president for expressing that with 200,000 deaths from the virus instead of millions, "we have done a very good job."
"Setting aside the fact that leading disease forecasters are mystified at how Trump got to those numbers, trying to spin 200,000 deaths as a good job because it's not millions, is the most callous way to minimize the deaths of Americans imaginal," he said, putting into words what many critics of the president are saying at this point of time.
"Were it not for the fact that Trump responded to 9/11 on 9/11 by pointing out that he used to own the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan, now he owns the tallest. And the thing is, that wasn’t just offensive, it wasn’t even true." He went on to hashtag his statement with #OurPresidentIsAnIndescribableDick.
The host then moved on to discuss Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's failures, who he described as an "alt-right Pinocchio". Senior adviser Kushner had earlier stated in a press conference that states shouldn't depend on the federal stockpile of medical supplies because it was for the federal government's use and not for the states.
"Wait, our stockpile?" Oliver exclaimed. "It's not your stockpile! It's a national stockpile for use by the United States you f***ing moron. And here's the interesting thing about the United States, it's almost entirely made of states. There's states everywhere. I'd say more than 40 of them, Jared. And some of them badly need supplies right now, like the city you used to live in, and I pray you never show your f***ing face again".
It was then Republican Governors Ron DeSantis (FL), Brian Kemp (GA), and Kay Ivey's (AL) turn to get an earful for their failed response to the threat of the pandemic in their states. He called them "actively irresponsible" in their response to the crisis. He called out Kemp for being ill-informed about the virus - Georgia's governor did not know that asymptomatic people could transmit COVID-19.
Florida governor DeSantis was called out for allowing a reckless right-wing Tampa pastor to his megachurch services. "Even when DeSantis finally did the right thing this week, he still managed to f**k it up," he said. "You're not protected from coronavirus just because you're in church," the late-night host said.
And Ivey was chastised for being clueless about Alabama's coronavirus cases; she didn't even know that her state has a higher growth rate of cases than California. "I’ll give her this… Alabama isn’t California or New York. It is, of course, Alabama, a state whose flag says 'we’re working on it,' whose seal says 'This is where Alabama is' and its facts page on 50 states.com is 50 facts about Indiana."