Last week, John Oliver gave himself 30 seconds to party hard while celebrating Donald Trump’s reelection loss to Joe Biden. Now it’s season finale time, and the host did get to face off with Adam Driver (you can read about that confrontation here), but there was also an unavoidable subject to discuss. Not much has changed since last week because Trump still refuses to concede the election despite Biden’s 306 projected electoral votes next to his own 232. And despite his dwindling legal options, Trump’s still withholding all transition funds to Biden, so once again, Oliver needed to talk about “this a**hole.” (And again on Monday morning, Trump falsely claimed victory.)
Oliver wanted to make one thing very clear, which is that Trump’s constant ranting about election fraud “really is nothing,” and eventually, he’ll be forced out of the White House. Before that happens, though, Oliver’s aghast at the “absolutely unforgivable” way that Trump’s going out as president. “Trump lost this election, and he knows it,” declared the host, but he’s seemingly determined to spend his days tweeting voter fraud claims and conspiracy theories while letting the virus running rampant. As his “parting gift to the country, Trump is somehow managing to divide us even further while also hobbling his successor at the worse possible time.” And that, Oliver declares, is becoming “deadly serious,” not only because of the pandemic’s increasing death count but because of all the 2nd Amendment-enthusiast threats against city commissioners “for counting votes.”
Oliver does see light coming at some point in 2021, but he foresees much work ahead:
“The fact that Trump won’t be president next year is good. It’s really good, but there is a lot of work to do, and at least in the short term, things are gonna suck for awhile, but we have to try and repair this damage.”
The rest of the segment includes Oliver’s disbelief that Republicans are indulging Trump’s delusions for unknown reasons, and multiple Fox News hosts are giving air time to false conspiracies about dead voters “stealing” the election. That would include Tucker “Waiter’s Nightmare” Carlson and Laura Ingraham talking to a scrambled voice that’s like “Megan Mullally undergoing an exorcism.” Then there’s Jon Voight calling for the greatest uprising since the Civil War while likening Democrats to Satan. It’s nuts, and Trump’s coping with his misery by shouting out Scott Baio on Twitter.
Is it 2021 yet? As Oliver showed at the end of the episode, he is finished with 2020 to the point of blowing it up.
