As the situation at Twitter continued to rapidly deteriorate following an reported “mass exodus” of employees and Elon Musk‘s controversial decision to unban Donald Trump, John Oliver weighed in on the chaos at the social media platform. During the opening segment of Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, the late night host tore into Musk for his weak jokes and signaling to “many of the worst people on Twitter” that the site is now a free-for-all. Oliver also dropped a scathing new nickname for the flailing media baron.
“A man who answers the question “What if Willy Wonka benefited from apartheid?’” Oliver quipped before dragging Musk over the coals for scaring away advertisers with his $8 a month blue checkmark plan that led to a “predictable” rise in impersonating brand accounts. The late night host also went to town on the platform’s apparent increase in hate speech as well as the removal of safeguards to stop misinformation.
Oliver concluded his intro segment by saying that Musk clearly doesn’t know what’s going to happen next on the social media platform, now that he’s fired half his staff and is facing several labor lawsuits.
“He’s decimated his staff and degraded his product, and sure, he could try and sell what’s left of Twitter, or it can continue functioning worse than before, as his free-for-all digital clown town,” the host said.
Despite ripping Musk apart for destroying Twitter, Oliver is not immune to the schadenfreude of it all.
“There is undeniably something a little satisfying about a guy who was so desperate to be perceived as cool and funny on the internet that he paid $44 billion to make it happen, only to discover that he still somehow couldn’t afford it.”
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)