John Oliver knows that the seemingly unending rash of police brutality against Black Americans has had a bit of a numbing effect. The Last Week Tonight has tackled the subject many times over the past handful of years, including discussions about defunding the police and accountability for law enforcement. So, he wanted to “break the cycle” this week while responding to last week’s police shootings and killings of Daunte Wright (age 20, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota) and Adam Toledo (age 13, in Chicago).
Oliver, of course, was aghast and frustrated at how the U.S. can’t seem to do anything to curb the issue of police mowing down Black citizens. “We couldn’t even finish writing about what happened to Daunte Wright before the city of Chicago released video of one of their officers killing a 13-year-old unarmed child, Adam Toledo,” the host declared. He added that the police footage “clearly contradicted the picture of an armed confrontation painted by the police” along with “a prosecutor who said Toledo had a gun in his hand when he was shot, which he did not.” To that end, Oliver urged protesters to continue their fight, but he understood that people probably don’t want to rewatch any of the relevant footage again, so he decided that some distraction was in order.
To that end, Oliver zoomed through some gleefully frivolous stories, including the giant bunny heist and whatever was happening with Usher Bucks in Las Vegas before devoting some airtime to this pressing issue: “The Commercials On Fox News In The Middle Of The Night Know Exactly Who They’re Talking To.” Then this happened:
Yep, Oliver devoted about five seconds to saying that it wasn’t worth rehashing the Fox New takes on the police killings of Daunte Wright and Adam Toledo; and instead, he roasted the Fox News audience by playing a full minute of commercials that reveal an interesting late-night trend from the cable news channel. Savage.