John Oliver returned after his latest Emmys win on Sunday night, and to kick off the show, he went right for the throat of vice presidential hopeful JD Vance, and his claims about pets being eaten by migrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Acknowledging that he was on hiatus during the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Oliver noted that he still wanted to touch on Trump’s performance — particularly when he echoed Vance’s claims about pets being eaten.
“Can you even remember a time where something like that would’ve been disqualifying? Because I can’t anymore,” Oliver mourned after playing a clip.
That said, the host was more upset with Trump’s running mate than Trump himself on this one, mostly because JD Vance — “a man who always looks like a yassified chipmunk,” he joked — has not only doubled down on perpetuating these baseless claims, but because he effectively lit the fire in the first place.
As Oliver explained, there was indeed an influx in Haitian migrants to Ohio — specifically because they were recruited to come there to fill jobs. They weren’t “dropped” in, as Vance has suggested.
The HBO host also noted that the economy boomed as a result, but a housing crisis emerged. When the Springfield city manager sent a letter to the Senate Banking and Housing committee asking for funds to mitigate this, Vance was CC’d — but Vance selectively highlighted a portion of that letter out of context to create the story that there was a “Haitian migrant crisis” in the city.
“But I guess we now know it is a mistake to expect precise wording from Vance when it comes to anything ‘Haitia’-related,” Oliver sniped, poking fun at Vance mistakenly referring to Haiti as Haitia.
Oliver then ran down all the threats that Haitian migrants have now faced, including bomb threats, the appearance of a neo-Nazi group in Springfield, and countless rumors on social media. The late night host was also quick to point out that Vance’s team actually did fact-check some of those social media rumors, and found them to be false, but Vance pushed them anyway.
“These are lies that could get people hurt,” Oliver said.
The HBO host then called out Vance for bragging about how he got the national media to finally pay attention to what’s happening in Springfield, Ohio by creating these stories.
“Here’s the thing: they didn’t ask for attention. They asked for help,” Oliver said angrily. “Vance is the one who wanted attention. And that clearly took priority here, because while he’s remarkably bad at a lot of things — writing brooks, delivering speeches, ordering donuts like a human from Earth — it turns out he’s actually pretty good at parroting racist lies like the spineless dips–t that he is.”
“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” is now streaming on Max.
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