“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” has a new “business daddy,” and the late night host made sure to give Warner Bros. Discovery a proper welcome on Sunday. It wasn’t exactly a warm welcome, considering he poked fun at them for scrapping “Batgirl,” but it was a welcome nonetheless.
The moment came during Oliver’s main show segment, which this week was monkeypox. In addressing how health officials fumbled the prevention of a widespread outbreak, Oliver noted that the U.S. actually had a stockpile of 20 million vaccine doses that were just allowed to expire.
He criticized the move as “unconscionable” and “abject selfishness,” considering how other countries that regularly deal with monkeypox likely would’ve benefitted from having the doses sent to them. But on a less serious note, Oliver also likened the vaccine doses to “Batgirl,” in that both were unceremoniously shelved.
“For some reason, we let the vaccine sit unused on a shelf in our reserves like an expired Chobani, or a $90 million movie on HBO Max,” Oliver joked. “By the way, hi there, new business daddy! Seems like you’re doing a really great job. I do get the vague sense that you’re burning down my network for the insurance money, but I’m sure that that’ll all pass.”
You can watch Oliver call out Warner Bros. Discovery in the video above.
Of course, Oliver’s words for Warner Bros. Discovery – which became his new “business daddy” earlier this year – were much kinder than the ones he often had for his previous “business daddy,” AT&T. In October, Oliver called out AT&T after it was revealed that they were one of the primary sources of funding for far-right One America News Network.
“Yup, turns out AT&T has been up to some s—,” Oliver said at the time. “And it is worth noting, AT&T is still technically our business daddy, making OAN our business step-sibling, and not in a hot way.”
You can watch that moment here.
