John Oliver and his Last week tonight The team was busy winning an Emmy last week, so Sunday night’s show marked their first opportunity to weigh in on the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Oliver chose to focus on Trump's claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are kidnapping and eating cats and dogs. The HBO show host called the clip a “tremendous moment in American oratory.”
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people who came over, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people who live there,” Trump said in footage from the Sept. 10 debate.
Oliver responded, “Yes, that was Donald Trump accusing Haitian immigrants of killing and eating people's pets. And can you remember a time when that would have been disqualifying? Because I can't anymore. Republicans have nominated Trump three times. Democrats have lost to him half the time so far. And the election is still inexplicably close because unfortunately, some Americans watched that and thought, 'I don't like the way Kamala laughed when she called immigrants dog eaters. That was not very presidential.'”
Oliver acknowledged that it has been a while since the debate, during which “a lot of jokes were made about cats eating.”
“But I still want to talk about it both because the chaos Trump has unleashed in Springfield is ongoing and because it seems emblematic of his campaign,” she said, noting that “city officials insist there is no evidence of what Trump confidently spewed out on 67 million people.”
Oliver noted that Trump was actually repeating a claim previously made by J.D. Vance, his vice presidential running mate. Oliver showed a Sept. 9 tweet from Vance that read: “Months ago, I raised the issue of illegal Haitian immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Now reports are showing people having their pets kidnapped and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country. Where is our border czar?”
Oliver joked that Vance's tweet “makes it sound like eating pets is a birthright for Americans.”
Oliver continued to criticize Vance, who, when asked about the tweet, “insisted that he was just reflecting people's concerns.” He played a clip of Vance saying, “The media has been trying to say for days that I made this up. I didn't make anything up. I just listened to people telling me these things.”
Oliver quipped: “Wait, 'if enough people say it, I'll say it again'? It's not ideal when the guiding philosophy of a vice presidential hopeful is indistinguishable from that of a fucking parrot.”