John Oliver on Trump’s Win Over Kamala Harris

John Oliver took a close look at the results of the 2024 presidential election on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, diving right in to examine how Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris.

Obviously, that was not an outcome Oliver had hoped for, having spent the end of last week’s show arguing for undecided viewers to vote for Vice President Harris, the Democratic nominee.

“[O]n Tuesday, Trump won re-election,” he said at the beginning of Sunday’s show, to boos from the audience, “which is, to put it mildly, not what I was personally hoping would happen. And honestly, in Trump’s victory speech, he couldn’t seem to believe it either.”

The HBO host then showed a clip of Trump’s speech, in which the former president and current president-elect said: “We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing,” he said, adding incredulously: “Look what happened. Is this crazy?”

Said Oliver: “Yeah, it is crazy. It’s really fucking crazy. He’s basically one sentence away from saying, ‘I mean, you guys saw what I did, right? And you still voted for this. That doesn’t make any sense.’” 

Oliver continued: “I know being a shambling verbal mess is part of Trump’s brand, but it is still incredible to see an incoming president ad-lib a victory speech with the same energy as the best man who didn’t realize he had to give a toast: ‘What a beautiful day. What, what a beautiful beauty today. My brother and his girlfriend — wife, sorry — today they… they did the thing you all saw it. I thought my part was done with the bachelor party, but here we go. Marriage is crazy, right? It’s crazy.’”

Oliver went on to note how it’s been a “rough week” in which “the tiniest moments this week, where the world was going on like nothing had happened could be suddenly enraging.” He cited examples such as text from a relative extending an invitation to Thanksgiving, The New York Times sending an alert about a recipe for roast chicken, and the Hello Kitty brand posting on X a word search puzzle with the caption, “Checking in … What are you looking forward to this month?”

“Hey, Hello Kitty — not fucking now,” Oliver said. “I would love to tell you what I’m looking forward to, but I cannot seem to find ‘drinking my lights out and [having] some grief mac and cheese’ on your stupid puzzle. Get the fuck out of here.”

He noted that X users also got mad at a video teaser for Tyla’s new song in which a derriere wearing jean shorts was being buffed. The teaser was posted the day after the election and elicited responses like “not now girl. not now” and  “Tyla reading the room” with a gif of Lea Michelle. However, many others pointed out that the singer is South African, with one noting: “She is literally South African. … Nobody’s happy that Trump won including me, but she’s literally not an American. What do y’all want from her?”

“Which is fair,” Oliver noted. “People in other countries are allowed to buff their jean shorts. They didn’t put us in this situation. We did.”

He went on: “And, and honestly, if you are watching this right now and thinking, you know what, I’m not actually ready for this either, I totally get it. It is understandable not to want yet another guy in a suit doom squawking at you. So if you are too angry, depressed or worried to watch the rest of this show, no problem. I have been in each of those places this week, and they are all a correct reaction because look, we did a show like this after the election in 2016 when no one expected Trump to win. This time, though, his winning felt like a real possibility all year long, lots of people mobilized to stop it, but it happened anyway, which feels somehow worse.”

Later, Oliver gave some advice to his viewers who are struggling to come to terms with the results of the election.

“[O]n Jan. 20, Trump is getting sworn back into office and that is very depressing. So what do the rest of us do next? Well, for the next few days, I’d say whatever you want,” he said. “I am not gonna judge you for how you get through the next week for two reasons. One, I’m not gonna see it. I am in the TV. This is far away from where you actually are.

“And two, because there is no right reaction right now; lots of us are grieving and grief has stages. We take different amounts of time for different people. The stage I’m currently locked in is anger. I am mad for trans people who’ve been threatened. I’m disgusted at the prospect of mass deportation. I’m furious at Biden for not dropping out earlier, and that the egos and inaction of two men [Trump and Biden] older than credit cards themselves have led us to this point. I’m mad that women have to hear ‘your body, my choice’ from right-wing dipshits. I’m mad that Elon Musk is apparently sitting in on meetings with the president of Ukraine. I’m mad about the myriad of damage Trump will do that cannot easily be undone like setting back efforts to fight climate change and appointing more Supreme Court justices. And I’m mad at the prospect of four more years of people saying, ‘So is your job like so much easier with Trump as president?’ No, it is not! No, it fucking isn’t! Fuck you so much!”