John Oliver dedicated the main segment of Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight” not to a topic but to a person: Vice President JD Vance.
“I know to some Vance might appear to be just another abrasive MAGA asshole with a load-bearing beard, but to many on the right, he’s a towering intellect,” Oliver pointed out as he picked apart Vance’s rise to become Donald Trump’s right-hand man, a trajectory he said was particularly surprising given Vance’s former disdain for the president.
Oliver aired a video of a pre-MAGA Vance striking a comparatively nuanced tone, which he said was “strange to see” from “a guy who’s since become such a troll.”
Then came the damning analogy:
“It would be like finding old videos of your dog eating with a fork and a knife. ‘What the fuck?!? Yesterday I watched you take a shit and then eat it mouth first. How on earth did we get from this to that?’”
Oliver dissected Vance’s ambition and opportunism and suggested he had become “the archetype of the hyperonline conservative troll, right down to the whole, ‘Kidding, not kidding, trigger the libs shtick.’”
Oliver also warned viewers not to be fooled by Vance, citing what had been hailed as his “rational” performance during the 2024 vice presidential debate with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
It’s “so important to remember who JD Vance actually is” because, said Oliver: “He’ll present himself as an anti-elitist man of the people but much of his career has been bankrolled by tech billionaires, he’ll go to bat for Alex Jones, arguing we should show grace to those who are 40% right, but he’ll happily co-sign on childless people being sociopaths and the left being un-humans. He’ll offer empathy and understanding when it comes to non-conventional thinkers, but has no problem deriding immigrants as a net negative on society.”
