Watch John Oliver Give National Apology for Donald Trump Candidacy
John Oliver delivered a national apology during Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, taking blame for the rise of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. “It is frankly hard to believe that there was a time when people thought a Trump candidacy would be funny,” the comedian said, before cueing up a Trump-related clip from his 2013 guest-hosting stint on The Daily Show.
The archived footaged focused on Trump’s plans to run for president in 2016 – a concept Oliver found ludicrous at the time. “Do it. Look at me. Do it,” he said to Trump in the camera. “I will personally write you a campaign check now on behalf of this country, which does not want you to be president, but which badly wants you to run.”
Back on Last Week Tonight, Oliver crossed his fingers that his original instincts were correct. “I want to believe that America will reject Donald Trump, that our innate sense of decency will kick in like some sort of moral auto-pilot,” he said. “But I have been spectacularly wrong before.”
The comedian then revealed a different Daily Show clip as a consolation. When Oliver was a correspondent eight years ago, he unleashed a bold prediction that turned out to be very wrong: “The Chicago Cubs will never, ever win the World Series.”
He may not be Nostradamus, but Oliver urged Americans not to sit out on Election Day, regardless. “If you are thinking you don’t have to show up to vote on Tuesday because there is no way the impossible could happen, take it from somebody who has learned from painful experience: You are wrong about that.”
Watch five things we learned from John Oliver.