John Oliver: ‘Non-Zero’ Chance I’ll Get Deported Under Trump
John Oliver echoed comments he made about Donald Trump’s immigration executive order in his Rolling Stone cover story to Stephen Colbert Tuesday night, noting he’s concerned he might be thrown out of America “like a tea bag.”
“The crazy thing is it’s probably not gonna happen, but there is a non-zero chance of it happening now,” Oliver said.
“So yeah, I am slightly concerned. I have an American wife and American son now, but who knows what’s enough? Having a green card used to be enough. But yet what we saw with that executive order on immigration, that debacle, things were not what they supposed to be.”
Oliver then slammed Trump’s executive order for not allowing military translators into the United States, adding the president never sacrificed anything for this country.
The comments echo what he recently told Rolling Stone. “Normally, you would think, “I’m probably not going to get deported, presidents have big jobs, they’re not that petty,” he said. “So, believe me, that is something that is wrapped around my head. Normally you could curtail the paranoid part of your brain with logic. And you can’t do that with the same ferocity because that logical part of your brain now tells you the chance is nonzero.”
Elsewhere in the Late Show interview, Oliver talked about Last Week Tonight‘s post-Election Day break. “Until Inauguration Day, nothing was really happening,” he said. “It was just being tied to a train track, watching the train coming, and of course Inauguration Day is the train hitting you and you’re thinking, ‘Yep, that felt pretty much like I thought it was gonna feel.'”
With so much happening in just the first two weeks of Trump’s presidency, Oliver reiterated a point he made in Last Week Tonight‘s 2016 finale, which is to not allow this to become “the new normal.”
“I think people are still feeling viscerally repelled by things. I think the problem really arises when you get punch drunk,” Oliver said. “Where you hear about a Betsy DeVos confirmation and go, ‘Well, that’s just the way the world is now.'”
Colbert and Oliver also discuss whether the United States faces a “retrenchment” from its status as the Number One world power, much like Great Britain did centuries ago, and whether Oliver would ever be cast as James Bond. “If you want a Bond that’s nervous around women, I got you here,” Oliver said.
Watch to find out five things we learned from hanging out with John Oliver.