John Oliver has criticised Donald Trump amid the US president’s widely condemned deployment of Federal officers to anti-racism demonstrations in Portland, Oregon.
Investigators at the Justice Department and Homeland Security are launching probes into the Trump administration’s decision to send in the officers, amid complaints over the use of force on protesters.
Speaking on his HBO topical comedy series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the British-American comedian said: “The protests in Portland have actually been going on daily for nearly two months now, since the killing of George Floyd.
“But the deployment of Federal agents was a sharp escalation of questionable legality, and yet, to hear the president tell it, he had no choice, and it was a terrific idea.”
He continued: “It’s never good when Trump says he’s doing a ‘great job’ given he thinks that the administration is doing a ‘great job’ dealing with the coronavirus and he once proclaimed Ben Affleck would do a great job as Batman. Clearly, this man has no sense of what a ‘great job’ actually looks like.”
Oliver also noted that Trump has been “threatening to use Federal force” in other cities as well, describing the suggestion as “outrageous”.
He noted that it was “troubling” that the president appeared to be using the Portland demonstrations as a “staging ground” for an “authoritarian show of force”.
The Community star has been an outspoken critic of the president throughout his time in office.
Earlier this year, Oliver quipped that the president has “the spirit, brain, appetite, temper, patience and wit of a child that you hate”.
