John Oliver has condemned Donald Trump’s response to the Los Angeles anti-ICE riots, warning of a “slippery slope to authoritarianism”.
On this week’s edition of Last Week Tonight, Oliver launched straight into a scathing takedown of Trump’s response to the protests in LA, which erupted last week after ICE agents carried out raids across the country. In response, Trump deployed the National Guard and US Marines to try to contain the situation.
Oliver began by criticising Trump for saying that LA would have been on “fire” if he hadn’t sent in the National Guard and Marines, a comment that comes just months after the city experienced devastating wildfires that left 30 people dead.
“I know I’m not saying anything new right now, but he is such a d**k,” said Oliver. “There is just no reason to bring up the traumatic fires that are still very much on people’s minds in LA, for the same reason you shouldn’t open a toast at a retirement party with, ‘Wow, only milestone left after this is death.’ Yeah, everyone knows that, and we’re all trying not to think about it.’”
During the protests, which were mostly confined to a small area in downtown LA, several self-driving Waymo cars were set ablaze, which Oliver claimed was “not at all representative of the protests as a whole.”
He added: “Setting a driverless car on fire is not the same thing as assaulting someone, unless we’re somehow living in the Pixar Cars universe, where burning one is murder, and you’d be condemned to hell by the Car Pope – a real character from Cars 2, by the way – implying there’s car Catholicism, car Jesus and, presumably, a decades-long car coverup of car sexual abuse.”
Trump’s decision to send in troops to LA will reportedly cost US taxpayers $134m, which Oliver compared to the amount of money often spent on a Marvel film: “Usually, when that much is spent on something completely pointless, we at least get to see one of the Avengers in it.”
Although Oliver couldn’t be sure what would happen next, he was confident about one thing: “When everyone was warning about a slippery slope to authoritarianism under Trump, this is it – because masked government agents grabbing people off the street and deporting them without due process is authoritarianism; sending in the military to crack down on protests against those actions is authoritarianism.”
However, despite the bleakness of the situation, Oliver pointed towards the other protests that happened in the US over the weekend, such as the largely peaceful No Kings demonstrations, as a reason for optimism. “We’re living through a time in American history that will be remembered for acts of incredible cruelty, but I hope it will also be remembered for acts of courage and defiance,” the 48-year-old said.
