John Oliver weighed in on the conflict in Iran on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight.
“Now despite relentless bombing, the U.S. has been unable to stop Iran striking targets around the region and blocking the Strait of Hormuz,” he recapped on his HBO show. “The news hasn’t been great, so on Thursday, [United States Secretary of War] Pete Hegseth decided to speak to the American public directly.”
Oliver showed a clip of Hegseth talking about the situation in the Middle East at a press conference: “I stand here today speaking to you, the American people. Not through filters, not through reporters, not through cable news spin. … Yes, there are reporters in front of me, but they are not our audience today. It’s you, the good, decent, patriotic American people. You, the hardworking, tax-paying, God-fearing American patriots.”
Quipped Oliver: “OK, set aside Hegseth’s whole vibe there — which is very ‘Welcome to my birthday dinner. One of you has been poisoned’ — You actually don’t need to announce who you are and aren’t speaking to. There’s a reason I don’t start this show by saying, ‘Welcome, welcome, welcome, fuck this studio audience. I wish they’d jump into the Hudson River if they don’t laugh, that’s on them. Anyway, it’s been a busy week.’ I might think it, but I’d never say it.”
The offensive has been dubbed “Epic Fury,” and Oliver wasted no opportunity to mock that moniker.
“It’s definitely the stupidest name I’ve ever heard,” he said. “It sounds like a VHS tape Hegseth put out of himself doing karate in a garage. It sounds like the name of an energy drink marketed to divorced monster-truck fans containing so much caffeine, it makes you shit your pants while having a heart attack.”
Oliver then showed a news interview with a woman at a gas station, where prices have been rising since the military operation began, noted that she’d voted for President Trump three times.
“That was my bad. Apparently I’m an idiot,” she said. Asked what she would tell Trump if he were listening, she replied: “You’re a worthless pile of shit.”
Said Oliver: “You know what they say, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, there’s gonna be a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, and my road trip to St. Louis is about to cost more than my car payment.’”
Oliver then noted that Trump declared that U.S. had “won the war” and said the president “seems desperate to paint this situation as much more stable than it actually is.”
On Friday, Trump told reporters: “Oh, I think we’ve won. We’ve knocked out their navy, their air force. We’ve knocked out their anti-aircraft, we’ve knocked out everything. We’re roaming free. From a military standpoint, all they’re doing is clogging up the strait, but from a military standpoint, they’re finished.”
Responded Oliver: “Oh, well that’s great news, but here is the problem with that. He already declared that we’d won the war 11 days ago. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it has seemed to continue since then. And I’ve gotta say, for all this administration’s disdain for cable news spin, and its insistence people report the reality, they are stretching the truth to breaking point here, because even as Trump’s claiming that we’ve won, the Pentagon’s requesting $200 billion in extra funding for this operation, sure suggesting it’s going to be going on for a while. He’s also claimed we’ve destroyed 100 percent of Iran’s military capability, which is a little hard to believe, given they’re still somehow managing to strike multiple other countries in the region, and he claimed twice this week that a former president endorsed his decision to go to war, something they’ve all since denied.
“The lies are getting pretty flagrant here, even by this president’s standards, and inevitably people are noticing. In fact, you could argue that the only irrefutably laser-focused, decisive ‘epic fury’ that has been on display this week has been this outburst targeted at him,” he continued, replaying a clip the woman quoted as saying, “You’re a worthless pile of shit.”
