It first aired on February 28, 2016, as part of the third episode of Last Week Tonight's third season, when Trump was the frontrunner for the Republican Party nomination for the presidency.

By Super Tuesday on March 1, two days after broadcast, Google searches for "Donald Drumpf" had surpassed those for both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who were then competing against Trump for the Republican Party nomination.

Oliver intended the term to uncouple the grandeur of the Trump name so the latter's supporters could acknowledge his political and entrepreneurial flaws.

Commentators debated whether the family changed their name in the 17th or 19th century but agreed that neither Donald Trump nor his father Fred ever carried the surname "Drumpf".

"[2][3][4] After summarizing his "unpredictable and entertaining" style and acknowledging his appeal to voters disenchanted with the American political establishment, Oliver criticizes Trump as a "serial liar".

[2] The now-defunct magazine's editor, E. Graydon Carter—who discussed the story in a November 2015 Vanity Fair article—said that after the article was published, Trump would send envelopes enclosed with photos of himself at various times, with all the pictures highlighting his fingers with a circular gold Sharpie to dispute the claims.

Oliver states that during a phone-in interview on Fox & Friends, Trump had advocated killing families of suspected terrorists as part of his strategy to defeat ISIS, which would constitute a war crime under the laws of the Geneva Convention.

[2][9] Up to that point, Trump had been accused by the mainstream media of promoting bigotry against several ethnicities during his campaign, including Hispanophobia and Islamophobia.

Oliver, an alumnus of Stewart's Daily Show, justified the "Drumpf" epithet by insisting that "[Trump] should be proud of his heritage!

Oliver opines that the name "Drumpf" reflects Trump's true nature much more accurately, and says that if viewers wanted to vote for "the charismatic guy promising to make America great again", they should "stop and take a moment to imagine how [they] would feel if [they] just met a guy named Donald Drumpf—a litigious serial liar with a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former Klan leader who he can't decide whether or not to condemn.

"[2][3] After noting the "powerful" and "almost onomatopoeic" connotation that the Trump surname has with some people, Oliver says of the ancestral name, "Drumpf is much less magical.

[12][15] After the segment, Oliver released a Google Chrome extension dubbed the "Drumpfinator", which changes all instances of "Trump" to "Drumpf" on webpages.

Oliver also registered the web domain "donaldjdrumpf.com" to provide free downloads of the "Drumpfinator" Chrome extension and sell red baseball caps branded with the slogan "Make Donald Drumpf Again".

By March 1, the date on which the "Super Tuesday" primaries were held, Google Searches for "Donald Drumpf" had surpassed those for both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, two of Trump's rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.

The American Jewish Congress announced the results of a poll of their members that referred to the candidate as "Donald Drumpf", which they later acknowledged was an accident caused by someone's use of the extension.

[23] Wired magazine published multiple articles replacing Trump's name with the phrase "Someone with Tiny Hands" in reference to the "Short-Fingered Vulgarian" meme, a result of another Chrome extension.

Named after the Last Week Tonight segment, the bot uses neural network technology to post tweets in an imitation of Trump.

[32] By March 8, ten days after the episode's broadcast, the donaldjdrumpf.com website had sold over 35,000 "Make Donald Drumpf Again" hats, comprising all the inventory on hand.

Rosenbaum wrote that the phrase was reminiscent of Trump's own xenophobic statements in that it was part of a long-running trend of "bestowing foreign-sounding names to imply that the target isn't really an American.

"[35] Alluding to the fact that the segment aired on the same night as the Oscars, the comedian also stated, "We were not doing [the episode] with the sense that it would become bigger than our show normally is", but the "Drumpf" appellation's later popularity "kind of slightly ruins the memory".

[42] This position was endorsed by The Boston Globe,[43] as well as by Daniel Victor, the New York Times reporter, who wrote, "Despite mistaken impressions, Mr. Trump and his recent relatives had nothing to do with the surname change.