Last Week Tonight segments about Donald Trump
[4][3] The segment popularized the term "Donald Drumpf", which Oliver said was coined with the intent to uncouple the grandeur of the last name to facilitate Trump's supporters' ability to acknowledge his political and entrepreneurial flaws.
He even offers a counterproposal of buying a waffle iron for every American, which would be cheaper, more pleasant, "do nearly as much to keep out immigrants and drugs" and "won't harm our relationship with our third largest trading partner.
"[7][8][9] He also examines the feasibility of the wall due to a 1970 international treaty between the two countries that prohibits structures that may obstruct water flow from being built along the Rio Grande and Colorado River basins.
Additionally, Oliver cites data that show that most Mexican-born migrants residing in the U.S. entered the latter country legally and that illegal immigrants committed violent crimes at lower rates than American citizens did, contradicting claims Trump made.
Oliver says that the 3,500 lawsuits that Trump has been involved in would exceed the combined number of episodes of most of the attorney-centered drama series that have been produced in the history of American television.
[11][12] In part of another subsequent segment on August 14, Oliver examined remarks by Donald Trump, who during the previous week had made the suggestion that supporters of the Second Amendment could stop opposing Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton from enforcing gun control policy proposals (an open-ended remark widely considered as suggesting violence against Clinton, but downplayed by Trump and many of his Republican surrogates to suggest his supporters should take political action against her) and claimed that President Barack Obama and Clinton were "the founder[s] of ISIS," citing in the latter that Obama's decision to reduce the number of U.S. ground troops in Iraq in 2013 created a governance vacuum that led to the radical Jihadist terror group's rise (although the U.S. military reduction did play a factor in its development, ISIS traces its origins to 2004, one year after the Iraq War began under the partial guidance of Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, as an Iraq-based arm of al-Qaeda).
[16] The election recap segment of the October 9 episode touches upon an outtake from a September 2005 Access Hollywood segment released by The Washington Post two days earlier, in which Trump inferred to then-host Billy Bush that his celebrity status gave Trump license to make inappropriate sexual advances with women (including grabbing their genitalia without permission).
[17][18][19] Oliver then excoriates members of the Republican Party who continued to support Trump as the party's presidential nominee despite his prior controversial statements and various remarks that offended racial and religious minorities during the course of the campaign to avoid jeopardizing their chances of re-election by alienating Trump's supporters, only for the remarks to force them to rescind endorsements or distance themselves from Trump because of the risk to their re-election by more moderate Republicans and other voters offended by the footage, saying that their outrage would only be justified if "[they] were cryogenically frozen until Friday afternoon, and that Access Hollywood tape was the first thing [they] saw upon being re-animated"; Oliver also questions the move of several male Republican Senate and House members to frame their outrage about the comments on behalf of their female relatives.
To demonstrate this, Oliver played a clip of Trump's first post-election interview in which he had considered maintaining some aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, despite campaigning against it during the election.
Oliver then examined Trump's candidates for potential Cabinet members, such as Newt Gingrich, Rudolph Giuliani, and Reince Priebus, all of whom have had significant experience in American politics.
Oliver then examined the possible reasons for Trump's victory, such as misleading forecasts, shortcomings in Hillary Clinton's campaign (namely her inability to appeal to white, rural, and working-class voters), and America's history of racism.
Oliver argued that his audience should also support the press, given Trump's inability to accept reality and responsibility as well as his promise to "open up those libel laws".
Oliver compiled a montage of people on the street as well as celebrities such as Amy Schumer, Larry Wilmore, and "Weird Al" Yankovic lamenting these negative events.
[21] In the core portion of the fourth-season premiere on February 12, 2017, Oliver discussed Trump's propensity to base his statements on tenuous or questionable media sources.
[22] Oliver began by discussing Trump's exaggerations or outright fabrications concerning voter fraud, Christian refugees from Syria, and the weather on his inauguration day.
[23] Oliver further explained that Trump stumbled on responses to simple governmental common knowledge such as the nuclear triad, and that his posts on Twitter quoted, sometimes word-for-word, cable news sources that had aired fifteen minutes prior.
[30] Oliver surmised that this was based on a post by one Twitter user,[22] who falsely claimed to have "verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens" but refused to release any evidence to support that assertion.
"[32] Oliver mentioned the obvious nepotism displayed in the White House's decision to reserve a single media press-conference seat for Breitbart, which Bannon headed before he joined Trump's campaign.
[22] He ended the video by suggesting that people fact-check their information before sharing it on social media and announcing that he was purchasing airtime on cable systems in Washington, D.C. and Trump's hometown of New York City to run locally inserted advertisements during cable news programs that Trump liked to watch, namely CNN's New Day, MSNBC's Morning Joe, and Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends.
In these advertisements, another catheter-using cowboy (played by Thomas Kopache) describes topics like the nuclear triad, global warming, and Trump's youngest daughter's name.
[33] A recurring segment called "Stupid Watergate" is concerned with the appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and resulting coverups.
[34] The episode particularly highlighted Trump's complaint during the Presidential commencement address for the Coast Guard Academy that "[n]o politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.
Oliver says that Trump's presidency is tiring, saying that "every room in America should have a sign on the wall that counts the number of minutes that it's been since someone brought up his fucking name."
[37][36] The second "assault" is something Oliver called "whataboutism", a logical fallacy involving an appeal to hypocrisy,[37] which the comedian says was used by the Soviet Union to discredit opponents by labeling them as hypocrites.
[37] Oliver caricatures a disaffected blue-collar factory worker who voted for Trump and supported the president's action to enlarge the United States' nuclear arsenal: "Well, the plant closed down and I lost my health care, but somewhere a Washington Post reporter is scared of dying so things are looking up.
It started by highlighting Trump's ranting about his then-impending sentencing over the Stormy Daniels hush money case, his lies of trans-people being the invention of "the radical left just a few years ago," and claims of cutting fundings to any schools that has a vaccine or mask mandate.
Individuals named on the episode includes Russ Vought, Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, John McEntee, and Larry Kudlow among others as the architects and advocates of Project 2025.
