John Oliver calls out Donald Trump for authoritarianism, being a dick

On Last Week Tonight, Oliver addressed Trump's ongoing military intervention over anti-ICE protests.

By Mary Kate Carr | June 16, 2025 | 9:35am

Screenshot: HBO/YouTube

TV News Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

John Oliver calls out Donald Trump for authoritarianism, being a dick

The escalating U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and resulting protests are the biggest political story in America right now, so John Oliver took the time to address the situation on what Late Nighter reports was the longest episode of Last Week Tonight ever. As part of the segment, Oliver played President Donald Trump’s remarks at Fort Bragg, where Trump claimed that if he hadn’t sent in the National Guard (and later, the Marines), Los Angeles would be burning, akin to the wildfires earlier this year. “I know I’m not saying anything new right now, but he is such a dick,” Oliver complained (via Deadline). “There is just no reason to bring up the traumatic fires that are still very much on people’s minds in L.A., 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.”

Trump’s continued assertion that California would be in ruins without his intervention is hyperbolic to the point of being an outright lie. Los Angeles residents on the ground have noted the anti-ICE protests that triggered the National Guard deployment were relatively small in scale, particularly when compared to something like 2020’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Oliver pointed out that even the LAPD chief described the city as “nowhere near a level” for federal military backup (via The Daily Beast). “Despite a lot of sensationalist news coverage, all of this was well within the city’s control,” the host said. “Why would you send troops if there is nothing for them to do? You’re just going to have 4,000 soldiers wandering around L.A. swinging by the Hollywood Walk of Fame to go, ‘Huh? Christian Slater. OK.'”

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Though there was indeed “sporadic vandalism and rock throwing and some Waymo cars were set on fire,” those “were isolated incidents not at all representative of the protest as a whole,” Oliver continued. “And I’m not saying that those aren’t striking visuals. I’m just saying 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 cover-up of car sexual abuse.”

Trump’s response to the protests “felt completely over-the-top, especially when you consider troops will apparently be there for 60 days at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $134 million,” Oliver went on. “And usually when that much is spent on something completely pointless, we at least get to see one of the Avengers in it.”

Political pundits have posited that Trump’s military intervention was as much an attempt to intimidate his enemies—like California Governor Gavin Newsom—as it was to quell protests, a test to see how much he could get away with by flexing his power. “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,” Oliver stated.

A similar argument could be made about Trump throwing himself an expensive military parade birthday party, which traded in the aesthetics of fascism even if the result was decidedly unimpressive. In response to that flex, millions of Americans took to the streets for the nationwide “No Kings” demonstrations. It’s events like these protests that give John Oliver a sense of optimism. As he said, “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.”