Though we were all denied the opportunity to see the world’s preeminent political satirist skewer the first round of televised debates for the GOP’s presidential hopefuls, with Jon Stewart filming his final episode of The Daily Show mere hours before they began, others have sought to fill that void.
On Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the outspoken host laid into presidential candidate Donald Trump, referring to the real estate mogul as “thin-skinned” and “sexist.” And, not to be outdone, Stewart’s former understudy John Oliver mocked The Donald on his own HBO program, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
“That is either an overpacked stage or the worst season ever of Dancing with the Stars—and I’m very much including the season where David Hasselhoff ejaculated a cha-cha-cha,” Oliver said on Sunday night’s episode. “But let’s not kid ourselves here: This debate was always only going to be about one person, and from the very first question he was the focus of everyone’s attention.”
Yes, that person was Trump, who from the get-go caught jeers from the audience by refusing to pledge his support for the eventual Republican nominee if it isn’t him.
“Why is that audience acting surprised?” asked Oliver. “That couldn’t have been more of a setup for Trump than if the prompt had been, ‘Raise your hand if your daddy left you millions of dollars instead of hugging you.’ The entire debate was basically a two-hour circus sideshow with an old piece of luggage covered in Cheez Whiz as its center. And the whole thing will be quickly forgotten. In fact, the main headlines the next day were nothing to do with the battle between the candidates onstage but between Donald Trump and moderator Megyn Kelly, which culminated in this.”Oliver then threw to a clip of Trump’s ridiculously sexist post-debate critique of Kelly: “She starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions and, you know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her… wherever.” Now, Trump’s gross history of misogyny aside, the sexist comment dominated all the post-debate headlines—which failed to focus on any of the potential presidential candidates’ troubling positions, like the fact that Governor Scott Walker wouldn’t grant a woman an abortion even if it could save her own life.
“Whoa. ‘Her wherever?!’” said Oliver. “You can only imagine how talented a lover Donald Trump must be: ‘I’m just gonna put my thingamajig in your wherever and I’m going to waggle it! I’m going to waggle it around.’”
“Now, if you want to hear more on the Trump/Kelly showdown, you can basically tune in to any news network because it is all they’re fucking talking about,” Oliver continued. “But we are going to move on, and I’ll tell you why: This whole debacle was meaningless. The 2016 election will not depend on this because it’s 457 days away. There will be actual babies born on Election Day 2016 whose parents haven’t even met yet. So everyone pace yourselves.”