America has It’s time to reflect on presidential candidate Donald Trump’s insane comments during the last debate, in which he claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were kidnapping and eating cats and dogs. But John Oliver still has some thoughts on the matter.
In a new episode of last nightOliver showed a clip of the debate, calling it “an extraordinary moment in American rhetoric.” In the clip, Trump asserts: “In Springfield, they eat the dogs, the people who come in, they eat the cats, they eat the pets of the people who live there.”
“Yes, that was Donald Trump accusing Haitian immigrants of killing and eating people’s pets,” Oliver responded. “And can you even remember a time when something like that would have led to disqualification? Because I can’t anymore. Republicans have nominated Trump three times now. Democrats have lost to him half the time. And the election is still inexplicably close because unfortunately some Americans watched that and thought, ‘I don’t like how Kamala laughed when he called immigrants dog eaters. That wasn’t very presidential.’”
He added that despite “a lot of jokes about eating cats,” “I still want to talk about this because the chaos that Trump caused in Springfield continues and because it seems symbolic of his campaign.” Oliver then criticized Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, who had bolstered the claims, joking that Vance’s tweet “makes it seem like eating pets is a natural-born American right.”
Oliver showed a video of Vance saying, “The media has been trying for days to say that I made this up. I didn’t make anything up. I just listened to people tell me these things.” The late-night host responded, “Wait — if enough people say that, I’ll repeat it? It’s not ideal when the guiding philosophy of an aspiring vice president is indistinguishable from a parrot.”
Then he made fun of the way Vance pronounces Haiti. Oliver said, “First of all, there's only one Haiti-related mispronunciation that we recognize in this house, and that's Alicia Silverstone in No idea“, repeating the famous line: “If the government can get into the kitchen and put some things in order, then surely we can celebrate with the Haitians.”
