John Oliver may have protested too much about devoting any airtime on Last Week Tonight to Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, because he’s gone from telling Stephen Colbert that he’d rather not acknowledge that the New York “businessman” was even in the race, to mounting a campaign to pull back the curtain/Trump’s combover and make him “Drumpf” again. With his show going on hiatus for a month, Oliver made one last-ditch effort to prevent a Trump presidency. No, he didn’t rattle off a list of all the bigoted and inaccurate statements the GOP candidate has made—the show did run an extra 8 minutes last night, but that still wouldn’t have been enough time. Instead, Oliver addressed a segment directly to Trump, urging him to drop out of the election—or, in the common parlance, to “dump Trump.”
Even posing as a public servant for photo-ops doesn’t appear to suit Trump, who went Louisiana to meet with flood victims and hand out Play-doh donations. (He did so against the wishes of Governor John Bel Edwards, who’s asked all politicians, including President Barack Obama, to let first responders do their jobs before dropping by for a visit.) Seeing Trump’s grumpy face, Oliver couldn’t help but offer him a way out—just drop out of the race. After all, Trump’s already accomplished a whole lot: He’s brought even more attention to our flawed political contributions system, our flawed two-party system, and our flawed media coverage of the last two. Trump’s fallen ass-backwards into an exposé.
To thank the “voodoo doll made from discarded cat hair” for his unintended good service, Oliver got Will Arnett to record some passages from the Dan Gutman classic, The Kid Who Ran For President, from which Trump could crib his dropping-out speech. There isn’t a single use of the word “loser,” so Trump should be okay with it.