John Oliver admits Last Week Tonight’s Donald Drumpf joke got old quick
By Hector Cruz
Last Week Tonight host John Oliver thinks that the”Donald Drumpf” label he created has been overused.
John Oliver’s most-watched Last Week Tonight clip to date remains his “Make Donald Drumpf Again” segment where he fully took on then-candidate Donald Trump for the first time in the midst of the Republican primary. The viral clip released nearly a year ago not only amassed over 30 million views on YouTube and inspired a high-selling hat emblazoned with the phrase, but it also thrust Oliver into the mainstream in a way that his prior segments on such topics as net neutrality and payday loans hadn’t before.
But in an in-depth interview with Rolling Stone, the British comic said that he felt that the continued use of Trump’s ancestral name by some of his detractors has gotten old, although he defended the initial use of the label as a way to separate the brand from the man.
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Oliver agreed that the gag “got out of hand,” arguing that he didn’t think the piece would receive the amount of attention that it did given that the episode aired opposite the Oscars hosted by Chris Rock, admitting that its prevalence “became a bit dismaying,” and “kind of slightly ruins the memory,” though he remains proud of the fact that it was a means to respond to Trump’s “anti-Semitic” attack on Jon Stewart where he revealed his original last name on Twitter.
“It was supposed to be just a joke, like everything we do, not a stick to hit people with,” he said. “It was supposed to be a much more nuanced, argumentative piece than the reductive end that we put on it. So just to see people using it as a shorthand was pretty dispiriting in the end.”
Oliver also agreed with the interviewer that the widely circulated segment became like “when a cool band has a hit song that becomes way too big,” such as Radiohead’s “Creep,” adding: “That joke became old for us very quickly. There’s a reason we didn’t use it again. It really is the song I skip past.”
Revisit the “Make Donald Drumpf Again” segment below:
Next: Last Week Tonight announces return date in new trailer (Video)
While promoting the upcoming fourth season of Last Week Tonight, Oliver pledged to cover more topics than just Trump, but promised that when he does discuss the president, he will work hard to try to get past the “low-hanging fruit” surrounding the new administration. Meanwhile, in the RS cover story, the comedian also touched on Brexit, Trump’s inaugural speech, and why it’s pointless to interview Kellyanne Conway.
Last Week Tonight Season 4 premieres this Sunday, Feb. 12 at 11 p.m. on HBO.