Oliver Lampoons Trump's Laughable Nuclear Policy

Calling nuclear weapons "the most terrifying thing you can stockpile, right after baby dolls," John Oliver delved into the recent Nuclear Security Summit held in Washington, D.C. on Last Week Tonight Sunday. Russian President Vladimir Putin elected not to attend the biannual security conference, despite the fact that Russia inherited most of the responsibility to manage the second-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The best part of the bit, however, was when Oliver lampooned Trump's laughable nuclear foreign policy platform.

The biggest point that Oliver made during his opening segment concerned something the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald "Tiny Hands" Trump, said about nuclear weapons. In what may be a calculated snub to President Obama's nuclear disarmament agenda, or might have just been the former slumlord speaking off the cuff, Trump "mention[ed] that he would be perfectly comfortable with other countries becoming nuclear powers, including Japan and South Korea." Um, please tell me that he is joking?

Sadly, that's not the case. Oliver cut to a clip when "America's potential next president" said: "At some point, we have to say, 'You know what? We're better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea. We're better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself. ... [And] Saudi Arabia, absolutely." Oh, yeah, I forgot that the best way to de-escalate tensions with a megalomaniacal dictator is to post up a bunch of nukes a few clicks south of his country. Totally missed that bit in my International Relations class.

"Yep. He says that with the confidence of a man who could easily find Saudi Arabia on a map — if he was given three tries and the map only included countries ending with -Arabia," Oliver deadpanned, to laughter from his studio audience. "And that's not all, because this week Trump recently refused to rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe, for reasons including, and I quote 'Europe is a big place.'" Hey, Don — can I call you Don? — while Europe is a big place, when a meltdown at a little reactor in rural Ukraine mushroomed out of control, the radiation spread so far that it is still contaminating reindeer in Norway... 30 years later.

"The person who made the statements doesn't know much about foreign policy, or nuclear policy, or the Korean peninsula, or the world generally," Obama explained languidly to the media at the summit's press call. I'm pretty sure that Obama is on to something here. By refusing to call him by name, the president is taking a stab at delegitimizing Trump's candidacy by deflating his almost mythic stature in the media and amongst his faction of supporters. Oliver made a good call by showing the POTUS in action; maybe instead of Making Donald Drumpf again, the next step is refusing to say his name.

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