John Oliver Says Trump Is Trying To Distract You Again

There are many problems with President Trump's partial travel ban as it is currently in effect. But according to John Oliver, one key part is just not going to fly. "Grandparents don’t count as close family? Good luck telling them that," Oliver joked on Sunday's episode of Last Week Tonight. But before he could actually criticize the president's ban, Oliver had to address Trump's CNN body-slamming tweet, which were among many "absolutely indefensible" Twitter posts the president sent out this week. Oliver pointed out it's hard to even discuss the issues given Trump's endless distractions on Twitter.

Oliver, as has grown customary, started his show off with the latest on Trump, "The Bachelor in Paradise of American Presidents." Thus he first focused on Trump's attacks on MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski; earlier in the week the president had tweeted that "low IQ Crazy Mika" had gone "to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!"

That might seem like a shock to most American's, but Oliver wasn't surprised. "Trump is basically a walrus wearing a t-shirt that says, 'I have diarrhea.' He’s pretty open about how grossly shitty he can be, so we can’t be shocked when he suddenly is," Oliver noted.

From there, Oliver shifted gears into covering the travel ban, noting the confusion surrounding exactly what had happened. The Supreme Court decided last week that part of the executive order could be carried out after all. It had previously been blocked at the Circuit Court level. "At first the ban was banned, but now the court has partially banned the ban ban, instituting a partial ban pending the possibility of a future partial ban ban," Oliver tried to sum up.

According to SCOTUS, people without a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States" could be affected. The problem with this is that the Trump Administration gets to define what those relationships look like, who is in and who's out, which brings us back to grandparents. The White House decided they don't count.

Even more at issue was the decision not to let refugees come in with the ban; the administration decided that the refugee resettling agency didn't count as a claim of bona fide relationship with an entity in the country.

Oliver noted that some conservatives like Tucker Carlson celebrated the move. For example, Carlson asked on Twitter, "Why does America benefit from having tons of people from failing countries come here?" That begged for the most perfect of responses. Oliver called it a "question that made the Statue of Liberty give up and drown herself in the Hudson River."

But even that was not the craziest development in Trumpland this week. The ban may have been cruel and damaged the country's standing in the world. "So you would think that the president is at least justifying its existence. Instead he keeps derailing the conversation with his barrage of bullshit," Oliver said. That would, of course, be Trump's body-slamming tweet. Trump had uploaded a GIF of him body slamming someone that had a CNN logo superimposed over their head.

Talk about making the media your enemy. Trump posted hashtags #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN with the video. But leave it to Oliver to bring the joke full circle, to the issue that should have been dominating the news all weekend:

You know, at this point I have no choice but to admit that Trump was right: There is at least one grandparent who poses a grave and immediate threat to America. Unfortunately, it’s the grandparent currently in f**king charge of it.

And I have to admit, he does have a fair point.