CLEARING THE AIR

John Oliver Reveals Just How ‘Dangerous’ Trump’s Election Lies Are

“As a parting gift to the country, Trump is somehow managing to divide us even further,” the “Last Week Tonight” host explained.

On Sunday night, John Oliver dedicated the season finale of Last Week Tonight to (soon-to be former) President Donald Trump’s wild and baseless allegations that the election results are fraudulent.

Oliver cited the fact that nearly all of the Trump campaign’s lawsuits have been laughed out of court. He also noted that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the Department of Homeland Security that Trump himself helped create, stated, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” and that this was “the most secure [election] in American history.”

Interestingly enough, the one major voter-fraud arrest stemming from the 2020 election involved a man in Luzerne Country, Pennsylvania, who voted for Trump via mail-in ballot using his deceased mother’s name.

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“This administration’s refusal to acknowledge the election’s outcome means that [President-elect Joe] Biden is not getting high-level intelligence reports and can’t access funds meant to facilitate his transition,” said Oliver. Also, outgoing Trump officials aren’t able to share coronavirus vaccine distribution plans with the incoming Biden administration, which is potentially slowing down vaccine distribution at a time when COVID cases around the country are spiking.

According to Oliver, Trump’s election lies are “pathetic, dangerous, and in many ways, an appropriate coda to a presidency that has destroyed so many lives—not only of those that he’s attacked, but of those that he’s claimed to protect. So many of us have lost loved ones—either because you can no longer square your love for them with their love for him, or because they fell down a mind-melting rabbit hole of conspiracy theories that he happily perpetuated, or because he let a deadly virus run wild and it fucking killed them.”

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Marlow Stern

“And now, as a parting gift to the country, Trump is somehow managing to divide us even further, while also hobbling his successor at the worst possible time, which is absolutely unforgivable,” he continued. “And yes, the fact that Trump won’t be president next year is good—it’s really good—but there is a lot of work to do, and at least in the short term, things are going to suck for a while, but we have to try to repair this damage.”

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Marlow Stern

Martha MercerEditor

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