John Oliver Unloads on Trump for ‘Don’t Give a S***’ Gatsby Party
The talk show host also took a swipe at the president’s latest renovations.

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John Oliver ripped President Donald Trump for hosting a Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, calling the move “pretty insulting.”
More than 40 million Americans got cut off from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the weekend, despite two federal judges ruling that the government must continue funding SNAP with contingency funds, with a call for action by Monday.
“Trump is going to have to own the consequences here, and even as he continues to blame Democrats for this shutdown, he somehow manages to make the optics even worse,” Oliver said to close out his opening monologue on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight.

Trump attends a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on October 31, 2025.
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
On the tarmac from Palm Beach, Florida, Trump, 79, said, “It’s all their fault,” referencing the party that’s not in charge of the government, as CNN then cut to footage of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Halloween party, with the anchor describing The Great Gatsby as a book “about rich people partying.”
“Yeah. Not only is that pretty insulting,” Oliver, 48, said. “I’m guessing it’s also pretty infuriating to whatever exhausted high-school freshman just wrote a 4,000-word essay about Great Gatsby as a grim meditation on the dissolution of the American dream, only for CNN to tell him, ‘You know what? It’s really just a book about rich people partying.’”
He added, “And for what it’s worth, the actual theme of that event was apparently, and I quote: ‘A Little Party Never Killed Nobody.’ And I guess that is true. Although it is also true that as we are all finding out right now, a Grand Old Party is capable of killing a whole lot of people, and unfortunately, they don’t seem to give a single marble- and gold-encased s--t about that.”

Trump talks with guests during a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate on October 31, 2025 at Palm Beach, Florida.
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
On Friday, Trump also posted a slew of photos showing off glitzy renovations to the bathroom for the second-floor Lincoln Bedroom in the White House, which included gold fixtures and floor-to-ceiling marble.
“Yeah, that is pretty tone-deaf,” Oliver said. “I will say to Trump what I said while watching David Harbour’s Architectural Digest video: ‘You are vastly overestimating how much I care about where you take a s--t.’ But it is odd to be posting bathroom remodel photos when so many are legitimately concerned about getting the government open again.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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