During his opening monologue on tonight’s installment of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver addressed the spiraling claims by Donald Trump‘s administration regarding the Iran War, which has continued to drag on despite assurances it would entail a decisive military operation last month.
After cuing a video of U.S. Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth‘s recent address to the American public, in which he defended “Operation Epic Fury,” the late-night host quipped: “‘Epic Fury is different?’ Maybe. It’s definitely the stupidest name I’ve ever heard. It sounds like a VHS tape Hegseth put out of himself doing karate in a garage. It sounds like the name of an energy drink marketed to divorced monster truck fans containing so much caffeine it makes you shit your pants while having a heart attack. It doesn’t exactly convey care and precision.”
Prior to the weekend, Trump also reiterated that he believes the U.S. has decisively won the war.
“Oh, well, that’s great news, but here’s the problem with that: He already declared we’d won the war 11 days ago, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it has seemed to continue since then,” Oliver said. “And I’ve gotta say, for all this administration’s disdain for ‘cable news spin,’ and its insistence that people ‘report the reality,’ they are stretching the truth to breaking point here.”
He continued, “Because even as Trump’s claiming that we’ve won, the Pentagon’s requesting $200 billion in extra funding for this operation is sure suggesting it’ll be going on for a while. He’s also claimed we’ve destroyed ‘100% of Iran’s military capability,’ which is a little hard to believe, given they’re still somehow managing to strike multiple other countries in the region. And he claimed twice this week that a former president endorsed his decision to go to war, something they’ve all since denied. The lies are getting pretty flagrant here, even by this president’s standards, and inevitably, people are noticing.”
The only “epic fury” he’s witnessed this week, Oliver joked, is from a three-time Trump-voting Dauphin County resident named Amanda, who has since gone viral for telling local news what she would say to Trump if he were watching: “You’re a worthless pile of shit.”
