During the opening of “Last Week Tonight” this past Sunday, host John Oliver reflected on a moment far in the past when he mockingly begged Donald Trump to run for the presidency.
Oliver looked back to that fateful day when he was guest hosting “The Daily Show” in 2013 when initial reports indicated that Trump was mulling a possible presidential run in 2016.
Rather than reacting with the appropriate shock and horror we now know is necessary when dealing with a Trump candidacy, Oliver reacted as most would have then: with mockery.
Said Oliver:
“Do it. I will personally write you a campaign check now on behalf of this country, which does not want you to be president, but which badly wants you to run.”
The older, wiser Oliver of 2016 stared at the camera, shame-faced.
“Now, in my defense, I have no defense for that and was hoping to think of one before finishing this sentence, which oh s**t it’s over.”
But what can we learn from our dear English political commentariat?
“I want to believe that America will reject Donald Trump. That our innate sense of decency will kick in like some sort of moral auto-pilot. But I have been spectacularly wrong before.”
“I’m an idiot, but that clearly shows no outcome is certain, so if you are thinking you don’t have to show up to vote on Tuesday because there is no way the impossible could happen, take it from somebody who has learned from painful experience… you are wrong about that.”
Watch.
