President Trump celebrated Halloween with a ‘Great Gatsby’-themed party at Mar-a-Lago this year, amid a government shutdown where more than a million people aren’t getting paid and many stand to lose access to SNAP benefits. So, on Sunday night, John Oliver roasted the “insulting” party.
To kick off his show, the HBO host recapped just how bad things have gotten for many during the shutdown, before calling out Trump for making the optics worse with the party. As CNN noted, the theme was inspired by a book “which was, of course, about rich people partying.”
“Yeah, not only is that pretty insulting, I’m guessing it’s also pretty infuriating to whatever high school freshman just wrote a 4,000-word essay about ‘Great Gatsby’ as a grim meditation on the disillusionment of the American Dream, only for CNN to tell them ‘You know what? It’s really just a book about rich people partying,’” Oliver joked.
Oliver then pointed out that the official theme of the party was “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody,” named for the song Fergie sang for the “Great Gatsby” film adaptation.
“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,” Oliver said, flashing a graphic of the Republican Party logo on screen. “And unfortunately, they don’t seem to give a single marble- and gold-encased s–t about that.”
The late night host was referring at that point to Trump’s latest White House renovation, which was a complete remodel of the bathroom attached to the Lincoln bedroom. The bathroom is now floor-to-ceiling marble, with Trump’s preferred gold accents.
“Yeah that is pretty tone deaf, and you know what, 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,” Oliver said.
You can watch the latest episode of “Last Week Tonight” on HBO Max now.
