John Oliver took on the anti-vaccine movement on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight,” pinning a lot of it on President Donald Trump.
The comedian began his segment by arguing that people can often forget how well vaccines work because nobody posts Facebook statuses like, “I didn’t get polio again today!”
“Small groups are both skeptical and vocal about vaccines which is nothing new, but these days those voices have been amplified by the human megaphone that is the President of the United States,” said Oliver.
The host then played a clip showing Trump on the campaign trail, in which the businessman expressed skepticism over vaccines, saying that he believed children receive too many shots at once, and wanted to spread out how frequently children are given the shots.
“This is also a sentiment he’s expressed online,” Oliver reminded his audience, displaying a tweet by Trump that reads: “Tiny children are not horses.”
“And that is an assertion that Politifact rates as, “Yeah, I mean, I guess technically we’ve gotta give him that, but good grief,” Oliver joked.
Oliver then noted that an unprecedented rise in measles broke out in Minnesota’s Somali community because parents refused to give their children the shots. He blamed it partly on false information doled out by Andrew Wakefield, the director of “Vaxxed: from Cover-Up to Catastrophe” and a disgraced British former doctor who published a study in 1998 that claimed links between a vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and autism.
“He’s basically, the Lance Armstrong of doctors,” Oliver joked.
“Very few people will say they are completely anti-vaccine,” he continued said. “Instead — like the president — they’ll say ‘I’m not anti-vaccine, but.’”
Oliver ended on a personal note, sharing that his child was born prematurely and despite that, he’s still vaccinating his son on schedule.
Watch the segment above.