John Oliver checked in on the midterm elections Sunday night, focusing on the Arizona senate race and having a ball tearing through some of the odd Republican campaign ads and strategies.
Arizona is represented by two Democrats: Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly. According to Oliver, Republicans think they can unseat Kelly, but it’s a competitive GOP primary.
First, there’s Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, whose “whole vibe” is on display as he shows off his nunchuck skills in a pair of videos celebrating the end of the state’s ban on the exotic weapons. The first video was apparently so popular that people demanded more, so in the sequel, Brnovich simply says, “You want more chucks? You got more chucks.”
“Now, I know that that is ridiculous, but I personally am enjoying Danny McBride’s newest character, and I’m excited to see where he goes with it,” Oliver mocked in response.
But, as the late-night host points out, Brnovich isn’t necessarily supported by Trump fans, because they feel he didn’t do enough to support Trump’s repeated baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
So along comes Jim Lamon, the next GOP candidate.
Oliver took particular delight in tearing apart Lamon for a TV ad in which he stars as the hero in a Wild West shootout against “Old Joe,” “Shifty Kelly” and “Crazyface Pelosi.” He informs the trio that “The good people of Arizona have had enough for you,” before shooting a weapon out of each of their hands. Naturally, it closes with Lamon identifying himself, saying he approved the message.
“Well, you shouldn’t have approved it Jim, because your ad is terrible,” Oliver joked. “‘Shifty Kelly’ is supposed to be Mark Kelly, who’s married to Gabby Giffords, who survived being shot in the head in 2011. So, shooting at her husband is, at best, insensitive. And it’s frankly amazing that a grown man dressed in a sheriff costume that looks like it was discontinued by Party City is somehow just the second most distasteful part of that ad.”
Finally, Oliver turned his attention to Blake Masters, the candidate Donald Trump chose to endorse in the Arizona senate race.
“And if you think his name alone makes him sound like a third tier Bond villain, wait until you hear about his everything else,” Oliver joked.
Masters is a self-described “conservative nationalist,” who has previously said that the Unabomber was “a subversive thinker that’s underrated” and blamed gun violence in America on Black people.
“Blaming Black people for gun violence in America is just outrageously and creatively racist,” Oliver noted. “But also, it’s unsurprising from someone who, and this is true, was called an ‘immigration patriot’ by the white nationalists website VDARE, which praised him saying he checks all the right boxes. And ‘He’s an immigration patriot who checks all the white supremacist boxes’ just isn’t what you want to hear about a man running for office.”
But he wasn’t done. Oliver then pulled up a clip of Masters himself calling out his competitors for “petty, dirty politics,” in what appears to be an attempt to get ahead of upcoming ads against him.
“As my competitors self destruct, I’m sure these attacks are only going to increase, right?” Masters said. “They’ll interview my classmates from middle school. They’ll pore over whatever I may have written as a teenager, trying to twist it all out of proportion. But I’m not going to get sucked into that kind of petty, dirty politics.”
Of course, that was a massive red flag for Oliver.
“Holy s—, ‘they will pore over what I may have written as a teenager’ is just not a normal thing to worry about,” Oliver marveled. “It’s like saying ‘My petty opponents will go from dog pound to dog pound, asking the staff what I may have done with all those stray dogs. Classic petty, dirty politics.’ Except no, it isn’t Blake! It’s weird, specific politics that we now need to know a lot more about.”
