John Oliver blasted Fox News for holding a “circus sideshow” instead of a presidential debate last week, and called out the media for covering the “meaningless” feud between GOP candidate Donald Trump and anchor Megyn Kelly.
“The entire debate was basically a two-hour circus sideshow with a piece of luggage covered in Cheez Whiz at its center,” the comedian said Sunday during HBO’s “Last Week Tonight.”
He argued that although Fox News had the 10 top-polling Republican candidates on the stage, the first question from network personality Brett Baier proved that it was really only ever going to be about one.
“Is there anyone on stage tonight who is unwilling to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the Republican party and to not run an independent campaign against that person?” Baier asked, and Trump was the only candidate to raise his hand.
“Why is the audience acting surprised?” said Oliver. “That couldn’t have been more of a setup for Trump than if the question had been, ‘Raise your hand if your daddy had left you millions of dollars instead of hugging you.’”
More recently, Trump has been under fire for telling CNN he thought Kelly specifically targeted him during the debate.
“There was blood coming out of her eyes,” he said. “Blood coming out of her wherever.” Predictably, Trump insisted on Monday that Kelly should apologize to him.
Oliver could care less who apologizes to whom, though.
“Now, if you want to hear more on the Trump/Kelly showdown, you can basically tune in to any news network right now, because it is all they’re f–king talking about,” Oliver said. “But we are going to move on, and I’ll tell you why: This whole debacle was meaningless. The 2016 election will not depend on this because it’s 457 days away. There will be actual babies born on Election Day 2016 whose parents haven’t even met yet. So everyone pace yourselves.”