Stephen Colbert and John Oliver sat down on Saturday night in Newark, New Jersey, to break down the state of the country after President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise victory earlier this month.
Colbert, who hosts CBS’ “The Late Show,” spoke eloquently about election night (”The audience was sobbing openly”); the rising problems surrounding fake news on Facebook (”The fact that they call this fake news upsets me, because this is just lying”); and his disgust for people who suggest he’s pleased Trump became president (“Next person who says to me, ‘You must be happy on a certain level’ is going to get their eye carved out”).
But perhaps the most poignant comment of the night came from Oliver. The host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” took issue with those who have been quick to speculate that things won’t be so bad under President Trump.
“I think the danger of [saying], ‘Live your lives, the sun comes out tomorrow’ is that that’s true for some people, and so it’s very easy to forget that it’s very much not for others,” Oliver said.
“That’s the danger. If you are lucky enough for your life to become routine, it’s easy not to feel the pain of others whose routines are going to be shattered. Not everyone is going to be OK, so it’s incumbent on everyone to remember that.”
In the days after Trump’s election, experts said the spike in hate crimes appeared worse than even after the 9/11 attacks. In New York, hate crimes against Muslims have more than doubled this year, and hate crimes against Jews have risen as well, NYPD Police Commissioner James O’Neill said Sunday.
Trump has also said he hopes to deport two to three million “criminal aliens.”
The talk, “Wow, That Was Weird: A Post-Election Evening With Stephen Colbert and John Oliver,” was a fundraiser for a film festival in Colbert’s hometown of Montclair, New Jersey.
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