HBO’s John Oliver kicked off the 2025 season of Last Week Tonight on Sunday by recapping the first four weeks of Donald Trump’s return to the White House that included a bit on Elon Musk and DOGE. Oliver would label Musk as “one of the worst white guys South Africa has ever produced” while ignoring questions about whether South Africa really needs or deserves aid. On Monday, Oliver joined CBS’s Stephen Colbert on The Late Show to urge people to keep protesting because, according to him, even a message of “[bleep] this [bleep]” can help.
After playing a news clip of a South African woman explaining she was turned away from a clinic due to the funding freeze, Oliver declared, “Yeah, it's awful. And it's somehow made even worse by the ‘We value you’ message on the shuttered window, which they should probably now change to ‘We value you, but unfortunately we can't help you, thanks to one of the worst white guys South Africa has ever produced, parentheses, which is really saying something.’”
Oliver continued, “Now, after blowback to all this, the Trump Administration announced that they'd given limited waivers for some lifesaving programs, but unfortunately, thanks to the sheer confusion over who is even eligible, the waivers have not resulted in the resumption of many vital programs, and that is what they don't seem to get about shutting down work like this.”
He further added, “Even if the faucets get turned back on completely, which they almost certainly won't, huge damage will still have been done. For instance, USAID funds things like antiretroviral treatments that prevent HIV being transmitted to babies before, during, and after birth. As one agency employee put it just a few days into the pause, already, ‘At a minimum, 300 babies that wouldn't have had HIV, now do.’"
While it was nice Oliver finally admitted that babies before birth are still babies, what is not nice is that in 2024, USAID sent South Africa roughly $320 million. At the same time, the South African government has spent 95 million rand, or $5.1 million, defaming our ally Israel at the International Court of Justice. If somebody has their priorities messed up in this situation, it isn’t Musk.
On Monday, Colbert recalled, “Five years ago, five years ago to the end of the first Trump administration, we talked about things that, you know, got you through it like the tough news cycles, not somebody who has to do a show about it, but, you know, just as a citizen of the country. Things that—”
Oliver interrupted to portray opposition to Trump as a matter of simple decency, “As an actual human, partially-functioning human.”
Colbert quickly agreed and continued, “Exactly, things that gave your soul some vigor, they kept you going. Some of them last time were the protests at the airports after the Muslim ban, that was a big one.”
Oliver replied by longing for “The Resistance” days of yore:
I will say that there was a really interesting quote that we used from one of the lawyers inside the DOJ who was fighting some of the travel bans at the time. He said that seeing people occupy those airports, seeing them protest was really useful to him in terms of energizing him and making people feel like they were acting on behalf of the people's will, and he said activism outside our building helped with the activism inside of it, and I think that's important to remember: you can send a message and not have to wait just to vote. It's valuable to send messages even if that message is [bleep] this [bleep]. That's sometimes, it's sometimes the strongest message to send.
Maybe Oliver can take that message to the South African government and tell them that it doesn’t make sense to expect Uncle Sam to keep funneling money to a government that seeks to undermine his foreign policy objectives.
Here is a transcript for the February 16 and 17 shows:
HBO Last Week Tonight
2/16/2025
11:30 PM ET
JOHN OLIVER: Yeah, it's awful. And it's somehow made even worse by the "We value you" message on the shuttered window, which they should probably now change to "We value you, but unfortunately we can't help you, thanks to one of the worst white guys South Africa has ever produced, parentheses, which is really saying something."
Now, after blowback to all this, the Trump Administration announced that they'd given limited waivers for some lifesaving programs, but unfortunately, thanks to the sheer confusion over who is even eligible, the waivers have not resulted in the resumption of many vital programs, and that is what they don't seem to get about shutting down work like this.
Even if the faucets get turned back on completely, which they almost certainly won't, huge damage will still have been done. For instance, USAID funds things like antiretroviral treatments that prevent HIV being transmitted to babies before, during, and after birth. As one agency employee put it just a few days into the pause, already, "At a minimum, 300 babies that wouldn't have had HIV, now do."
***
CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
2/18/2025
12:09 AM ET
STEPHEN COLBERT: Five years ago, five years ago to the end of the first Trump administration, we talked about things that, you know, got you through it like the tough news cycles, not somebody who has to do a show about it, but, you know, just as a citizen of the country. Things that—
JOHN OLIVER: As an actual human, partially-functioning human.
COLBERT: Exactly, things that gave your soul some vigor—
OLIVER: Yes.
COLBERT: -- they kept you going. Some of them last time were the protests at the airports after the Muslim ban, that was a big one.
OLIVER: Yes, that is true. And I think in creating the show last week, what we tried to do was contextualize the feelings that people have right now and I think what we hit on was the fact there was understandably some eye-rolling of the kind of resistance of 2016. I will say that there was a really interesting quote that we used from one of the lawyers inside the DOJ who was fighting some of the travel bans at the time. He said that seeing people occupy those airports, seeing them protest was really useful to him in terms of energizing him and making people feel like they were acting on behalf of the people's will, and he said activism outside our building helped with the activism inside of it, and I think that's important to remember: you can send a message and not have to wait just to vote. It's valuable to send messages even if that message is [bleep] this [bleep]. That's sometimes, it's sometimes the strongest message to send.
