John Oliver chastisedDonald Trumpduring Last Week Tonights Season Four premiere, criticizing the president for his media bias and casual disregard of fact-checking. Faith and facts arent like Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton, the comedian cracked. When you confuse them, it actually matters.
Oliver, the current Rolling Stone cover subject, opened his main segment with a brief rundown of Trumps most egregious exaggerations, including statements on topics like voter fraud, Syrian Christian refugees and even the weather during his inauguration speech. That is where we are currently at: We have a president capable of standing in the rain and saying it is a sunny day, the host observed. Trump has made it clear that reality is not important to him.
Citing Politifacts Truth-O-Meter, which found that 69.9 percent of Trumps statements so far have been some degree of false, the host continued to explore the presidents rocky relationship with truth. One major problem, Oliver said, is that Trump gets a troubling amount of information from cable news, particularly Fox News, and websites like Info Wars and Breitbart, the latter formerly overseen by the presidents chief strategist, Steve Bannon.
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There is a pattern here, Oliver observed. Trump sees something that jibes with his worldview, doesnt check it, half-remembers it and then passes it on at which point it takes on a life of its own and appears to validate itself.
To help reach the president with some unbiased information, Last Week Tonight created a series of TV ads scheduled to run on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News in the D.C. area. Styled as a cowboy-led catheter commercial parody, the clips sneak in important factoids about climate change, the unemployment rate and the name of Trumps daughter Tiffany.
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