John Oliver Roasts Madison Cawthorn’s Anti-Mask Mandate Speech by Reminding Him His Ancestors Were Slave Owners

John Oliver hit at Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for opposing mask mandates in the name of personal freedom, reminding the North Carolina lawmaker that his ancestors owned slaves.

On last night’s @LastWeekTonight @iamjohnoliver slammed @RepCawthorn for his appearance at a recent @BuncombeSchools meeting. Tree punching, mispronouncing names, and @CawthornforNC’s slave-owning ancestor all rate mentions.#FireMadison @fire_madison #CluelessCawthorn @nc11dems pic.twitter.com/Tr81sISETz

— WNC Political Operative (FireMadison.com) (@WNC_Politico) August 16, 2021

Oliver first hit at DeSantis for saying that people “have to deal with” future waves of the coronavirus, as “it’s airborne, and it’s aerosolized.”

“Wow. The world changes so quickly, doesn’t it?” Oliver asked sarcastically. “If you told me just a few years ago that Florida’s Republican governor would respond to a deadly threat with, ‘These waves are just something you have to deal with,’ I would assume they were talking about Miami sinking into a warming ocean, not a totally different, totally self-induced crisis.”

“And it’s pretty tough to hear this cut-rate Coach Taylor saying ‘Just deal with it’ when he seems to be very much not doing that,” Oliver continued. “Just a few weeks ago, DeSantis issued an order banning school mask mandates, making Florida one of at least seven states now prohibiting schools from imposing them. And school board meetings around the country have seen fiery exchanges about this issue.”

Oliver later went after Cawthorn, who claimed that the “greatest threat to our children” doesn’t stem from the coronavirus, but instead from “woke liberal government officials” who think they are “all-knowing and all-wise.”

“Madison Cawthorn thinks the biggest threat to children is school board members who think they’re omniscient,” Oliver said. “I’d say, I was surprised by that. But this is a man who once posted this video of himself beating up a tree, so he clearly loves to pick useless fights against imaginary opponents where he comes out looking like a complete asshole.”

Cawthorn gloated that he was a “direct descendant of Abraham Kuykendall,” who was one of the first men to settle in Buncombe County, where the representative was speaking at a board of education meeting.

“He knew hardship firsthand,” Cawthorn added. “He did not endure that hardship just so a work school board could begin to systematically strip the responsibility from the hands of parents and guardians to determine what to happens with their children.”

In very Oliver-like fashion, the late-night host did his research on Cawthorn’s descendants, discovering that the Kuykendall, who “knew hardship firsthand,” was one of the county’s oldest known slavers.

“Not only does that last name sound like the Swedish translation for Bratz dolls, Abraham Kuykendall — which is how it’s actually pronounced — was one of the earliest slave owners in the county,” Oliver noted. “So, next time you’re trying to prove a point about how parents should decide what’s better for their kids, maybe don’t use a guy who decided the best thing for other people’s kids was for him to own them,”

Oliver also went after “a bunch of foolish” anti-vax parents who oppose mask mandates, calling “the fucking problem.'”

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