John Oliver Mocks Low Turnout at Trump’s Tulsa Rally, Addresses Shocking Coronavirus Spikes in Prisons
Last Week Tonight host John Oliver mocked President Donald Trump over the smaller than expected crowd at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday, before addressing the coronavirus spikes in prisons and jails.
Prior to the event, the president and other White House officials boasted about the number of tickets that had been reserved, and the rally was expected to be Trump festival replete with musical acts.
People began lining up for the Saturday rally days before the event, which Trump had also bragged about in an interview with Gray TV’s DC bureau chief Jacqueline Policastro
“We had over a million people apply, they had people now, days ahead, lined up,” he said. “They have big lines of people, over a million people tried to get tickets for the event.”
The turnout, however, was shockingly lower than expected — some 6,000 supporters trickled into the large stadium — prompting Oliver to poke fun at the president during his Sunday night episode.
“There’s absolutely no one in the room with me right now, although interestingly, that’s still somehow only slightly fewer people than were at President Trump’s Oklahoma rally last night, which was half-empty despite his campaign claiming that a million people had requested tickets,” he joked. “And even building an outdoor stage so he would be able to do a second speech to the thousands that couldn’t get in. That speech turned out to be very much unnecessary.”
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were set to speak to a crowd of supporters gathered outside the Bank of Oklahoma Center before he gave his official rally speech, but the campaign canceled the address to his “overflow crowd” when not enough people showed up.
“So few people turned up, in fact, that even Pink was tweeting, ‘I think I sold that same place out in five minutes. #donkeyshow,’” Oliver, added. “And it’s never a great sign when, as president, you’re getting dunked on by Pink.”
In his deep-dive segment, Oliver shared statistics from the New York Times that showed there have been a total of 8,000 infections and deaths in prisons due to the coronavirus, noting that five of the largest clusters of Covid-19 are in prisons and jails.
“The fact is, we should be depopulating prisons and jails as quickly as we can right now — and I know how that sounds because we were all raised hearing that ‘you shouldn’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,’ but in our current system, you’re never just being sentenced to time,” Oliver said.
“You’re being sentenced to a lifetime of social stigma, futile job interviews, and roadblocks to necessities like housing. All of that is immoral enough. There is frankly no reason whatsoever we should now also be sentencing people to die from a virus, because that’s not justice, it’s neglect.”
Watch above, via Youtube.
