‘Viscerally Offensive…Heartbreaking’: John Oliver Blasts Trump Ban in Chat With Dan Rather
In advance of the season four premiere of his hit HBO show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver is speaking out on the executive order signed by President Donald Trump banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. And if you’re even vaguely familiar with Oliver’s work, you can pretty much guess how he feels about the ban.
Speaking with Dan Rather on his weekly SiriusXM radio show Dan Rather’s America, the native of Great Britain spoke about his own experience with the US immigration system, calling it “hard.”
“As a white, male, human being, with a generic first and last name, coming from Great Britain, sponsored by a series of TV production companies in America…and absolutely crystal clear, perfect English. I’ve seen the system at its easiest,” Oliver said. “And it’s hard. So if I’m getting the best of the system, I really fear for the people getting the system at its worst.”
Oliver continued, and discussed the ban:
(A)s an immigrant, I guess that’s one of the reasons I find some of these actions taken through the executive order so viscerally offensive. It is offensive to me to see how immigrants are being treated. Not just people on green cards, but you talk about visas…the translators who have worked for our military in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have bled for this country without ever having visited it. They have sacrificed family members. Something which our president has not done. He has not done either of those things. So for him to see them as a threat to this country rather than a proud benefit, is pretty hard to swallow.
Oliver brought up translators to whom US military personnel promised help, and called their treatment shameful, even going back to President Barack Obama‘s administration. Oliver says that treatment has now gotten worse under Trump.
So many of our military – you go to any military members’ Facebook pages. We made promises to those translators. Those military members made promises saying, “Of course I will help you” because they believed that the country they were fighting for would do the right thing by them. And it is heartbreaking to think the extent to which those veterans feel that they have betrayed the people who served alongside them. It is a true shame. It was shameful before this president came into office how we were treating them. It was shameful how they were treated during the last administration. It’s even worse now.
Listen above, via Dan Rather’s America, which airs weekly on Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m. ET on SiriusXM channel 102.
[image via screengrab]
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