John Oliver Rips Trump’s Coronavirus Disinformation Campaign

John Oliver tore into President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, criticizing his “callous indifference to human life” on Last Week Tonight Sunday.

Oliver focused on the slew of bad information about the outbreak coming from the administration, with The Independent noting that at one point the comedian said, “It now seems that every Trump press conference has to come with an epilogue from an expert clarifying all the things he just got wrong.”

Trump has also done plenty of boasting in the middle of the pandemic. Most notably, he bragged to reporters about an uncle of his who taught at MIT and claimed “maybe I have a natural ability” for understanding the science underpinning the outbreak. Trump has also taken to gloating about the coronavirus statistics in the United States, repeatedly saying last week that the country had just 240 confirmed cases and 11 deaths, far fewer than other countries dealing with outbreaks.

However, as Oliver noted, Trump is so loathe to let those numbers rise that he told reporters he preferred that the 21 infected passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship off the coast of California not get off the ship (the Grand Princess will finally dock in Oakland today).

“If Trump had gotten his way, and we had left those people on board indefinitely, the infection would’ve likely spread more,” Oliver said. “I would say it’s impossible to have such a callous indifference to life but he does seem to have a ‘natural ability’ for it.”