Donald Trump is all my fault: John Oliver

The New Daily
Nov 08, 2016, updated Nov 08, 2016

"I'm an idiot," John Oliver admitted to viewers. Photo: YouTube.

Last Week Tonight host John Oliver has accepted the blame for Donald Trump’s candidacy and appealed to the United States’ “innate sense of decency”.

“It is frankly hard to believe that there was a time when people thought that a Trump candidacy would be funny,” Oliver said on Last Week Tonight.

“But there was such a time.”

Oliver then showed a clip of him guest-hosting The Daily Show in 2013, in which he is discussing Mr Trump’s consideration of a tilt at the 2016 presidency.

In it, Oliver enthusiastically encourages Mr Trump to run.

“Do it,” Oliver said to Trump in the clip.

“I will personally write you a campaign check now on behalf of this country, which does not want you to be president, but which badly wants you to run.”

The show then went back to Oliver, who seeks to justify his plea.

“Now, in my defense, I have no defense for that and was hoping to think of one before finishing this sentence, which oh s**t it’s over,” he said.

“I want to believe that America will reject Donald Trump. That our innate sense of decency will kick in like some sort of moral auto-pilot.”

“But I have been spectacularly wrong before.”

To prove his point, Oliver then showed another clip from , this time in 2008 in which he confidently proclaims that the “Chicago Cubs will never, ever win the World Series”.

The Cubs did win the World Series last week, after 108 years of trying.

“I’m an idiot,” Oliver said.

“But that clearly shows no outcome is certain, so if you are thinking you don’t have to show up to vote on Tuesday because there is no way the impossible could happen, take it from somebody who has learned from painful experience… you are wrong about that.”