John Oliver again mocked President Trump and his “stupid trade” war on Last Week Tonight, this time taking aim at comments Trump made about the prices of dolls going up due to tariffs.
Last week the president explained the effects of the tariffs by using the price of dolls going up as an example: “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
Said Oliver: “What a very weird thing to say. It’s just another snapshot in the chaos album that is Trump having anything to do with children, because you can now put ‘kids will have two dolls instead of 30’ right up there with the lawnboy scream and that time he asked a kid if she believed in Santa Claus because, quote, ‘At 7, it’s marginal, right?’”
The HBO show’s host then noted that Trump reiterated his comments a few days later, saying: “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old, needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls, or four dolls.”
Oliver’s take: “OK, there is so much there. ‘A beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old’? Don’t call an 11-year-old that. First, it’s creepy, and second, I promise, you call an 11-year-old girl a baby, she’ll fucking kill you.”
He continued: “To think the prime age for playing with dolls is 11 is almost impressively wrong. Everyone knows the breakdown of what people play with by age goes: blocks from ages 1 to three, dolls from ages 3 to 7 and our phones from ages 8 until we die.“
But Trump didn’t stop there. He continued to explain himself during remarks made later on Air Force One.
“All I’m saying is that … that a young lady, a 10-year-old girl, a 9-year-old girl, a 15-year-old girl, doesn’t need 37 dolls. She could be very happy with two or three four or five,” Trump said.
Opined Oliver: “Every single way this man refers to girls makes my skin want to turn inside out. That said, I did also want to see him keep going there, just to see how many variations of ages and numbers he could cycle through: ‘All I’m saying is a young lady, 10-year-old girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl, 45-year-old girl that’s still young at heart, doesn’t need 37 dolls. She could be very happy with two or three or four or six or eight, but also nine, and in its own way, 10 — 10 dolls, she could be happy with, couldn’t she? Or maybe 11. We can’t rule out 11 dolls, or 12 — 12’s a good number, isn’t it, folks? Twelve apostles, 12 days of Christmas, 12 Angry Men — Henry Fonda, great guy, right? The other men, very angry, very angry men. That’s what we’ve got to get out of this country that’s coming over illegally. Or, you know what? 13 dolls, that’s my final offer.’”
Oliver went on to jokingly question whether Trump had ever come into contact with a 15-year-old girl, given that most girls have given up dolls by then: “Has he ever met a 15-year-old girl? That’s a dumb question. Of course he has. He was friends with Jeffrey Epstein.”
Oliver also quipped that sticks are about to “make a comeback” as a popular toy given the tariffs: “Throw it, catch it, set it on fire. Just look at it. The sticks the only toy you’ll ever need, which is lucky ’cause it’s also the only one you’ll ever have.”
