John Oliver suggests Trump should drop out of the race, "conning America to help America"

Culture

With John Oliver and his HBO series Last Week Tonight set to take a hiatus for a month, the host made a final plea to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump: drop out of the race. Oliver presents a compelling case to the "racist voodoo doll made of discarded cat hair," as Trump's numbers continue to dip in the polls. 

It is, of course, tough to imagine the real estate mogul dropping out when his campaign hinges on him citing his career track record of "winning" as his greatest attribute. But if Trump dropped out, Oliver posits, he can say his entire campaign was a facade to show how flawed America's political system is. Oliver speaks directly to Trump in the segment: 

Just think about how triumphant it would feel to say on national television, "I openly ran on a platform of impossibly ignorant proposals steeped in racial bigotry and nobody stopped me. In fact you embraced me for it. What the fuck was that about?" 

Oliver presented evidence of this concept in literary fiction, bringing out the 1996 young adult novel, The Kid Who Ran for President. There are some eerily similar characteristics between the fictitious kid and Trump, aside from the fifth-grade level vocabulary. The would-be kid president and Trump feed on the most base impulses of voters: in the kid's case, abolishing homework; for Trump, building a wall between the United States and Mexico. 

Oliver suggests that Trump could even plagiarize the kid's speech from the novel when he resigns — as Oliver notes, it wouldn't be a first for the campaign — sharing an excerpt with narration from Will Arnett. 

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"That is a perfectly Trumpian address," Oliver says. "It's a negation of responsibility, an implication of everyone else's stupidity, and it's a threat." 

Oliver concludes the segment with a promise: If Trump does in fact drop out, and use the kid's speech, he'll graciously invite him to his show. 

"Back in February, I stood here and called you a two-bit bullshit artist, conning America to help himself," Oliver concludes. "Please, prove me wrong and show yourself to be a three-bit bullshit artist, conning America to help America." 

Watch Oliver's segment below.