With far-right violence on everyone’s mind thanks to the damning evidence revealed during the January 6 hearings, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver zeroed in on the latest nightmare rising star in MAGA-world: Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters. The venture capitalist has Donald Trump’s full endorsement, and as Oliver details, he’s checking all the nationalist and white supremacist boxes to be a darling to the far right. Oh, and also his name sounds like a “third-tier Bond villain.”
After introducing Masters, Oliver went to work highlighting the candidate’s views on gun violence, a pressing topic in light of the Uvalde school shooting. Like most right-wing candidates, Masters, says the real gun violence problem is gang violence. However, Masters took it one step further. “It’s gangs, it’s people in Chicago, St. Louis, shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly.”
Oliver couldn’t believe it. Via The Daily Beast:
“OK. Blaming Black people for gun violence in America is outrageously uncreatively racist, but also it’s unsurprising from someone who—and this is true—was called an ‘immigration patriot’ by the white nationalist website VDARE, which praised him saying he ‘checks all the right boxes.’ He’s an immigration patriot who checks all the white-supremacist boxes just isn’t what you want to hear about a man running for office. You don’t even want to hear it in a Sex and the City voiceover.”
Things took an even weirder turn when Oliver aired a clip of Masters being asked who he thinks is a “subversive thinker who’s underrated.” His actual answer: The Unabomber.
“I’m sorry, Theodore Kaczynski? What are you? His mom while he’s in trouble?” Oliver mockingly asked. “‘Theodore John Kaczynski, have you been sending mail bombs to airlines and universities around the country from a remote cabin in the Montana wilderness? You are so grounded, mister! Naughty Theodore!'”
(Via The Daily Beast)