After taking a week off, Last Week Tonight returned on Sunday evening where John Oliver proceeded to make a meal out of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis using the full weight of the state government to punish The Walt Disney Company for opposing the recently passed “Don’t Say Gay” bill. In a nutshell, DeSantis and state Republicans concocted a piece of legislation that reverses a decades old act that allowed Disney to operate as its own private government in certain districts. The entertainment conglomerate essentially taxed itself to provide critical social services in exchange for more freedom to develop its theme parks. However, with DeSantis dissolving that status, that leaves taxpayers on the hook for those services as well as a billion in bond debt.
True to form, Oliver went to town on DeSantis for clearly not having a plan for this whole thing. Via The Hollywood Reporter:
Oliver cut to a clip of DeSantis at a press conference, saying: “We’re gonna take care of all that. Don’t worry… we have everything thought out. Don’t let anyone tell you that somehow Disney‘s going to get a tax cut out of this. They’re going to pay more taxes as a result of it.”
Said Oliver: “There is just nothing more immediately off-putting than someone starting a sentence with ‘Don’t worry.’ It sounds like a frat boy trying to reason with the cops after a noise complaint: ‘Don’t worry, man. We’re gonna take care of all of that. We got everything thought out. You guys want a beer or something? You wanna hang out?’”
As Oliver later explained, he’s completely onboard with a mega corporation paying more in taxes, but not like this. “I don’t love that it might happen not through meaningful tax reform but on the whim of one right-wing dipshit who’s scared of gay people and doesn’t understand the First Amendment,” the late night host quipped. “But hey, ends, means, what are you gonna do?”
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)