Warning: Video contains explicit language
Comedian John Oliver kicked off season six of “Last Week Tonight” on HBO with a whirlwind recap of major news, placing special emphasis on President Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency over a southern border wall.
Oliver riffed on Trump’s announcement speech from Friday, highlighting some of the same lines and topics that were fodder for the cold open of this week’s “Saturday Night Live,” a skit that prompted a rebuke from Trump via Twitter.
The HBO host focused his ire on the president’s choice of words surrounding the urgency of the national emergency.
“I could do the wall over a longer period of time,” Trump said Friday. “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”
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Oliver wasn’t happy with that explanation.
“Well it’s not an emergency, then, is it?” he exclaimed.
The comedian went on to attack Trump for heading just hours after his emergency announcement to the Mar-a-Lago club.
“You know, the kind of thing you do when America is in crisis,” Oliver joked.
Additionally, the host, a Briton who has a green card to live in the United States and is married to an American, turned the main portion of his show to addressing Brexit, the looming political, economic, and geographic schism his native country faces in the coming months.
Brexit, the separation of the United Kingdom from the European Union, is set to take effect on March 29, whether the two parties have a plan in place or not, and on Sunday’s show Oliver warned the move could be “an absolute catastrophe.”
Watch the clip at the top of the page.
Peter Bailey-Wells can be reached at peter.bailey-wells@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @pbaileywells.