John Oliver: “Nazis are a lot like cats: If they like you, it’s probably because you’re feeding them.”

Noting the President’s vague response to the awfulness in Charlottesville — a rambling off-the-cuff speech in which he failed to denounce white nationalists and neo-Nazis, threw in a non sequitur mention of Barack Obama, threw in his own name because he can’t stand it when he isn’t mentioned, and condemned hate on “many sides” — John Oliver opened last night’s episode of Last Week Tonight with this:

He has some very good lines:

• On the tiki torches: “Nothing says ‘white nationalist’ like faux Polynesian kitsch.”
• “A protester being killed in the wake of neo-Nazis marching in the streets of an American city is the kind of tragedy that calls for true leadership from whoever is in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, the current occupant is this guy [Donald Trump].”
• “There honestly aren’t many instances in modern American politics where you can honestly think that guy really should’ve mentioned the Nazis, but this is emphatically one of them!”
• “It’s like a reverse Godwin’s Law: if you fail to mention Nazism, you lost the argument.”
• “David Duke and the Nazis really seem to like Donald Trump, which is weird, because Nazis are a lot like cats. If they like you, it’s probably because you’re feeding them.”
• On Trump’s refusal to disavow the white nationalists:
  • “He had one last shot before the buzzer on the racism clock hit zero, and he threw an air ball so far away that it landed in the Third Reich.”
  • “Here is the problem with that: a non-answer in a moment like this is an answer. If you had asked me ‘Have you ever been aroused by the fairies in Zelda: The Ocarina of Time?’ and I responded by slowly and silently walking away from you, you would know exactly what I was saying.”

Also worth reading

I had to disavow the Nazis. Why can’t the President? Part of the Green Card process is answering a question where the right answer is to clearly and unequivocally disavow the Nazis, which I did easily, gladly, and proudly. You’d think the President would be able do the same, but…

Thanks to Mark Relph for the find!