John Oliver kicked off Sunday’s Last Week Tonight by running down a list of several Democratic wins from last week’s midterm elections.
The show started out with a blue wave crashing through the intro before Oliver cheerfully recapped the news: “It has been a busy week and, given the midterm results, a pretty good week too. Democrats won so big on Tuesday it was sometimes genuinely hard to take all the positive results in.”
He listed several big Democratic victories — earning loud applause from the audience after each — including the historically red Lone Star State: “It was genuinely hard to believe Texas had just turned blue.”
Oliver then turned his attention to a certain billionaire who spent a lot of money backing candidates who were ultimately defeated. “Then it hits you, Elon Musk wasted so much money,” he said. “The half a billion dollars he spent to try and buy the election just went up in flames faster than a parked Cybertruck. Speaking of which, we also learned this week he’s ending production of Cybertrucks, which isn’t technically an election result but kind of feels like one.”
Oliver also spotlighted the Mississippi Senate race between Scott Colom and Cindy Hyde-Smith. It’s still too close to call, but the Last Week Tonight host noted that Hyde-Smith “appeared to have prematurely declared victory” on Wednesdsay. Colom, he said, “had a quintessentially Southern response.”
Oliver showed a clip of Colom speaking to reporters. When asked about Hyde-Smith’s apparent gaffe, Colom paused for several seconds before saying, “Bless her heart.”
Explained Oliver: “If you are not from the South, you should know it is basically not possible to say anything meaner than that down there. ‘Bless your heart’ was essentially invented in the South as a way to commit legal murder on someone without getting out of your church pew.”