John Oliver embodies the mentality of the elitists who look down on President Trump and his supporters as ignorant buffoons even better than his HBO colleague, Bill Maher.  The very people whose self-regard is dependent on their academic credentials, social standing, and career prestige adore Oliver as the sort of person they'd like to be.  He's a Brit who still speaks with an Oxbridge accent (he even graduated from Cambridge) after decades in America, and his sarcasm aimed at the people they hate is as sharp-edged as Maher without as much ugly hatred showing though.

Naturally, the mainstream media started falling all over themselves with praise when he debuted on HBO in 2014 as host of Last Week Tonight, when his gig on The Daily Show with John Stewart ended.  Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people, Vanity Fair gushed, the New York Times called him a "smash," and both The Daily Beast and Time assured us that he's not so much a comedian as a journalist.  Naturally, he started getting honors: Peabody Awards (3) and Emmys (8) — so far.

With all this standing as an Important Voice, Oliver should face a reckoning for mocking President Trump when he warned us in 2017 that after the mob was done with Confederate monuments, the Founding Fathers would be next, a prophecy that played out just last week.

Yaakov Pollak called him out on Twitter:

2017: So-called comedian John Oliver mocks President @realDonaldTrump for suggesting statues of Washington and Jefferson would be next. Trump was right. pic.twitter.com/wV5SkslFMw

— Yaakov Pollak (@Yanky_Pollak) June 21, 2020

So who's the smart one now, John?

Photo credit: Twitter video screen grab.