John Oliver on Joe Biden’s election win: ‘Trump’s bulls*** did not work this time’

Talk show host said street celebrations felt like ‘reverse 9-11’

John Oliver has expressed his relief over Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 US election, saying Donald Trump’s “bulls*** did not work this time”.

On Sunday's episode (8 November) of Last Week Tonight, the talk show host celebrated the end of Trump’s tenure in the White House.

Showing a news clip of Biden being announced as the winner, with 290 electoral college votes, a visibly excited Oliver said: “Yeah, that definitely happened.”

Oliver then showed video footage of people in the streets celebrating the news. “It was like that all day here in New York,” he said. “There was a mood here that can only be described as a reverse 9/11. Why? Because it combined complete euphoria, an abiding disgust for Rudy Giuliani and this time, people were actually dancing on the rooftops in New Jersey. It was a really good day. Never forget.”

When he said “people were actually dancing”, Oliver was alluding to the statement that Trump made in 2015 about the September 11 terrorist attacks, where he claimed: “I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.”

Oliver added that Trump’s claims of election fraud were “desperate and pathetic”. He said: “The fact is, Trump lost this election. He lost. All that bulls*** which we've grown accustomed to seeing work, did not work this time.”

He said Trump and his family will not stop “lying like they've always done” but “it's just not going to have the same effect anymore, it's not going to directly impact every American's life”.  

That alone, he concluded, “is f***ing fantastic”.