As the US presidential elections draw near, Donald Trump’s campaign shows no signs of settling down. In the last week, the campaign chairman has resigned, Trump’s poll numbers have dropped, and Steve Bannon, chairman of the far-right website Breitbart, has joined the campaign payroll. This shakeup, comedian John Oliver explained on his Sunday (Aug. 21) episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, shows that the Republican candidate is at a critical point in his campaign.
“This feels like a fork in the road for Trump,” Oliver said. “He’s either hitting bottom, from which he’ll rebound to victory, or it’s the beginning of the end.” But Oliver also suggested a third option for the presidential candidate: dropping out.
Rather than lose to Hillary Clinton, an off-brand option for the bombastic businessman, or win, an option that would require him to actually govern, Trump could instead withdraw from the race and spin it as a lesson for the American public, said Oliver. “Simply drop out and tell America this entire candidacy was a stunt, a satire designed to expose the flaws in the system.”
Throughout his campaign, Trump has indeed pointed out serious flaws in the US political system, from campaign finance to media bias to his own voters’ embrace of disturbingly violent campaign rhetoric.
Oliver offered a roadmap for Trump using a 1996 children’s book about a child who is elected president. The book, Dan Gutman’s The Kid Who Ran for President contains a speech from the boy president that chastises “the grownups of America” for electing someone so clearly unfit for the presidency:
America must be in really bad shape if you elected me president. You better get it together and find some qualified people to run this country or we’ll all be in big trouble.
“This book is your only way out from two equally unappealing scenarios,” Oliver said, addressing the presidential hopeful directly.