John Oliver opened Sunday’s Last Week Tonight with an excoriation of Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance’s lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom they have falsely accused of eating people’s pets.
“Can you even remember a time when something like that would have been disqualifying?” the host wondered. “Because I can’t any more. Republicans have now nominated Trump three times. Democrats have so far lost to him half the time. And the election is still inexplicably close because unfortunately, some Americans watched [the debate] and thought, ‘I don’t like how Kamala laughed when he called immigrants dog eaters. That wasn’t very presidential.’”
The made-up stories about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants, who the town welcomed to help fill jobs locals wouldn’t take, are “emblematic” of the Trump-Vance campaign, said Oliver, noting: “City officials insist there is no evidence of what Trump confidently spewed to 67 million people.”
And “far from just repeating claims he’s heard, Vance has actually helped create much of the chaos he’s now trying to exploit,” Oliver said.
“This pet-eating panic was built on nothing,” he continued. No real example, no substantive report. Even worse, Vance knew it. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Vance called the Springfield city manager, who told him that the rumors about stolen pets in the town were simply not true.
“So Vance knew it was a lie this whole time,” said Oliver. “But instead of just admitting that, he and his campaign have been scrambling to dig up new bullshit evidence – all of which either bears no resemblance to the claims he’s made, or falls apart at the slightest scrutiny.”
While Vance is not good at lots of things, Oliver added, “it turns out he’s pretty good at parroting racist lies like the spineless dipshit that he is.”
In his main segment, Oliver addressed issues with social security disability benefits, which 15 million Americans rely on to provide for basic needs like food, shelter and medical care. The benefits are administered through a pair of programs – supplemental security income (SSI), which is need-based and intended for the elderly or disabled, and social security disability insurance (SSDI), for people who contributed to social security through payroll taxes but are unable to work substantially due to a disability. If you qualify for either, you also qualify for Medicare or Medicaid.
“These programs are the key safety net for many of those with disabilities in this country,” said Oliver. “Unfortunately, as anyone who has tried to apply for them will tell you, the application process is an absolute nightmare.
“The fact is, most disabled people who apply for disability benefits do get denied,” he explained. “It’s one of those things that doesn’t make sense, but is actually true, like how most truffle oil isn’t made with truffles, or the oldest person alive technically never dies, or the fact that Tim Walz is younger than Weird Al.”
A government accountability office report found that between 2014 and 2019, about 48,000 people filed for bankruptcy while awaiting a final decision about their disability appeals. “These benefits can be hard to get, easy to lose” and “can turn your life upside down”, said Oliver, as they are governed by narrow criteria not based on a doctor’s diagnosis, but a list of specific conditions. And the criteria can be, as Oliver put it, “wildly out of step with modern medical practice”.
He added: “Your records could be reviewed by someone who’s never met you, you could be briefly examined by someone with no expertise in your condition and they can use outdated data to determine whether or not you get critical benefits.”
To answer the question of whether a disability prevents someone from working, the agency consults a list of occupational titles that was last updated in 1977. People have been denied benefits because the agency found jobs on the list that people could theoretically do, including nut sorter, egg processor, dowel inspector and magnetic tape winder, “which would be easy jobs to find if you lived in 1977 or the busy world of Richard Scarry”, said Oliver, “but it’s a ridiculous list for the modern day.”
Part of the issue is that the Social Security Administration has been underfunded for over a decade, after a Republican-led Congress slashed its budget in 2011. “It is frankly no wonder that last year, there was a backlog of a million pending initial disability claims,” said Oliver.
Once you do get benefits, you must comply with stringent income and asset limits to keep them – limits that make it “functionally impossible to save money”, sometimes as low as $2,000. Oliver pointed to several examples of people who were denied their disability benefits during the pandemic, after the government-issued stimulus checks, which were supposed to be exempt, put them over the asset limits.
“I don’t know how anyone can think the government is run by a shadowy cabal of elites when more often it appears to be run by three raccoons stacked up in a men’s warehouse suit,” said Oliver. “Because only they would send someone money during the pandemic, forget they were the ones who sent it, and then demand more than double that money back.”
It’s not just about the money, he added. “It’s not just about disabled people getting their basic needs met. It’s about creating a society where they’re equal and active members.
“This system needs to be better,” he concluded, “not just for the sake of disabled people, but for everyone.”
