John Oliver decided to focus on Elon Musk on Last Week Tonight‘s last new episode of 2023. The comedian roasted the billionaire by recounting all the controversies he’s been involved in this past year and said he “could pull off any bad guy in a movie.”
“There’s Lex Luthor posing for the cover of Metropolis Maniacs monthly. There’s ‘Why No Mr. Bond. I and my child bride expect you to die,’” Oliver joked. There’s, ‘I just bought your media company, I’m about to strip you for parts.’ There’s, ‘First racist sheriff.’”
He continued, “And finally, the less fuckable reimagining of Billy Zane’s character in Titanic. Truly, the man has range.”
Oliver recalled Musk’s headlines from testing “the most powerful rocket ever built” to the Tesla recall that involved two million vehicles over the autopilot software. The HBO host also played the clip of Musk telling advertisers where to go after backlash over antisemitic posts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. It was at this point that Oliver said Musk was dressed as Chip from the Disney animated series Rescue Rangers.
John Oliver compares Elon Musk to Chip from ‘Rescue Rangers’
HBO
Oliver went on to explain that Musk changed the way people perceive him in the last year. The comedian cited that at one point, Musk was described as “the real-life Iron Man” and remembered the billionaire made a cameo in Marvel’s Iron Man 2 film alongside Robert Downey Jr.
As Oliver recalled Musk’s ascension, he played a clip of the Tesla owner being compared to Henry Ford, the business magnate and founder of the Ford Motor Company.
“Like Henry Ford, Elon Musk managed to build on the technology that others had invented,” Oliver said before releasing the zing, adding, “That’s not actually the only way he’s like Henry Ford, which you’d know if you ever Google either of their names and the word antisemitism.”
