John Oliver delved right into his topic of the night, discussing Hungary‘s descent into far-right populism via Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s documented legal coup.
While making a point about Orbán and his wealthy supporters’ acquisition of myriad online and print publications, radio outlets and TV stations, and how negative coverage of the government has nosedived since then, the political comic took a shot at Paramount on Last Week Tonight.
“Wow. A far-right leader’s friends and allies just buying up all the media outlets in the country and turning them into conservative sycophants — can you imagine that? I sure can’t,” he said sarcastically, as an image of the David Ellison-owned corporation flashed on screen. “That’s definitely not something I’ve had recurring nightmares about for the past month!”
President Donald Trump and other MAGA supporters, like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro, have championed Orbán, though Hungary’s economic and sociopolitical decline has been well-documented. The country’s election is set for April 12.
“Orbán’s stranglehold on power should be alarming for us here in the states,” Oliver cautioned, “because he has clearly been an inspiration to American conservatives, to the point that JD Vance is apparently planning to visit Hungary to show support for Orbán ahead of their election. And that is because, for them, Orbán is not a cautionary tale; he’s a blueprint.”
He continued: “We are lucky to have the checks and balances that we do, but we would do well to watch for warning signs of what happened to Hungary starting to happen here, like — small things, I don’t know — stacking the courts, or shameless gerrymandering, or fear-mongering about immigrants, or presidential allies buying up the media. Anything you might spot like that!”
In the latest update to the WBD-Paramount merger, which came on the heels of Paramount’s completed acquisition of Skydance last year, Warner Bros. Discovery has set an April 23 special meeting of shareholders to vote on the media giant’s sale Paramount Skydance, a key step forward in the process.
