Comedians Continue to Batter Trump Hilariously as His Nomination Looms

Last week John Oliver finally turned his attention to Donald Trump, and gave him the excoriating deep-dive treatment that Last Week Tonight has become both famous and essential for. Oliver stripped the real estate mogul and TV personality naked for 20 minutes, beseeching his viewers to help “Make Donald Drumpf Again,” a reference to what is apparently his family’s ancestral name before it was changed to the more pleasant-sounding Trump generations ago.

After the candidate’s continued primary wins, Oliver targeted Drumpf for the second straight week. Oliver started out by giving the GOP primary season its most appropriate tagline yet, dubbing it the “Clowntown Fuck-The-World Shitshow 2016,” before comparing the party’s front-runner for the nomination to a “kidney dropped on the floor at a Supercuts.” He also aired a riveting audio clip of Morgan Fairchild reading Ivana Trump’s novel For Love Alone (a yarn presumably based at least a little on Ivana’s relationship with the Donald), as well as a clip of Mitt Romney disavowing Trump on behalf of all reasonable Republicans.

And that was really the big takeaway from last week’s chapter of our great political nightmare: the condemnations of Trump by public figures in and out of his party reached terrifyingly specific proportions. Romney went so far as to (accurately) say, “He calls for the use of torture and for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press,” adding that “this is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.”

Meanwhile, Louis C.K. gave that abyss a name. In an open letter, C.K. called Trump “Hitler” and said our continued enabling of his insane bigotry means that “we are being Germany in the 30s. Do you think they saw the shit coming? Hitler was just some hilarious and refreshing dude with a weird comb over who would say anything at all.”

Even Saturday Night Live finally came around and properly lambasted the former host of The Apprentice. You might recall that SNL took a lot of heat last November when it enlisted Trump to host, with about 200 protesters setting up outside NBC headquarters holding signs that said “Racism Isn’t Funny” (because it’s not). Well, the message was received, as last weekend’s “Voters for Trump” ad featured a mixed bag of Nazis and generic white supremacists explaining why Trump would have their vote come election day.

Comedians like Oliver, C.K., and the players of SNL taking down Trump is mostly a lot of preaching to the choir. But it’s going to take voices screaming out from both sides of the aisle to squash Trump’s terrifying rise to power before the Republican National Convention in July turns into a bloodbath, with the ghost of Chris Christie’s dignity hovering idly by the carnage.