John Oliver Repeats Lie about Trump’s George Floyd Remark

By Kyle Smith

Monday, June 08, 2020

 

On Friday, social media comprehensively litigated the question of what President Trump said in his press conference touting, among other things, an unexpectedly encouraging jobs report. It turned out that at least two reporters who had falsely claimed that Trump had said Floyd would be happy about the jobs numbers later reversed course because this isn’t what happened.

 

Sunday night on his HBO show John Oliver revived this lie, saying that Trump “also, in announcing jobs numbers on Friday, invoked George Floyd’s name, saying, “This is a great day for him,” which is utterly f***ing disgusting.” (Note that there’s no joke here, just performative outrage about an imaginary Trump statement.)

 

As Tobias Hoonhout reported Friday afternoon after several hours of misleading reports about what happened, at the press conference in which Trump discussed the jobs numbers, he invoked the presidential privilege known as “discussing more than one subject at a briefing.” His next topic was civil rights. “Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement regardless of race, color, gender or creed,” Trump said. “They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement. They have to receive it. We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen. Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying, ‘This is a great thing that’s happening for our country.’ This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody, this is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

 

Reporters such as Peter Baker of the New York Times and Gabby Orr of Politico deleted tweets suggesting Trump had claimed George Floyd would be happy about the economic news. Baker originally tweeted, “Trump suggests that George Floyd would be happy about the jobs numbers,” but later deleted the tweet. Politico’s Gabby Orr said in a tweet that Trump said “Floyd is marveling at today’s jobs numbers from Heaven,” but deleted that remark. (Other outlets including Time, the Daily News, and the Associated Press did not delete tweets making the false claim.)

 

After Oliver’s broadcast, an entertainment reporter at The Daily Beast used Oliver’s lie as means to dust off and repeat the original misrepresentation of Trump’s remarks. It was as if Oliver (and the many sycophants in the media who cover his rants as though they were news) learned nothing from Jimmy Kimmel having to retract a similar non-joke asserting that Mike Pence had delivered empty boxes of protective equipment to a hospital.

 

If comics are going to behave like political commentators, then they must face the same factual scrutiny as political commentators. There’s no, “I was being ironic” or, “I was only kidding” defense to the false statement that “[Trump] also, in announcing jobs numbers on Friday, invoked George Floyd’s name, saying, ‘This is a great day for him.’” Trump didn’t do that.