For Immediate Release
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Contact: Hannah Goss, hgoss@azdem.org
LAUGHABLE, NOT ELECTABLE: The #AZSen Field Got “Skewered” on Late Night TV
It’s “Nunchucks McGee” vs. “the world’s most pathetic cowboy” vs. “a guy who liked the Unabomber’s earlier, funnier stuff”
PHOENIX — The clown show (read: GOP Senate field) made it to late night…
On Sunday, John Oliver dedicated his first segment of “Last Week Tonight” to recapping the “unintentional comedy fodder of the Republican primary” and introducing viewers to the “decidedly weak” field of “lesser-known” GOP candidates.
This isn’t the first time the “combustible” GOP Senate primary became the butt of the joke — last week, Seth Meyers mocked Blake Masters for peddling the baseless conspiracy theory that the January 6th insurrection was set up by the FBI.
After the whole country laughed along with Oliver, the Arizona Republic’s Bill Goodykoontz broke down the host’s brutally fair punchlines about Brnovich, Lamon, and Masters, writing, “It was pretty funny, if you could get past the fact that one of them might be a future U.S. Senator.”
See below for a rundown of the Republic’s recap:
- Oliver began by making fun of Brnovich’s infamous nunchuck videos, which to a comedian is like shooting fish in a barrel, something Oliver acknowledged.
- He moved on to one of Lamon’s commercials, in which Lamon is decked out like an old West sheriff in a shootout with characters supposedly representing Democrats, including Kelly. Kelly, of course, is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in an attack in 2011.
- Like most political ads, this one ends with Lamon saying he approved it. “Well you shouldn’t have approved it, Jim, because your ad is terrible,” Oliver said.
- He aired a segment of Masters on “The Jeff Oravits Show” from April, when Masters said, “We do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence. It’s gangs. It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly.”
- Oliver then played a clip from the podcast “Subversive w/ Alex Kaschuta,” in which Masters was asked to name a subversive thinker who’s underrated. “I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this,” Masters said. “How about Theodore Kaczynski?”
- Kaczynski is better known by another name: the Unabomber. “Probably not to be great to be talking about the Unabomber while campaigning,” Masters says on the podcast.
- “Look, this primary is very up in the air, and we don’t know whether it will go to Nunchucks McGee, the world’s most pathetic cowboy or a guy who liked the Unabomber’s earlier, funnier stuff,” Oliver said.
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