Skip to content
Entertainment
Link copied to clipboard

John Oliver weighs in on Scott Wagner’s ‘golf spike’ threat video on ‘Last Week Tonight’

Comedian John Oliver has turned his attention once again to Scott Wagner on HBO's Last Week Tonight

Scott Wagner speaks to supporters after winning the Republican primary gubernatorial candidacy in York, Pa.Tuesday, May 15, 2018.
Scott Wagner speaks to supporters after winning the Republican primary gubernatorial candidacy in York, Pa.Tuesday, May 15, 2018.Read moreJOSE F. MORENO / Staff Photographer

Comedian John Oliver has turned his attention once again to Scott Wagner on HBO's Last Week Tonight, this time for the Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate's insistence that he would stomp on Gov. Tom Wolf's face with "golf spikes" in next month's election.

Oliver began his show Sunday with a segment looking at midterm election advertisements, which became interesting here in Pennsylvania last week after Wagner released his now-viral video on Facebook. In the clip, Wagner says he is "sick and tired" of Gov. Wolf's "negative ads," and advises that Wolf should "put a catcher's mask on" to avoid a golf cleat assault at the polls in November.

"How can you be anti-negative ads," Oliver said of the video, "when your entire ad feels like a man getting into a fight in a garage? 'Put on a catcher's mitt, because I'm going to stomp on your face with golf cleats, pin you down with a leaf rake, jam your feet into a snowblower, and run you over with my wife's 2015 Volvo station wagon.'"

Wagner deleted the video from Facebook several hours after it was posted, but it had gone viral prior to its removal. Democrats condemned the ad, with US Rep. Steve Scalise writing on Twitter that "there is absolutely no place in our politics for this kind of rhetoric."

In a followup to the "golf cleat" video, Wagner released another clip admitting that he "may have chosen a poor metaphor" in discussing Gov. Wolf. Wagner's campaign office previously said that his initial comments were "not to be taken literally."

"I may have had a poor choice of words," Wagner said. "I shouldn't have said what I said." Wolf, meanwhile, told the Inquirer last week that he thought such an assault "would hurt."

"I'm not sure I'd like that," Wolf said.

Oliver last focused on Wagner on Last Week Tonight in June 2017, following President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. At the time, Wagner floated a theory that climate change could be caused by the Earth's position in the solar system, as well as body heat from the world's growing population.

"The Earth moves closer to the sun every year. We have more people, you know. Humans have warm bodies, so is heat coming off?" Wagner said last year. "We're just going through a lot of change, but I think we are, as a society, doing the best we can."

Oliver mocked Wagner's thoughts on Last Week Tonight, saying that "we are not doing the best we can, because we keep putting idiots like Scott Wagner in positions of power."

"I don't even know where to begin there," Oliver added.

Wagner responded publicly shortly after the episode aired, thanking Oliver for "putting my picture and my name on national TV."

"I'd love to go on your show sometime," Wagner said in a Facebook video to the comedian. "You and I could have a lot of fun."

For the rest of his Last Week Tonight episode on Sunday, Oliver focused on journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post reporter who was allegedly murdered in Istanbul, Turkey by a group of Saudi agents. Watch the clip below: