{"id":631127,"date":"2026-09-21T05:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T05:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631127\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T05:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T05:48:11","slug":"john-oliver-takes-swipe-at-david-ellison-and-his-business-daddy-larry-ellison-on-last-week-tonight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631127\/","title":{"rendered":"John Oliver Takes Swipe at David Ellison and His ‘Business Daddy’ Larry Ellison on ‘Last Week Tonight’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen we last saw John Oliver<\/a> behind the desk of \u201cLast Week Tonight<\/a>,\u201d he was mocking Trump for sacrificing a number of members of his senior staff<\/a> on a decoy plane amidst his peculiar catering truck escape in Turkey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Sunday night, the funnyman returned to his Emmy-winning HBO series<\/a> after a monthlong summer break and aimed his ire at a variety of targets, from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) getting loudly booed during an appearance on ESPN\u2019s \u201cCollege GameDay\u201d in Austin, Texas, to UnitedHealthcare\u2019s notorious history of denying health claims in advance of Luigi Mangione\u2019s December sentencing for killing its CEO Brian Thompson.<\/p>\n

\n\tOliver was discussing UnitedHealthcare denial of Kate Weissman\u2019s cancer treatments, forcing her parents to spend $95,000 for the treatments out-of-pocket (she\u2019s now cancer-free), when he took a swipe at David Ellison<\/a> (and his father Larry). The younger Ellison is, of course, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, whose $110.9 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery \u2014 the parent company of HBO<\/a>, which controls Oliver\u2019s show \u201cLast Week Tonight\u201d \u2014 is making its way through the courts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHaving access to wealthy parents just cannot be the system to get badly-needed health care \u2014 even if it is apparently the system that lets you be in charge of HBO,\u201d cracked Oliver.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comedian then aired a photo of David and Larry Ellison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYeah. My soon-to-be business daddy has a literal business daddy,\u201d said Oliver. \u201cAnd to be very clear: I deeply respect that and I would never make fun of you for it, unlike that pesky Stephen Colbert.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOliver recently renewed his \u201cLast Week Tonight\u201d contract through 2027 in advance of the Ellisons\u2019 probable acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When we last saw John Oliver behind the desk of \u201cLast Week Tonight,\u201d he was mocking Trump for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[48360,93,3284,61,60,21024,11104,21025,247398,282],"class_list":["post-631127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-david-ellison","tag-entertainment","tag-hbo","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-john-oliver","tag-larry-ellison","tag-last-week-tonight","tag-paramount-warner-bros","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}