{"id":486306,"date":"2026-02-23T20:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/486306\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T20:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:51:09","slug":"john-oliver-on-elon-musks-x-now-worse-than-useless-tv-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/486306\/","title":{"rendered":"John Oliver on Elon Musk\u2019s X: \u2018Now worse than useless\u2019 | TV comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

On his new episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver<\/a> wasted no time digging into the files related to late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>, which have once again ensnared former prince Andrew.<\/p>\n

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known after being stripped of his royal titles for his connection to Epstein, was arrested last week \u2013 the first arrest of a senior member of the royal family in modern history \u2013 on allegations that that he had shared confidential material with Epstein while serving as a UK trade envoy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true, they arrested former prince Andrew, and I don\u2019t know why they\u2019re still going with \u2018alleged\u2019 connections to Epstein there, while also running a photo that makes them look like the two closest friends I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d Oliver laughed. \u201cIt looks like they\u2019re brainstorming a new podcast. It looks like Andrew\u2019s soft-launching: \u2018Hey, would it be crazy if we moved in together?\u2019 I\u2019m just saying, maybe drop the \u2018alleged\u2019 part when you\u2019re dealing with two guys that look so close they could finish each other\u2019s prison sentences.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if you\u2019re thinking: \u2018Well, what was the new revelation that did it? Was it the grotesque new photo of Andrew on all fours over a young woman?\u2019 Incredibly, no, it was apparently this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emails released by the US justice department appear to show that Mountbatten-Windsor shared reports of official visits to Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore, as well as confidential investment opportunities in the reconstruction of Afghanistan\u2019s Helmand province.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, they got him on forwarding documents, which is a little underwhelming,\u201d said Oliver. \u201cThough, to be honest, when it comes to bringing down monsters, I don\u2019t really care if it\u2019s for a boring computer crime, the same way I\u2019m not that mad if what finally ends a toddler throwing a tantrum is a cardboard box [on his head]. The method doesn\u2019t matter. What\u2019s important is you have been stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, Andrew has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing and has been released, although that does not mean he\u2019s been found not guilty,\u201d Oliver added, next to the now widely circulated photo of Mountbatten-Windsor upon release, slumped in the backseat of a car. \u201cAll we really have to go on right now is this fantastic picture of him leaving custody, and you can draw your own conclusions there. Reasonable people can disagree on whether this makes him look guilty \u2013 or dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his main segment, Oliver pivoted to another man caught up<\/a> in the Epstein scandal: Elon Musk<\/a>, and specifically the many problems with Musk\u2019s role as the owner of Twitter, the social media site he bought<\/a> (and renamed X) for $44bn in October 2022. Oliver recalled how Musk arrived at Twitter HQ on his first day carrying<\/a> a sink, then posted \u201clet that sink in\u201d. \u2013 \u201ca joke so funny, I\u2019m still laughing right now\u201d, he deadpanned.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is saying Twitter was perfect before Elon arrived,\u201d Oliver continued. \u201cIt helped platform a lot of ugliness, including but not limited to our first shit-poster president.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it is genuinely worse now\u201d as a \u201ca sewer of misinformation\u201d with \u201cverified\u201d blue checks for sale. Since taking over Twitter, Musk slashed<\/a> its global trust and safety staff, reduced its full-time content moderators by over 50% and reinstated the accounts of several white supremacists. Oliver cited several independent studies<\/a> that found<\/a> Musk\u2019s X boosted rightwing accounts, as well as<\/a> tweets from Musk himself. \u201cAt this point, it seems like there\u2019s one option if you never want to hear anything from Elon Musk, and that\u2019s to be his coolest child,\u201d Oliver joked, referring to Musk\u2019s estranged daughter Vivian Wilson<\/a>, who is transgender.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwitter thumbing the scale toward Elon\u2019s interests is bad for multiple reasons, not limited to his godawful jokes, his history of invoking extreme ideas like the antisemitic \u2018great replacement theory<\/a>\u2019 and the fact that he was apparently a driver<\/a> of<\/a> US election misinformation in 2024,\u201d he added. \u201cBut perhaps the biggest cause for concern is the fact that our current government is troublingly dependent on Elon\u2019s platform. The Trump administration is painfully online, and particularly on Twitter.\u201d JD Vance has described<\/a> himself as a \u201cGrok guy\u201d, referring to Musk\u2019s much<\/a>–maligned<\/a> AI<\/a> bot<\/a>. The FBI director, Kash Patel, has fumbled investigations by prematurely<\/a> announcing arrests on X. And an infamous photo of the situation room from the US operation in Venezuela showed Pete Hegseth navigating<\/a> a Twitter search for \u201cVenezuela\u201d.<\/p>\n

As one White House staffer told the New Yorker: \u201cIf we have something that\u2019s popular in rightwing Twitter, the White House is acting on it 90-plus percent of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact is, a massive media platform has been shaped in the image of its poisonous owner,\u201d Oliver said. \u201cAnd it doesn\u2019t seem like Elon\u2019s gonna see the error of his ways anytime soon, seeing his brain seems to be thoroughly cooked by the garbage he consumes on his own site. To be honest, he still doesn\u2019t seem to have a vision of what Twitter should be.\u201d Asked in a recent interview why his vision of \u201ca collective consciousness\u201d was important, Musk fumbled for several seconds, eventually coming up with \u201cthe why of it I guess is that so \u2026 we can increase our understanding of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like the odds of Elon fixing this are pretty slim, meaning all we can really control is how we each interact with Twitter,\u201d Oliver surmised. His personal advice? Don\u2019t post at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are certain areas, like news in particular, where Twitter is now worse than useless,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fact, for breaking news, it is an active liability, as people routinely push out false information in the wake of tragedies and crises, often for money, and there don\u2019t seem to be many guardrails to stop them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of which is really a long way of saying that the Twitter that we may have once relied on and the Twitter that was fun and occasionally useful is just well and truly gone,\u201d he concluded. \u201cAnd collectively, while it might be sad, it might be past time for all of us to, if I may borrow a truly poisoned phrase, let that sink in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On his new episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver wasted no time digging into the files related…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-486306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}