John Oliver gleefully pounces on JD Vance for botched Haiti pronunciation
Oliver quipped that the only Haiti-related mispronunciation ‘recognized in this house’ is Alicia Silverstone’s iconic Haiti line in ‘Clueless’
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John Oliver has teased JD Vance for his recent mispronunciation of Haiti.
On the latest episode of his eponymous talk show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the comedian addressed the false claims made by both Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator Vance, about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio.
“I still want to talk about this, both because the chaos Trump stirred up in Springfield is ongoing and because it feels emblematic of his campaign,” Oliver began, going on to emphasize that “city officials insist there is no evidence of what Trump confidently spewed to 67 million people.”
Trump made the outrageous claim during his first presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this month.
The talk show host explained that the lie began the day before the debate when Vance, who “always looks like a yass-ified chipmunk,” tweeted that “Haitian illegal immigrants were causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio, and reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
“Which, among other things, makes it sound like eating pets is a right reserved for natural-born Americans,” Oliver joked.
The British host went on to clarify that Springfield has seen a significant influx of Haitian immigrants in recent years amid “tumult in Haiti.”
“The US granted a certain number of Haitian immigrants temporary protected status, making them eligible for social security numbers and work permits,” Oliver said. “At the same time, companies in Springfield faced a worker shortage, and many Haitian immigrants moved there after being recruited by local companies for jobs that locals were not filling.”
He then showed a clip of Vance mispronouncing the Caribbean nation as “Haitia” at a rally.
“First, there is only one Haiti-related mispronunciation we recognize in this house,” Oliver quipped, “and it’s Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, delivering the iconic line: ‘And so if the government could just get to the kitchen, rearrange some things, we could certainly party with the Haiteeans.”
Silverstone has previously admitted that her mispronunciation of “Haitians” in the classic 1995 romcom was unscripted.
“I know that [director] Amy Heckerling stopped the script supervisor because everybody, when I first did it, they all were running to tell me I was saying it wrong,” Silverstone told Looper in 2022. “She was like, ‘Stop,’ and she didn’t let anybody go near me because she loved that I was saying it wrong.”
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