John Oliver takes aim at Donald Trump's big beautiful bill
John Oliver shifted his focus to United States President Donald Trump on the June 29 episode of Last Week Tonight, specifically taking aim at Trump’s ambitious and controversial “big beautiful bill”. John Oliver focused on the bill’s efforts to slash America’s social safety net in order to facilitate the bill’s proposed tax cuts, which would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
In effect, John Oliver characterized Trump’s legislative agenda as empowering the richest people in America at the expense of the country’s most vulnerable. The Last Week Tonight episode focused specifically on how Donald Trump’s bill would impact Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Responding to Republican politicians downplaying the bill's impact, he said, "this is medicine for the sick and food for the hungry, the stakes are just higher."
I’m heading to the Senate floor to fight back against Republicans' “Big Beautiful Bill" that rips away health care from 17 MILLION people to give tax breaks to billionaires. pic.twitter.com/dufd2LbSoW
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 29, 2025
John Oliver brought up reporting that claimed the bill will add trillions of dollars to America’s national debt and accused Trump of misleading his base with his claims of the bill leading to a “blue collar BOOM”. He revealed that the “big beautiful bill” would weaken former President Barack Obama’s landmark Affordable Care Act by adding more red tape to the insurance process, making it more likely for people to get kicked off their healthcare plans. He accused the proposed tightening of Medicaid work requirements to effectively serve the same purpose.
John Oliver hit back at Republican politicians like Dr. Mehmet Oz and Joni Ernst, who attempted to justify these stricter work requirements, by stating that the data does not support their claims that doing so would actually increase employment in the country. Rather, John claimed that the end result of these stricter requirements would be more people, even eligible ones, simply dropping out of Medicaid altogether.
🚨MAJOR BREAKING: Senate Democrats have forced EVERY WORD in Trump's 900 page Big Beautiful Bill to be read on the floor before the vote.
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) June 29, 2025
The move will delay the vote to cut Medicaid and SNAP, raise energy costs, and give tax breaks to the ultra-rich. This is historic. pic.twitter.com/YxPHnwSXM3
John Oliver explored the bill’s projected impact on the SNAP "food stamps" program, with the legislation planning to slash federal funding to SNAP by $287 billion over the next 10 years. John explained how these cuts would result in state Governments being forced to bear the burden of financing the SNAP program, which could result in some states further shrinking the program, or outright opting out of SNAP altogether.
John Oliver believed that Republicans were being deceptive when they said the stricter work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP were done out of a commitment to meritocracy. Instead, he accused the party of facilitating the mass removal of people enrolled in Medicare and SNAP because of the added administrative hurdles they’d have to clear, making Donald Trump’s bill incredibly harmful to America’s most vulnerable and marginalized people.
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