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John Oliver joined the voices slamming President Donald Trump for attending a Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, hours before a vital food assistance program relied upon by millions of Americans was about to lapse. Some 42 million rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but because of the ongoing government shutdown, funding for the critical scheme ended on November 1. Meanwhile, Trump was pictured enjoying himself at the Halloween bash at his Palm Beach residence, surrounded by guests in Roaring Twenties-style getups. “Trump is going to have to own the consequences here, and even as he continues to blame Democrats for this shutdown, he somehow manages to make the optics even worse,” Oliver said during his opening monologue on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight. The host then showed CNN’s coverage of Trump’s Halloween party, with the anchor describing The Great Gatsby as a book “about rich people partying.” “Yeah, not only is that pretty insulting,” he said. “I’m guessing it’s also pretty infuriating to whatever exhausted high school freshman just wrote a 4,000-word essay about Great Gatsby as a grim meditation on the disillusionment of the American Dream, only for CNN to tell them, ‘You know what? It’s really just a book about rich people partying.’” Oliver continued: “And for what it’s worth, the actual theme of that event was, and I quote, ‘A Little Party Never Killed Nobody.’ And I guess that is true. Although, it is also true, that as we are all finding out right now, a ‘grand old party’ is capable of killing a whole lot of people, and unfortunately, they don’t seem to give a single marble and gold-encased s*** about that.” Oliver joins swathes of Democrats who have accused the president of prioritizing his “billionaire” friends over the American people. “Donald Trump hosted a Great Gatsby party while SNAP benefits were about to disappear for 42 million Americans,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom in a post on X (Twitter). “He does not give a damn about you.” Responding to the criticism, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Independent that Democrats “are full of it.” “President Trump has consistently called on them to do the right thing and reopen the government, which they could do at any time,” Kelly said. “Unfortunately, Gavin Newscum, Chuck Schumer, and Congressional Democrats would rather push health care for illegal immigrants than save American citizens from suffering.” Legal challenges were mounted Friday as a federal judge ordered Trump to release emergency funding for SNAP before the November 1 cutoff, while another ruled that the government is likely illegally blocking the emergency money. Trump said he wanted the courts to “clarify” how he can legally fund the program “as soon as possible” and blamed Democrats for the funding lapse. “I do NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT,” he posted on Truth Social on Halloween. “If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding, just like I did with Military and Law Enforcement Pay,” Trump added. SNAP funds, which are distributed by the federal government to states each month, support the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, which serves millions of households, with a vast majority of recipients being children and seniors. Recipients receive roughly $188 per person per month, or about $6 per day, which is administered on prepaid cards that can be used for grocery store staples. If that money isn’t delivered, it would mark the first time in SNAP’s 60-year history that the federal government had let it lapse.
