How John Oliver skewered Arizona's Republican US Senate candidates on 'Last Week Tonight'

It’s been a while since John Oliver has made fun of Arizona, but the unintentional comedy fodder of the Republican primary in the state’s U.S. Senate race provides finally proved too much.

Oliver devoted his first segment on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” on HBO Sunday to the contest pitting Mark Brnovich, Jim Lamon and Blake Masters, among others, against each other.

It was pretty funny, if you could get past the fact that one of them might be a future U.S. Senator.

Arizona is represented by two Democrats, Oliver pointed out: Kyrsten Sinema — “the only senator who seems to buy all her clothes exclusively from girl-boss pyramid schemes” — and Mark Kelly, who is running for reelection this year. Sinema is up for reelection in 2024.

Who is running for U.S. Senate? These are the major candidates in the race

Oliver started by making fun of Mark Brnovich's nunchuck videos

Oliver began by making fun of Brnovich’s infamous nunchuck videos, which to a comedian is like shooting fish in a barrel, something Oliver acknowledged. “I know that that is ridiculous, but I personally am enjoying Danny McBride’s new character and I’m excited to see where he goes with it,” Oliver said.

He moved on to one of Lamon’s commercials, in which Lamon is decked out like an old West sheriff in a shootout with characters supposedly representing Democrats, including Kelly. Kelly, of course, is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in an attack in 2011.

Like most political ads, this one ends with Lamon saying he approved it.

“Well you shouldn’t have approved it, Jim, because your ad is terrible,” Oliver said. “Shooting at her husband is at best insensitive, and is frankly amazing that a grown man dressed in a sheriff’s costume that looks like it was discontinued by Party City is somehow just the second most distasteful part of that ad.”

Punch line: Nobody ridicules Arizona quite like John Oliver

All this was just a warmup for Masters.

“His name alone makes him sound like a third-tier Bond villain,” Oliver said.

He aired a segment of Masters on “The Jeff Oravits Show” from April, when Masters said, “We do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence. It’s gangs. It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly.”

Oliver, understandably, couldn’t leave that alone.

'Things are going to intensify in Arizona over the next couple of months'

“OK, blaming Black people for gun violence in America is just outrageously uncreatively racist,” he said. “But also it’s unsurprising from someone who, and this is true, was called an immigration patriot by the white nationalist website VDARE, which praised him, saying he ‘checks all the right boxes.’”

Oliver then played a clip from the podcast “Subversive w/ Alex Kaschuta,” in which Masters was asked to name a subversive thinker who’s underrated.

“I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this,” Masters said. “How about Theodore Kaczynski?”

Kaczynski is better known by another name: the Unabomber.

“Probably not to be great to be talking about the Unabomber while campaigning,” Masters says on the podcast.

And yet.

Election guide: 2022 primaries

U.S. Senate | Governor |Secretary of state|Legislature | Treasurer | County attorney |Attorney general| Superintendent | Corporation Commission | District 1 | District 3 | District 4| District 5| District 6|District 8| District 9 | City council

One of Oliver’s strengths is pointing out the absurdity in something while not letting comedy overwhelm the serious consequences. Which is exactly what he did at the end of the segment. The GOP primary in Arizona is Aug. 2. The midterm election is Nov. 8. Each could bring a lot of change.

“Look, this primary is very up in the air, and we don’t know whether it will go to Nunchucks McGee, the world’s most pathetic cowboy or a guy who liked the Unabomber’s earlier, funnier stuff,” Oliver said.

“What we do know, though, is that things are going to intensify in Arizona over the next couple of months. But these results could well shift the balance of power in the Senate.”

Even for late-night comedy, that's no laughing matter.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How John Oliver took down Blake Masters, Jim Lamon and Mark Brnovich