John Oliver Calls Out Fox News’ ‘Racial Panic Goblins’ For Bad Take On Afghanistan

John Oliver devoted Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight” to the United States pulling out of Afghanistan, including a takedown of Fox News’ response to the situation. 

Oliver showed devastating news clips of Afghan citizens swarming the Kabul airport in an effort to escape Taliban rule.

“We all knew the end was likely to be ugly. The only question was, how ugly?” he said on his HBO program. “Well, this week, we got our answer.” 

Oliver argued that the U.S. has an obligation to honor its promise to protect Afghans who aided the United States during its 20-year involvement with the nation, as well as other vulnerable citizens.

He played a clip of an anonymous female Afghan activist telling Sky News that she had to go into hiding after receiving death threats from the Taliban over her work empowering other women. 

“I feel extremely abandoned,” she said in the clip. “It’s not only that I’m in danger. Now my children are in danger. They will not leave us alive.”

Oliver said the U.S. bears “responsibility for the situation that she is in,” especially after promising to “protect people who did courageous things that pissed off the Taliban, like advocate for human rights, even if it wound up putting a target on their back.”

Oliver then set his sights on Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, calling them “racial-panic goblins” for their attempts to demonize Afghan refugees.

“We are a big part of why those people are refugees,” Oliver said. “Helping them now isn’t charity. It’s doing the bare minimum. Refusing to help a neighbor whose home just burned down is shitty. Doing it when you helped start the fire is fucking monstrous.”

Last week, Carlson claimed Afghans refugees would “invade” the U.S. 

“If history is any guide, and it’s always a guide, we will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country in the coming months, probably in your neighborhood,” he said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “And over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions.” 

“So first we invade, and then we are invaded,” he said. “It is always the same.”

Ingraham used similar fearmongering rhetoric on the network. 

“The lesson of this 20-year war cannot be that every time we turn a country upside down or make huge mistakes, our immigration laws, our refugee laws no longer apply,” Ingraham said.

Oliver had a sharp response to Ingraham’s loaded remarks.

“The notion of ‘every time we turn a country upside down’ is an incredible thing to just blow past,” Oliver said. “Maybe that’s the lesson here, Laura. Maybe don’t keep turning countries upside down in the first place.”