John Oliver Trolls Mike Pence And His Bunny Rabbit Marlon Bundo
UPDATED with video: After discussing, at length, how very right Omarosa got it when she warned her Celebrity Big Brother housemates they’d be begging for Donald Trump’s return were he impeached and Mike Pence became POTUS, HBO late-night star John Oliver revealed the only thing he likes about Pence: his rabbit.
The Veep’s family bunny is named Marlon Bundo which, Oliver acknowledged, is an “objectively good name for a bunny.”
Marlon Bundo is, in fact, “the most likeable thing about an otherwise unlikeable man,” Oliver said. “Like how George W. Bush is a perfectly fine painter. Or how Bill Cosby raised Americans’ awareness about pudding. Or how Roger Ailes is dead. Sometimes you can’t deny that there is one thing you like about someone.”
Though Pence is the only member of the White House who Trump cannot fire, he is in every other way like Trump’s other Oval Office employee: ethically compromised, “creeped the f*ck out by Jared,” etc., the Last Week Tonight host pointed out.
Omarosa recently cautioned to her CBS reality series housemates that Pence is “extreme.” “I’m Christian, I love Jesus, but he thinks Jesus tells him to say things that are like, Jesus ain’t say that!” she explained.
Pence is a total Trump toady, Oliver reminded. When Trump said he won the popular vote if you took out all those millions of illegal voters, Pence defended Trump’s right to make false statements, calling it “refreshing.”
Pence’s extreme positions include opposition to abortion and gay rights. On his radio show in the 90’s, he said, among other things, it was time to “rethink this whole business of women in the military.” Two years later, he wrote an editorial attacking the Disney film Mulan because it showed a woman in combat.
And if you’re thinking, “he grew up in the 1950’s it’s just a generational thing” – no he didn’t. He’s 58 years old and actually three months younger than Flavor Flav, Oliver pointed out.
Evangelicals adore Pence, who has argued for the teaching of intelligent design in schools, expressed a hope to consign Roe vs. Wade to the ash heap of history, and, as governor of Indiana, responded to an HIV outbreak among drug users by dragging his feet on allowing needle exchange programs, and said he was going to go home and pray on it, because he apparently can’t pray in his office.
But the issue Pence is most associated with is his hostility to LGBT rights. Pence has argued against gays serving in the military, and made national news when, as governor, he signed a controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act, “which many felt enabled businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexuality,” Oliver explained.
Pence also has previously campaigned in the past on a platform that included allocating resources to institutions providing assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior, though Pence says he does not support so-called “gay conversion therapy.” On the other hand, he calls Focus on the Family founder James Dobson his mentor; he advocated for “conversion therapy.”
Which brought Oliver to Pence’s rabbit. Pence’s family has created a children’s book about Marlon Bundo, called “Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President.” It drops Monday – the day after Oliver’s broadcast.
“Unfortunately one of the stops on that book tour is at Focus on the F*cking Family,” Oliver said. “So, congratulations, Pence. You’ve managed to ruin Marlon Bundo. Now none of us can enjoy a book about your rabbit. Or can we?”
By “complete coincidence” Last Week Tonight also has written a book about Mike Pence’s rabbit. “A Day in the Life Of Marlon
Bundo” dropped as Oliver’s broadcast was wrapping – ahead of Pence’s Bundo bunny book.
Oliver’s book has Pence’s bunny falling in love with a boy rabbit. There’s also a Pence character in Oliver’s book – he’s a white-haired Stink Bug. And, all of the proceeds from Oliver’s book will go to the Trevor Project, which provides assistance to LGBT youth, and to AIDS United.
Oliver told viewers they could immediately buy the book at Amazon, or at BetterBundoBook.com. The audio book, available at Audible.com, features the voices of Jim Parsons, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, John Lithgow, Jack McBrayer, and Jeff Garlin, among others.
In addition to supporting worthy causes, another reason to buy Oliver’s Bundo book “is that selling more books than Pence will probably really piss him off,” Oliver noted.
But, he emphasized, this is an actual children’s book, “not some adult book telling Mike Pence to go f*ck himself, though, in buying it, that’s exactly what you would be doing.”
“Please buy it for your children; buy it for any child you know, or just buy it because you know it will annoy Mike Pence,” Oliver asked his viewers. “You’d be doing a nice thing, in a really d*ck-ish way. And isn’t that the dream, at the end of the day?”
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs2RlZQVXBU&w=620&h=340]
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