According to Variety, John Oliver has made a swipe at his possible future boss, David Ellison. Last Week Tonight airs on HBO, a network that may soon fall under the Paramount umbrella if their merger with Warner Bros. Discovery goes through.
Recently off a summer break, Oliver has been on a tear, first taking aim at President Trump for using a decoy plane during his catering truck escape on a recent trip to Turkey. Next, he aimed at Senator Ted Cruz for being booed on College Gameday in his home state of Texas. He then took on UnitedHealthcare after they denied claims for Kate Weissman’s cancer treatment. Weissman was forced to pay $ 95,000 out of her own pocket. The news was revealed ahead of Luigi Manigone’s sentencing for his plea on stalking charges of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But what really perked ears was when he cracked some jokes at Ellison.
“Having access to wealthy parents just cannot be the system to get badly-needed health care — even if it is apparently the system that lets you be in charge of HBO,” Oliver said per Variety.
Oliver continued, “Yeah. My soon-to-be business daddy has a literal business daddy,” said Oliver. “And to be very clear: I deeply respect that and I would never make fun of you for it, unlike that pesky Stephen Colbert,” according to Variety.
Ellison’s highly publicized antitrust lawsuit has been the center of Hollywood’s attention. The case is currently in mediation, trudging forward to a March 2027 start date. Beginning in October, Paramount owes a $7 million-a-day ticking fee to shareholders. Ellison has thrown the kitchen sink at Bonta’s coalition of states and the WGA, trying to wiggle out of it. He has threatened to take Paramount’s business outside California to a Republican-led state, in addition to filing for a nearly $ 2 billion bond to cover the fees until the end of the trial. In their filing, Paramount repeatedly states that ticking fees are extraordinarily rare, which has led Bonta and many others to ask why they’re even in the deal.
Many of Ellison’s decisions have been divisive or puzzling, to say the least. He recently wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which he states that the deal is less about monopoly laws and more about control of the left-leaning CNN.
