The Last Week Tonight host ridicules Trump’s recent performances and concocts a plan to get the Republican candidate to concede

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

John Oliver took aim at Donald Trump’s failed Hillary Clinton jokes at this week’s Al Smith dinner in his HBO show on Sunday night.

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On Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the comedian ridiculed the Republican candidate’s much-criticized performance at the charity dinner, questioning just why he would bomb so badly at what should have been a perfectly suited event.

“This wasn’t a town hall or a debate,” he said. “This was a $3,000-a-plate fundraising gala at a moth-eaten Manhattan hotel, organized by the Catholic church, a real estate-owning, male-dominated, sex-scandal plagued organization.”

He went on: “You’re treating a benefit for needy children like open mic night at Rascal McBigot’s, Long Island’s fourth-best alt-right comedy club.”

Oliver also believed that the reason Trump did so poorly was that the dinner required people to have “a healthy share of self-deprecation” but Trump was “almost pathologically unable to acknowledge any flaw or fault”.

He then went back to criticize Trump’s demeanor at last week’s final debate, showing a clip of Clinton’s Emmy joke and how much it seemed to annoy him.

“Of course he wants an Emmy,”Oliver said. “It’s a woman, it’s gold and it’s proportionate to his tiny hands. It’s basically Trump’s ideal mate.”

Finally, he talked about Trump’s seeming inability to accept the possibility of a Clinton victory. Oliver hatched a plan to make Trump happy: if he loses, he’ll still be able to claim that he won something.

“Let’s bet on the outcome of this election,” he said. “I will take the side that you win. You take the side that you lose. That way, if you lose, you still win.”

The prize for Trump would be an Emmy, something Oliver has many of. “She’s so small and so silent,” he said. “You don’t even have to take her furniture shopping.”

• This article was amended on 25 October 2016. An earlier version said Oliver had described the Catholic church as a “sexist, scandal-plagued organization”. That has been corrected to “sex-scandal plagued organization”.