John Oliver Perfectly Sums Up Alabama While Discussing The Death Penalty

John Oliver talks about the death penalty on Last Week Tonight.

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On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver did an updated episode on the death penalty in the US where he perfectly summed up what is wrong with red-state Republicans in Alabama.

Oliver said:

And early this year, Alabama performed the very first nitrogen gas execution, which was, by all accounts, absolutely horrific. One witness described the man who died as someone struggling for their life. And another who’d seen five executions said it was definitely the most violent execution that I’ve ever witnessed.”

All of which makes it pretty galling that afterward the state’s AG took this victory lap while thanking his whole execution team. ‘Everyone in this room knows they are the first team in the country to carry out nitrogen execution. And what occurred last night was textbook. They deserve a great deal of thanks and credit for being willing to be the one to step up first in the country to do so, and I now suspect that many states will follow. As of last night, nitrogen epoxy as a means of execution is no longer an untested method. It is a proven one.’

Yeah, he called it a textbook execution, which I would call textbook bullshit. And by the way, Alabama, do you ever get tired of being trailblazers in all of the worst ways? Your state history is just brave Alabama citizens protesting as your leaders are the last to do something good or the first to do something terrible.

Video:

From Oliver and his team putting together evidence that suggests that states and the Trump administration have been obtaining the drugs used in executions from a factory that is illegally making them to discussing the barbaric ways that the United States continues to insist on executing criminals, this episode was a worthy follow up to the two that Last Week Tonight has previously done on the topic.

It is a shame that Warner Brothers/Discovery has adopted the idiotic policy of not posting Last Week Tonight clips until Thursday because John Oliver’s latest episode really is a matter of life and death.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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