British media star Piers Morgan lashed out at Last Week Tonight host John Oliver in a searing tweet on Sunday, calling the HBO funnyman a “shameless old fraud” for attempting to speak on behalf of Americans as if he were one in the wake of the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
“Watching John Oliver repeatedly say ‘we’ & ‘us’ when discussing America is comical,” Morgan began. “Mate, you were born in the Midlands to a pair of Liverpudlian parents & speak in a thick Brummie accent. You’re about as American as cricket & mushy peas, you shameless old fraud!”
Oliver praised Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students who appeared on TV and spoke out in support of gun control after shooter Nikolas Cruz committed mass murder.
“These [school shooting] events are so familiar, you now automatically know how each side will play out: ‘Thoughts and prayers,’ ‘Fuck your thoughts and prayers,’ ‘It’s a mental health problem,’ ‘Yeah, but it’s also a gun problem’ and then someone says ‘Now’s not the time to talk about gun control,’ and everyone moves on until it inevitably happens again,” Oliver said on Last Week Tonight on Sunday.
“But this time felt slightly different, because when the ‘Now’s not the time’ argument came out, the kids from that school said, ‘You know what? Yes it fucking is,'” added Oliver, who spent years chastising Americans as a writer and correspondent on Comedy Central’s left-wing series The Daily Show.
Morgan is famously pro-gun control, which was among the reasons many experts say the ex-tabloid editor’s CNN show, Piers Morgan Tonight, was canceled in March 2014.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
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