Oliver Mourns How Musk Has Made X 'Much Darker'

Alex Christy
February 24th, 2026 3:01 PM

Text to Speech

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For some reason, HBO’s John Oliver decided that Elon Musk and his transformation of Twitter/X would make for golden comedic material for his main topic on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight. As Oliver tells it, the site has gotten “much darker” since Musk took over, but any reference to the prior problems or his native Britain’s creepy solutions was left unmentioned.

Oliver introduced an October 2025 clip of Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience by declaring, “He changed Twitter's name to X, announced an 'extremely hardcore cultural reset,” and by his count, said he'd cut about 80 percent of Twitter's staff. And to hear Elon tell it, he did this to protect free speech, and correct for what many conservatives considered a left-wing bias. In fact, as far as he was concerned, nothing less than the fate of the world was at stake.”

 

 

In the clip, which featured two jump cuts, Musk employed a Lord of the Rings analogy, “The reason for acquiring Twitter is because it was causing destruction at a civilizational level…You know, like Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings, where he would just sort of, like, whisper these, you know, terrible things to the king. The king would believe these things that weren't true…And they were pushing a nihilistic, anti-civilizational mind virus to the world.”

Oliver reacted by mocking the analogy while also lamenting the state of X, “Okay, for the record, Twitter's not a good analogue for Wormtongue at all, and I'm guessing I don't need to explain why, given the Venn diagram between "Viewers of this show" and "People familiar with second-tier Lord of the Rings characters" is, I'm pretty sure, a single circle, as round, in fact, as the outermost wall of Minas Tirith. But what Elon's embrace of so-called "free speech" has actually resulted in is much darker. One study found an approximately 50 percent increase in posts containing hate speech.”

While Oliver would go on to lament X’s algorithm, problems with its AI Grok feature, including its self-proclaimed “MechaHitler” title, uncensored fake news, such as people passing off video game footage for actual war footage, and its feature that pays certain larger accounts, which can lead to big paydays for intellectually unsophisticated political users, some context is needed.

First of all, Oliver did not mention that the previous leadership’s definition of “hate speech” and “disinformation” was notoriously broad. The Babylon Bee was banned from its account unless it deleted a joke that upset liberal transgender orthodoxy, and, most notably, users were forbidden from posting a New York Post link about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Second of all, the community notes feature has allowed for people to point out that people are trying to claim video game footage is something from real life.

Third, Oliver is not exactly a model of civil, reasonable, or well-informed discourse. He is a man who thinks the best thing about former President Ronald Reagan is that he is dead and who wishes his opponents would “rot in hell.”

Finally, anyone waiting for the Last Week Tonight episode that deals with Oliver’s native Britain arresting people for social media wrongthink would be well advised to not hold their breath.

 

 

Nevertheless, Oliver would join NBC’s Seth Meyers on Monday’s Late Night to promote the show. Meyers hyped, “Congrats. Season 13. You've done two episodes of your new season,” while sarcastically adding, “and as always, just so cheerful.”

Cracking himself up, Oliver claimed, “I am. That's right. We just want to be a mirror to the pile of [bleep] that is the world right now. Look at yourself. Look.”

Until Oliver holds up a mirror to the liberal part of the world, he isn’t actually holding up a mirror but rather just a bubble.

Here is a transcript for the February 22 and 23-taped shows:

HBO Last Week Tonight

2/22/2026

JOHN OLIVER: He changed Twitter's name to X, announced an "extremely hardcore cultural reset,” and by his count, said he'd cut about 80 percent of Twitter's staff. And to hear Elon tell it, he did this to protect free speech, and correct for what many conservatives considered a left-wing bias. In fact, as far as he was concerned, nothing less than the fate of the world was at stake.

ELON MUSK [OCTOBER 31, 2025]: The reason for acquiring Twitter is because it was causing destruction at a civilizational level. [jump cut] You know, like Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings, where he would just sort of, like, whisper these, you know, terrible things to the king. The king would believe these things that weren't true. [jump cut] And they were pushing a nihilistic, anti-civilizational mind virus to the world.

OLIVER: Okay, for the record, Twitter's not a good analogue for Wormtongue at all, and I'm guessing I don't need to explain why, given the Venn diagram between "Viewers of this show" and "People familiar with second-tier Lord of the Rings characters" is, I'm pretty sure, a single circle, as round, in fact, as the outermost wall of Minas Tirith. But what Elon's embrace of so-called "free speech" has actually resulted in is much darker. One study found an approximately 50 percent increase in posts containing hate speech.

***

NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers

2/24/2026

12:58 AM ET

SETH MEYERS: Congrats. Season 13. You've done two episodes of your new season. Fantastic.

JOHN OLIVER: Yeah, two. Two.

MEYERS: Yeah.

OLIVER: And as of—and as always, just so cheerful.

OLIVER: I am. That's right. We just want to be a mirror to the pile of [bleep] that is the world right now. Look at yourself. Look.

MEYERS: Yeah. But it's—it's incredible. And also incredible, I want to congratulate you on your many accomplishments.

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