John Oliver never thought he’d have to “care about Donald Trump,” he told fellow Daily Show alumnus Stephen Colbert. As a joke on, John Oliver’s show produced the red “Make Donald Drumpf Again” hats and sold them—at cost (to HBO’s chagrin). Oliver tells Colbert that they have sold 35,000 hats, with a request for a free hat coming from celebrity artist and CEO Jay Z. Oliver’s response to that:
He’s done very well. Buy a hat. Let it trickle down. That’s how economics works, right?
Oliver relented to HBO’s request. But he made it very clear to HBO that they better understand what they were getting into.
HBO asked if it was OK to give him one, and they were already running out, and I did say ‘be careful, because if he puts that on his head in public, you’re going to need more hats. And if his wife puts it on in public, we are no longer a tv show, we’re a hat manufacturing company.
You can watch the segment for yourself.