John Oliver is certainly a hilarious guy, but his probes into matters of global injustice on his weekly show, Last Week Tonight, have given comedy a wholly new edge. Be it Argentine debt restructuring, draconian municipal fines on the poor or Russia's miscommunication with mating geckos lost in space, you would be hard pressed to find a subject that Oliver will not take on. It was, however, his decision to direct his piercing gaze at Donald Trump that viewers were awaiting. Until then, Oliver had refrained from participating in the frenzied narrative surrounding the Republic front-runner for the American presidential elections. But on February 28, he meticulously took apart the mighty lie that is Donald Trump. It made one wonder why Oliver had not done this earlier; the Super Tuesday state results, declared on March 1, showed that Trump had finished as the undisputed favourite for the Republican nomination.

Oliver had once said, "I'm less interested in what [Trump is] saying than what's happening underneath." That is precisely what he examined: the numerous myths the Trump legacy is made up of. He wanted to destroy the idea that Trump is tough, and he did. He ruined Trump's inflated reputation for 'building' things, and drew attention to his declaration that targeting the families of terrorists is the best way to deal with terrorism. "That," he said, "is the front-runner for the Republican Party advocating a war crime."

The segment went on to be viewed more than 23 million times on YouTube, and Oliver has, since then, gone on to break down Trump's outrageous 'border wall' proposal in another, equally popular episode. (He even dedicated three minutes of a third episode to Trump's utter ignorance about nuclear weapons and who should own them; Trump refused to rule out dropping a nuclear bomb on Europe because - and this is a real quote - "Europe is a big place.")

Oliver has also earned his fair share of criticism. He has always been known to direct his scorn at what can be called much bigger menaces - institutions and systems. Examining murky forces with no visible face to blame is what Oliver does. As a result, many people thought that the Trump takedown was beneath him. The truth, however, is that Donald Trump is real, dangerous, and might be the next American president. The reason Oliver's approach works is because he does not think the threat posed by Trump is a joke, while other political funny men do. This is important because, contrary to popular opinion that late-night comedy takedowns cannot effect real change, Oliver has done exactly that - in 2015, a Ninth Circuit court judge cited his piece on US territory rights in a class-action suit in Guam; the Federal Communications Commission changed its stance after his segment on net neutrality (which also caused the FCC webpage to crash). Other comedians have said that Trump's attempt to get to the White House would bode well for comedy, but while Oliver's segments on the man have been hilarious, he has still driven home the point that Trump is no laughing matter.