Oliver’s attack on Snowden reached extraordinary and insulting 
heights. At one point, he interrupted the internationally respected 
whistleblower for sounding too much like “the IT guy from work… Please 
don’t teach me anything. I don’t want to learn. You smell like canned 
soup,” Oliver said to the courageous defender of democratic rights, who 
has now endured nearly two years of persecution and exile.
Oliver’s hostility towards Snowden and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is
 an expression of his staunch support, almost universally shared among 
well-to-do strata in American society, for the continuation of the US 
government’s surveillance programs.
-- Thomas Gaist, "John Oliver’s interview with Edward Snowden: Pseudo-satire in defense of NSA surveillance" (WSWS).