Jack Warner has hit back at British comedian John Oliver who hired airtime on Trinidad television in order to urge the former FIFA vice-president to reveal everything he knows about alleged corruption at football's crisis-hit world governing body.
Warner said Oliver, the presenter of US show Last Week Tonight, had embarrassed the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago in the four-minute comedy address. Warner also criticised CNN TV6, the Caribbean nation's largest private broadcaster, for giving him the platform.
"It is really incomprehensible how a local TV station, a national TV station, could allow a foreigner, most of all an American foreigner, to come into this country, to embarrass its citizens, to embarrass our people," Warner said on YouTube.
Warner is on bail in his homeland of Trinidad facing extradition to the United States after being one of the people indicted by American authorities over allegations of corruption.
The 72-year-old, who has denied any wrongdoing, promised in a broadcast titled 'The Gloves Are Off' earlier this month to release an ''avalanche'' of evidence relating to FIFA's financial transactions, including those of its departing president Sepp Blatter.
That led Oliver to purchase airtime on TV6 where he urged Warner to follow through with his pledge in a video titled 'The Mittens of Disapproval Are On'.
Warner, leader of the Independent Liberal Party (ILP) in Trinidad and Tobago, was far from impressed by the address, which included Oliver making an impersonation of Trinidadian expressions.
Warner added in his response: "To be critical of the way we speak, to be critical of the way we look, to be critical of our culture and if that is what a local TV station wants to propagate on our population, then I say heaven help us.
"I don't need any advice from any comedian fool, who doesn't know anything about this country, to tell me what files to release and what not to release. That is none of his business, I take no instructions from him. And, worse yet, take instruction from an American at this point in time.
"But as these things unfold in the weeks and months ahead, I expect the possibility of people to go lower than that, all in an attempt to get two or three dollars from advertising, or in an attempt to sell our nation short."
Warner, who resigned from all football activity in 2011 amid bribery allegations, also said that his country need to stand united against outsiders and that he intended to speak more at an ILP meeting on Friday.
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