John Oliver focused on the past seven days in Trump’s administration on Sunday night, referring to them as “absolutely insane”.
The Last Week Tonight host has repeatedly referred to the situation as Stupid Watergate, “a scandal with all the potential ramifications of Watergate but where everyone involved is stupid and bad at everything”.
He spoke about reports that the president allegedly shared classified intelligence with Russian officials in the White House. “That is the kind of information you shouldn’t even share with your closest friends, which of course in Trump’s case would be the caddy he calls Steve even though his name is Doug, a bucket of KFC chicken, and the ghost of Roger Ailes,” he said.
More has also emerged surrounding former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who apparently told Trump he was already under investigation when he was hired. “Literally every decision in the Trump administration is the worst possible one,” Oliver said.
This week also saw Trump claim that he’s been treated more unfairly than any politician in history, which led Oliver to note some key examples: “Abraham Lincoln was shot by an actor, William McKinley was shot by an anarchist ... JFK was of course murdered by Ted Cruz’s father.”
Reports have also suggested that Trump told Russian diplomats that he fired Comey so that his investigation into his Russian ties would ease off. Oliver called him “audaciously corrupt” and said that it’s like if Hillary Clinton had sent an email with the subject line: “Sup I did Benghazi.”
The Washington Post has claimed that a significant person within the White House is being looked into as part of the Russian investigation. “Some have suggested that could be Jared Kushner, but that seems unlikely because while he is technically significant and legally a person, he in no way qualifies as ‘of interest’,” he said. “He is the least interesting person on Earth.”
Oliver then showed how Fox News has reported the last week, refusing to validate any of the scandalous information – but within just two days, one of them broke and started to show concerns. “A Fox host not being able to hold his doubts at bay for 48 hours is pretty much a canary in a coal mine, but then at this point Donald Trump is basically waist deep in canaries,” he said.
He then speculated about what a Trump impeachment would look like, saying: “At least part of it would include thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey.”
Oliver remarked on Trump’s ability to recover from a number of disasters. “It seems like with President Trump that he’s always approaching the end of the line but it never seems to come, as if for him, and him alone, the end of the line is drawn by MC fucking Escher,” he said.
But Oliver did admit that he doesn’t think Trump is happy either, and looked at a recent interview where the president bemoaned that his new life is harder than he expected. “Your old job was basically having a name, letting other people pay you to use that name and firing Dee Snider,” he said. “It was fucking easy.”
In his final Watergate comparison, he joked: “Say what you want about Nixon, but at least he wanted the fucking job.”
