“Donald Trump Is A Bullsh*t Artist”, Says John Oliver

Last night, our favorite English enlightener John Oliver kicked off Last Week Tonight with the obvious: President Trump (still as unsettling a pair of words as “horse pope” or “Dr. Oz”.). Oliver ripped on Trump’s childish interactions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and proceeded to do the same to Press Secretary Melissa McCarthy Sean Spicer, as he had ridiculously blamed British intelligence for helping President Obama wiretap Trump (two charges that remain completely unfounded). After Trump refused to apologize for dragging both Germany and Britain into his wiretapping web of lies, Oliver echoed the sentiment of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria: “Donald Trump is a bullshit artist”.

The main story Sunday night, however, pertained to the Federal Budget (“the only beach read less appropriate than Bill Cosby’s Little Bill: One Dark and Scary Night“). Oliver implored us to think of this budget proposal as a “presidential mood board” – even if those moods are “impatient, vain, and horny for malice”. Trump’s budget proposal would cut a plethora of departments and important commissions, ranging from the Agriculture to Department and NASA to the National Endowment for the Arts. Oliver introduced us to the latest zany character among Trump’s colorful cast: Mick Mulvaney, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney described the process of creating this new budget as simply taking information from Trump’s past speeches and converting them into dollar amounts.

“Basically, Mulvaney treated Trump’s past statements the way Trump treats women: randomly singling out a few of them, and then reducing them down to numbers.” In an attempt to understand this method, Oliver reflected back on statements that the President had made in the past – and was dumbfounded by them: “I don’t know how you turn that into policy!” While breaking down the numbers, Oliver did admit he couldn’t be completely certain about where all the money was going, because he doesn’t “speak fluent toddler psychopath”.

The weirdest thing about all these cuts set to devastate a wide range of parents, workers, and others, however, was that the majority of them voted for Trump. Oliver quoted Trump’s own book when it came to predicting how his own voters were going to turn on him: “if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on”, Trump wrote. “Oh, I think people are catching on,” concluded Oliver.

To lift our spirits, Oliver ended the show on a happy note: the use of “traffic zebras” (young people in zebra suits who act as crossing guards/traffic directors) in Bolivia to prevent fatal car accidents. This is a serious job for people in Bolivia, who are given rules like “honor the costume, don’t eat while you work, and never, ever take your head off”. Oliver noted that every interview is “improved by a zebra head”, and proceeded to tell the audience that the show had made their own “Bolivian zebra” to “help make painful moments easier to take”. They added the zebra into Trump’s inauguration, Rachel Maddow‘s disappointing tax return reveal, and a clip from Manchester by the Sea. Oliver then revealed they had uploaded footage of the zebra on green screen for anyone to edit into whatever they feel necessary, and to tag their video with #JustAddZebras. The world may be dark, but at least we have Bolivian traffic zebras.