John Oliver’s Got Bad News For Liberals Hoping For Trump’s Impeachment

On Sunday, Last Week Tonight saw host John Oliver forgo the show’s usual formula and instead, take a deep dive into the “absolutely insane” series of events in the White House last week. The host admitted they originally intended to do another “boring” story about the TSA, but the happenings of the week were impossible to ignore. The week was so bonkers, Oliver said, that by Friday night, “it may have broken Anderson Cooper” – after political commentator Jeffrey Lord continued his relentless defense of President Trump, Cooper snapped: “if he took a dump on his desk, you would defend him.” Oliver balked at the fact that Lord didn’t immediately say “no”, and proceeded on to discuss what has felt like the longest week ever.

Given the “exhausting pace” of this week’s events, Oliver returned to “Stupid Watergate”, and sought to answer four basic questions: “what the fuck is going on?”, “how big a deal is this?”, “where do we go from here?”, and “is this real life?”. Can you remember how this week began? Oliver certainly struggled to, but if you need a refresher, it started with reports that Trump had revealed highly-classified information to Russians in the Oval Office. The host spent twenty minutes going through every wild report that made headlines this week, including Trump telling Russian dignitaries that firing FBI Director James Comey had eased pressure on him, which Oliver noted was so blatantly corrupt “it’s like if Hillary Clinton sent an email with the subject line ‘sup, I did Benghazi’.” When he brought up that the Washington Post‘s report that the investigation had been focusing on a “person of interest” in the White House, Oliver laughed off any claims that it could be Jared Kushner, as he “in no way qualifies as interesting”.

While most of the stories that Oliver touched on were not particularly enlightening, he did get to a point that most reporters were unable to explore this week: how likely is impeachment? These reports certainly seemed to trump anything the president had been involved in before, and seemed to warrant putting his position into jeopardy – even members of his own party began questioning his ability to hold office. Unfortunately, however, despite the fact that Trump always seems to be “approaching the end of the line, it never seems to come.” Time after time and scandal after scandal, the president has still not faced repercussions for his transgressions. In the extremely unlikely event that Trump was impeached, the alternative doesn’t seem to be much better.

“If you are hoping for impeachment or a resignation, it is worth taking a quick peek at the presidential line of succession,” Oliver began. “Because Trump going would be fantastic, but remember, that would give us President Mike Pence.” Oliver was quick to remind us that the vice president is a “hard-line conservative” whose policies are perhaps even more right-leaning than Trump’s. “If you’re telling yourself, ‘well, maybe Trump’s impeachment could take pence down as well’, well, think about what that would mean,” the host continued. “Because then, we’d have President Paul Ryan – three words I always knew I’d have to say, but I didn’t really expect to have to say quite so soon. Sort of like, ‘remember polar bears?’ or ‘female Entourage reboot’.” Oliver then went through the supposed line of succession, which was frankly bleak.

So for all those praying for Donald Trump’s impeachment, you shouldn’t be too excited by the never-ending slew of crazy events that transpired last week. The most baffling thing of all is perhaps the fact that Trump himself isn’t even enjoying his time in the position – Oliver reminded us of this by playing a clip of Trump speaking after his first 100 days in the White House about how much he misses his old life.

“I now have something in common with Donald Trump,” the Hostus Mostus jested, “because I, too, preferred my previous life before he became president.”