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Though a majority of Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight focused on economic development and making fun of the Entourage movie, John Oliver took some time to dive into the Paul Manafort scandal and the ongoing Russia investigation. The late night host took some well-aimed shots at Manafort and Rick Gates, but it was his criticisms of Donald Trump and allowing the “Trump card” that really stung.
These charges are the latest in what Oliver and Last Week Tonight have dubbed Stupid Watergate. As Oliver explains, Stupid Watergate is “A story that, like Watergate, could well end up toppling democracy but only because one of these idiots slipped on a banana peel, yelled something stupid like ‘Uh-oh Spaghetti-o’ and accidentally knocked democracy over.”
Oliver devoted about 10 minutes to listing the shady past dealings of Manfort and Gates, claiming they did everything from “propping up dictators” to “laundering millions of dollars.” However, Oliver’s main criticism of the segment wasn’t that these two men have done several morally questionable things throughout their careers. It was questioning why Manafort was ever hired in relation to the presidency in the first place.
The late night host picked apart Trump’s now infamous NO COLLUSION tweet, explaining that tweet implies Manafort did all of the questionable and illegal things he’s now being accused of before he was hired as Trump’s campaign manager. “Which means one of two things,” Oliver said. “Either Trump did a background check, discovered his suspicious activity, and didn’t care, or he didn’t so much as Google Manafort before hiring him because everybody knows that Manafort is dodgy.”
But Oliver’s main point during this segment was highlighting the dangers of relying too much on what he calls “the Trump card.” According to the late night host, Trump, his supporters, and his administration have been using Trump’s own incompetence as a defense. Oliver broke down how dangerous and flawed this line of thinking can be. “This guy is too dumb to really understand what he’s doing, so I guess we have no choice but to let him keep being president,” he said.
Oliver’s take on the Mueller investigation isn’t currently available on YouTube, but his excellent segment on economic development is. You can watch it below.
