John Oliver brands Trump's Russia scandal as 'Stupid Watergate'
John Oliver used the beginning of Sunday’s Last Week Tonight on HBO to tackle President Donald Trump’s Russia scandal and unsubstantiated claim that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone calls.
“We begin this evening with President Trump, two words that still simply do not belong together, like baby pubes or haunted horse,” said Oliver. “This week actually began promisingly for the president as he addressed Congress with what appeared to be a more disciplined tone.”
Oliver cut to a clip of Trump telling the nation on Tuesday that the “time for small thinking is over, the time for trivial thoughts is behind us.” Given the tone of the speech, Oliver noted that it seemed like the White House was on track. However, one day after the speech came the Washington Post‘s report that Attorney General Jeff Sessions twice met with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., during the election, which he did not disclose during his Senate confirmation hearings.
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“Yes, Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general and the unfortunate result of Dobby the House Elf’s one-night stand with a Confederate flag — enjoy — got in trouble this week for undisclosed meetings with Russia’s ambassador, something which itself isn’t against the law,” said Oliver. “The problem is, Sessions’ confirmation hearing featured this exchange.” Oliver then played a clip of Sen. Al Franken asking Sessions what he would do if “there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign.” Sessions didn’t directly answer the question, instead stating that he was unaware of such activities, “did not have communications with the Russians,” and was “unable to comment on it.”
“There’s an obvious problem there,” said Oliver. “As we now know, what he just said is not true, but perhaps the weirder thing is that was an unforced error. He wasn’t even asked if he’d met with the Russians. He just implicated himself out of the blue. We should have been immediately suspicious. If you ask someone how their weekend was, and they say, ‘Well, I definitely wasn’t masturbating into the Slurpee machine at 7 Eleven, you check the f—ing security cameras at the 7 Eleven and you don’t act surprised.”
Transitioning back to Sessions, Oliver replayed part of Sessions’ confirmation hearing. “You can sort of tell that Sessions knew he f—ed up, because watch his expression immediately afterward,” said Oliver. “He looked right at the camera. He looks like he’s about to loosen his collar and audibly say the word, ‘Gulp.'”
Oliver doesn’t think it’s enough that Sessions has since recused himself for any investigations about a Trump-Russia connection, pointing to the multiple calls for his resignation and reports of other Trump campaign operatives meeting with the Russian ambassador. “It doesn’t look great that every time Trump associates are asked about Russia, they respond like they’re trying to hide something,” said Oliver. He cited former Trump policy advisor Carter Page and Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s answers to questions about Russia as examples.
“Look, it is not clear what is really going on here yet, although one possibility is that this all amounts to what I’m going to call Stupid Watergate, a potential scandal with all the intrigue of Watergate, except everyone involved is really bad at everything,” said Oliver. “And the relevant question isn’t so much, ‘What did the president know and when did he know it?’ as it is, ‘Is the president physically capable of knowing things at all?'”
Oliver shifted to Trump’s Saturday tweets claiming that former President Barack Obama tapped Trump’s phone during the election. “Let me give you some context for where we are: In 1992, Dan Quayle misspelled the word ‘potato,’ and it became one of the most famous dumb moments in political history, but we are not at the point where the president is so busy hurling destabilizing conspiracy theories around, we can’t even pause to enjoy the fact he misspelled the word ‘tap.’ And his evidence for suggesting President Obama has committed a crime seems pretty thin.”
Oliver played an ABC News clip that suggested Trump either based the allegations on a “top-secret White House briefing” (the existence of which is not known) or an article on the Breitbart News website that “detailed speculation from a conspiracy-loving talk show host, Mark Levin.”
“Okay, I think we can now officially declare that Trump has a worse media diet that the Son of Sam killer, and he got all his news from a talking dog that told him to murder,” quipped Oliver. “And rather than providing evidence to support the accusation, this morning the White House urged Congress to look into the allegations, and it seems odd that a president would issue a firm statement of fact and then launch an investigation to try and support that claim…”
“The sad thing is, deep down, we probably all knew that this week would end this way,” said Oliver, who played a clip of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan smiling when Trump said the “time for trivial thoughts is behind us.”
“That is the face of a man thinking, ‘Don’t laugh — he’s the president,” said Oliver, “which incidentally should now be the official slogan of the Republican party.”
