John Oliver Roasts Steve Scalise for Dubbing Himself ‘David Duke Without the Baggage’: Duke Is Literally ‘All Baggage’

As congress continues to search for a replacement House Speaker, two frontrunners emerged last week, in the form of Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Steve Scalise. Both options were pretty bleak for John Oliver, especially considering the latter candidate has previously likened himself to the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

To kick off his second episode of “Last Week Tonight,” Oliver immediately got into Kevin McCarthy’s ouster, first poking fun at Patrick McHenry, who is filling the role in the interim.

Oliver joked that he looks like “Patton Oswalt as a ventriloquist dummy” and, like most of the late night hosts did this week, had a laugh at how hard McHenry slammed the gavel to adjourn the House after McCarthy was booted. The late night host then turned his attention to Jordan and Scalise, pointing out that Scalise was once equated to “David Duke without the baggage.”

“And you know who described him as that? He did!” Oliver marveled. “And to describe yourself as David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKK, without the baggage is a choice. Because that man is all baggage! Without it, he’s just a crypt keeper with a patchy bleach job.”

Oliver added that, whether the job ends up going to Jordan or Scalise, neither option is all that great.

“It is pretty clear that the Republican party is being controlled by the absolute extremists — but not just nationally,” Oliver explained.

From there, he went in-depth on a Tennessee mayoral race, in which the incumbent Republican is being challenged by a woman who has “branded herself as a hardcore MAGA candidate.” Running down a laundry list of her exposed lies and hypocrisies, Oliver compared her to many of the far-right Republicans in Washington D.C.

“There’s a real chance she could still win this election, because while her numerous scandals are clearly almost cartoonish in their extremity, her behavior is entirely emblematic of Republican politics, from the local level all the way up to the top,” Oliver said.

“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” is now streaming on Max.

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