John Oliver Weighs In on Jan. 6 Hearings and “Concerning” Number of GOP Primary Winners Still Claiming Election Fraud

Kimberly Nordyke
·2 min read
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John Oliver offered his take on the information coming out of the Jan. 6 House Committee hearings on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight.

He started off by noting how John Eastman, a lawyer advising then-President Donald Trump during the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, who had pushed the idea that then-Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the results of the November 2020 election.

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Oliver showed a clip of former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann recalling his reaction to the idea.

“I said, ‘Hold on a second. I want to understand what you’re saying. You’re saying that you believe that the vice president, acting as president of the Senate, can be the sole decision maker as to…who becomes the next president of the United States?'” Herschmann recalled. “And he said yes. And I said, ‘Are you out of your effing mind?'”

Said Oliver: “I will say, at this point, you can just say ‘fuck.’ Democracy is hanging on by a thread, and you had a front-row seat. You said it then, you can say it now. Because what he was suggesting to you there was bonkers. The idea that a single person can decide the president is completely against the ideals of this country, which is why the Constitution starts with ‘We the People’ and not ‘Mike.'”

Oliver went on to note that more than 100 Republican primary winners back Trump’s claims of election fraud, including a number of candidates for Secretary of State, which is “concerning,” Oliver said, “because they could end up in a position to directly influence the next presidential election.”

Oliver pointed to Jim Marchant, a Republican candidate for Secretary of State in Nevada, who said in a public forum that “the people of Nevada have not elected anybody since 2006. They’ve been installed by the deep state cabal.”

Said Oliver: “Wow. The people of Nevada have not legitimately elected anybody since 2006. That is a pretty bold claim, especially coming from the guy who himself was elected to the State Assembly there in 2016.”

Oliver noted that one of several candidates who are part of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, including New Mexico’s Audrey Trujillo, who has said: “A lot of people, whether we can prove it or not, feel that this election was stolen.”

Said Oliver: “Whether we can prove or not? That’s a pretty big loophole, isn’t it, Audrey? We all believe plenty of things we can’t prove but we shouldn’t base major life decisions on them.”

Oliver also showed a clip of Kristina Karamo, who is running for Secretary of State in Michigan, who’s accused the Democrats of having a “satanic agenda.”

“Obviously Democrats don’t have a satanic agenda, mainly because that would require having an agenda in the first place,” Oliver quipped.

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