Late Sunday, John Oliver began the latest edition of his Emmy-winning HBO show Last Week Tonight by tackling the biggest news of the year: impeachment.
Yes, the House has launched an impeachment inquiry into President Trump over a whistleblower report—and accompanying transcript released by the White House—accusing Trump of pressuring the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of his political rival/Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, eight times in a single phone conversation.
“Wow. Eight times! The only time it makes sense to ask for the same thing eight times in a single phone call is if you’re trying to connect with a customer-service agent for AT&T,” cracked Oliver. “Boom! I got you, Business Daddy, I got you! You genuinely bad company!” (AT&T is the owner of WarnerMedia, HBO’s parent company.)
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“Basically, [Trump] is accused of withholding nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine and then using it as leverage to get dirt on Joe Biden. It is very, very dumb. And you might remember, we called his Russia scandal ‘Stupid Watergate,’ which unfortunately means that we now have to work out what this sequel should be called,” Oliver continued, eventually landing on the name “Stupid Watergate II: The Stupidest Watergate.”
To make matters worse for Trump, the whistleblower’s complaint alleges that senior White House officials intervened to “lock down” all records of the call because they were convinced “that they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain.”
“It’s true: The notes from the call were stored in a separate code word-level system meant for highly classified information despite the fact that there was no legitimate reason to do that. And why do that if there wasn’t something very bad in there?” asked Oliver.
Given that the House has finally opened an impeachment inquiry into Trump, and even a few Republicans seem to be “treading with caution for a change,” Oliver wondered why things might be different this time around given the laundry list of troubling allegations levied at Trump.
“Unlike the Mueller Report’s legalistic descriptions of obstruction of justice, Trump pressuring Ukraine to get dirt on his opponent and then hiding the conversation is easy to understand. It’s just gettable. You don’t need to know any more than that to know it’s something presidents absolutely should not be able to do,” Oliver explained, adding, “This particular Trump scandal does start to feel a little different, and something that is absolutely meriting of impeachment—especially because the fact that it is so consistent with all of Trump’s other behavior suggests that it is a pattern that will continue until he leaves office, one way or another.”
