Once again this week, John Oliver had no choice but to open his show with President Donald Trump and his “Stupid Watergate,” a name the Last Week Tonight host coined “because it has all the potential consequences of Watergate, but everyone involved is really stupid.”
But this time, he zeroed in on House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes: “The most Devin Devin in the history of Devins.”
It was barely a week ago that Congressman Nunes briefly went off the grid in order to deliver evidence to the White House that he claimed backed up Trump’s claims that Obama had “wiretapped” him, which, as it turned out, came from sources at the White House. Despite all this, Trump initially said he felt “vindicated” by Nunes’ revelations.
“Trump feels vindicated by dubious sources all the time,” Oliver said, imagining the president positing, “We don't need to invest in clean energy. It says right here on this cup that ‘America Runs on Dunkin.'”
Recapping the story, Oliver said, “Devin took what appears to be an unnecessary trip to tell what appears to be unimportant news to what may have been the source of the news itself. So what Nunes brought to light has turned out to be a bunch of smoke and mirrors as convoluted as it is pointless — truly, it is the Now You See Me of revelations.”
“But wait, because Stupid Watergate found a way to get even stupider,” Oliver continued. “Because the surveillance Nunes was studying concerned the Trump transition team, of which one member was, you guessed it, Devin fucking Nunes.”
Oliver saved his harshest critique for the defense that Nunes’ fellow House Republican Ted Yoho delivered on MSNBC, in which he tried to claim that Congress members work for the president and not their constituents.
“No! You absolutely do not! You do one of them, and explicitly not the other. That is literally the point of Congress,” Oliver exclaimed. “And that's why this story is Stupid Watergate: It could very well take down the government, but nobody involved understands why, or how to cover it up, or what the government fucking is, or possibly how to breathe without getting regular reminders.”
