John Oliver tweaked Last Week Tonight's format on Sunday night because, he said, "the last seven days have been absolutely insane." So crazy, in fact, that it might have broken CNN's Anderson Cooper. "On a different night, I could probably devote time to why CNN would put themselves in the position of having a professional dump-defender constantly on their network," Oliver said, but there's so much going on with "Stupid Watergate — a scandal with all the potential ramifications of Watergate, but where everyone involved is stupid and bad at everything" — that he would focus on just four "basic" questions: "What the f—k is going on? How big a deal is this? Where do we go from here? and, Is this real life?"
He started with "the shortest possible summation of the events of this week," beginning with Monday's bombshell about Trump sharing highly classified secrets with the Russians and ending with the undenied news that Trump also told the Russians that FBI Director James Comey is a "nut job." "That sounds rough, but in Trump's defense, I can kind of see where he's coming from," Oliver said. "'The guy keeps hiding in my drapes — who does that? He's huge! I can see him.'" But the worst part of Friday's bombshell is that Trump also told the Russians that he fired Comey to take the "pressure" off the Russia investigation, Oliver said. "It's almost difficult to believe your ears when you hear something that sounds so audaciously corrupt. It's like if Hillary Clinton had sent an email with the subject line: 'Sup I did Benghazi.'"
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But Oliver also had some cold water for Trump impeachment fans, starting with a reminder of the presidential line of succession and ending at the reality of a GOP-controlled Congress. "The likelihood is that Trump will survive this and continue as president, which shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone," he said. "Trump has seemed to reach the end of the line on multiple occasions, only for nothing to happen." He ended the sometimes NSFW recap with a reminder of how sad this all is for everyone, even Trump. Peter Weber
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