John Oliver recaps last week's 'absolutely insane' Trump news, and the sad drudgery of 'Stupid Watergate'

John Oliver tackles the last week in Trump news
(Image credit: Last Week Tonight)

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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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.