Johnsplaining
John Oliver makes a good case that Michael Cohen's clients got exactly what they paid for
John Oliver began Sunday's Last Week Tonight by cleaning up the loose ends from last week's show, which he ended with a show of shutting it down. "I went to Australia to work with the koalas, but then I learned two important things," including that "HBO contracts are a little harder to get out of than I originally thought," he joked. "So unfortunately for everybody, this show must continue, and we begin tonight with the Trump White House," from President Trump shutting down the Iran deal to first lady Melania Trump asking Americans to "be best" and a White House staffer "joking" about Sen. John McCain dying. "That's shocking, but it's also not really surprising," Oliver shurgged. "These days, 'Trump aide says something awful' isn't really news, it's just an assumed fact, like gravity."
Oliver spent most of his Trump time on the travails of Michael Cohen, "a lawyer so shitty, he made Trump say: 'I need someone good — get me Rudy Giuliani on the phone.'" Novartis, AT&T, and Kremlin-linked Columbus Nova paid Cohen "millions of dollars for access to Trump — which is just bizarre," he said, not only "because lawyers don't generally pitch themselves by offering up info on their other clients," but also "because I just naturally assumed that you gained access to the president by finding a golden ticket in your MAGA hat. Don't fall into the river of gravy, little Charlie, or you'll never be the next owner of the racism factory!"
"We probably don't yet know the full significance of all of these payments, but I would argue that, at heart, these companies got exactly what they paid for," Oliver said. "Because they wanted to understand how the Trump administration worked, and think about it, they put their trust in a political novice who turned out to be a total moron and was actually just bilking them for personal gain." Watch below. Peter Weber