John Oliver finds some accidental genius in Trump's recorded chats with Michael Cohen, incriminating tweets

John Oliver began Sunday's Last Week Tonight with the latest installment of his look at President Trump's "Stupid Watergate" mess — a scandal "with the potential gravity of Watergate, if the entire White House was on bath salts and Nixon was a raccoon with his head stuck in a jar of peanut butter." And it's not just that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was somehow on the same recent flight as Donald Trump Jr., he said. "There was a series of potentially damaging revelations this week, courtesy of the president's former lawyer, Michael Cohen."

"Historically, 'there are tapes' hasn't worked out well for presidents," Oliver said. "It's one of those phrases that is universally foreboding, like 'the virus is airborne' or 'Ronan Farrow is working on an article about you.'" The tape where Trump discusses burying his alleged affair with a Playboy model "could be a problem for multiple reasons," he said, but Cohen's "second bombshell" about Trump knowing beforehand of the meeting his son and campaign chiefs had with Kremlin-linked officials offering election collusion "is potentially huge," if not all that surprising. "Breaking news: The president actually knew about meeting that involved his son, his son-in-law, and his campaign manager discussing dirt about his greatest enemy that took place where he lived and worked in a building which has his f---ing name on it!"

The last development is Mueller reportedly weighing whether Trump's tweets constitute obstruction of justice, a situation Oliver agreed might highlight Trump's accidental genius: "Just think about it — it's innately hard to believe something is a crime when it's done loudly and blatantly right in front of you."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Oliver also had a NSFW message for Facebook, in response to the social network giant's public-image-burnishing promise to return to its friend-sharing roots. And he elaborated his point with his own version of Facebook's ad, which is also NSFW. You can watch it below. Peter Weber