John Oliver simply doesn't understand why Brett Kavanaugh is 'the hill that conservatives are willing to die on'

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Last Week Tonight)

last updated 1 October 2018

Sunday's Last Week Tonight is basically "one long recap of one very long week, and one event in particular," John Oliver said, ruefully: Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Oliver started with Christine Blasey Ford, who testified credibly about what she called Kavanaugh's attempted rape in high school. "That is Fox News calling Ford's testimony a 'disaster for the Republicans' — and not like one of those Puerto Rico disasters," Oliver said. "One they might actually care about." But just when it looked like curtains for Kavanaugh, he hit back, with weirdly placed emotion: "I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think that men might be too emotional for the Supreme Court."

And "when pressed on his drinking, Kavanugh became either dismissive or outright hostile, and it was at those moments that you got a real sense of who this man actually is," Oliver said. His "surly tone" was not that "of a man who hopes to one day have the honor of serving on the Supreme Court but the tone of someone who feels entitled to be on it and, frankly, can't believe that you're being such a dick about this."

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Oliver went through Kavanaugh's troubling pattern of "misrepresenting the truth" and his staunch refusal to endorse an independent investigation to clear his name. Even if you think Kavanaugh is innocent or the allegations unprovable, the "judgment and temperament" he showed this week should be disqualifying, Oliver said. We're "all basically calloused to people talking" like "unhinged partisans," he added, "but we are supposed to have at least nine people left in America who do not talk that way."

"This brings me to the most basic question that remains: Why?" Oliver said. "Why this particular a--hole? Why is he the hill that conservatives are willing to die on?" He has some thoughts. There is NSFW language throughout. Watch below. Peter Weber

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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.