John Oliver explains why he favors impeaching Trump, even though it won't dislodge him from office

Impeachment is "an anagram for 'pinch me meat,' which is, interestingly, the sentence that got the Lucky Charms leprechaun #MeToo'd," John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. But impeaching President Trump is also a big topic among Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pumping the brakes.

Pelosi is actually right "that many people don't fully understand what impeachment involves," Oliver said, "so we thought that tonight might be a good time to discuss what it is, why it may be warranted, and what the risks might be in carrying it out." He ran thought the impeachment process and the grounds for impeachment laid out in the Constitution: treason, bribery, or "high crimes and misdemeanors." That last category, which Trump doesn't appear to understand, covers a wide range of serious misdeeds, and Trump has provided a lot of fodder. Oliver focused on one particular incident of likely obstruction of justice and why it's a "very, very big deal."

"It's impossible to say how a Trump impeachment would play out, although him leaving office is extremely unlikely," Oliver cautioned. "That would require 20 Republican senators to vote against him, and even if they did that, there is still to guarantee that Trump would actually leave — he basically told us as much out loud." But "not opening an inquiry comes with consequences, too," he said, "because it essentially sends the message that the president can act with impunity, which is a dangerous precedent to set — not just for future presidents but for the current one."

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 said that after vacillating for a while, he is on Team Impeach. "Every a--hole succeeds until finally they don't," he said, citing Richard Nixon. "I can't guarantee that impeachment will work out the way that you want it to, because it probably won't. But that doesn't mean that it's not worth doing. Because if nothing else, we'd be standing by the basic, fundamental principle that nobody is above the law." There is NSFW language throughout. Peter Weber