John Oliver on Election Scandals: 'You Can Be Irritated by Hillary's, But You Should be Fucking Outraged by Trump's'

By Ellie Shechet | September 26, 2016 | 6:20pm

Politics

In a Last Week Tonight segment measuring Clinton’s “scandals” against those of her amphibious competitor, John Oliver underlined the insanity of considering both candidates equally controversial.

The show took an exhaustive look at the two biggest issues confronting Clinton’s campaign, at least from a right-wing perspective—her private email server, an issue that was compounded by Clinton’s initially evasive reactions, and the Clinton Foundation, which has invited claims of conflicts of interests, particularly concerning undisclosed Russian donations around the time of the Uranium One deal—a deal that was, Oliver notes, signed off on by a number of other unaffiliated U.S. agencies.

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“Like the movie It’s Complicated, it probably would have been best if it had never happened,” Oliver joked (I deeply disagree, and wonder if he has seen It’s Complicated? I have, 5 times!). “They both look bad, but the harder you look, the less you actually find. There’s not nothing there, but what is there is irritating rather than grossly nefarious.”

On the other hand, we have Trump, who lies constantly, has refused to produce his tax returns, is subject to insane conflicts of interest raised by his business dealings and yet doesn’t appear to know or care what a “blind trust” is, is being sued for fraud; Trump also, Oliver notes, uses his mostly inactive charity to benefit himself, raiding it for cash to settle lawsuits against Trump businesses, to pay for portraits of himself, and to make an illegal donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who shortly afterwards decided against investigating Trump University.

“Ethical failings in a politician are like raisins in a cookie,” Oliver concludes. Hillary has “arguably more raisins than average. There’s probably ten of those little fuckers in there.” But Trump is a different story entirely, Oliver explains, as raisins pour down from the ceiling.

“The man is a fucking raisin monsoon.”