On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver opened with last week’s bombshell release of a secret recording in which Donald Trump and his former fixer Michael Cohen discuss a payoff to a Playboy playmate the president has previously denied having an affair with.

Oliver began: “We begin with the Trump administration’s ongoing scandals, which we’ve been calling Stupid Watergate, something 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.”



“This week,” he said, “it seemed like investigators started closing in on the Trump team, and not just metaphorically.”



Oliver then showed a viral photo showing Donald Trump Jr and the special counsel Robert Mueller waiting at the same terminal at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

“It’s true,” he said. “That happened.”

Oliver then quipped: “And if you are wondering who was more uncomfortable on that flight, Don Jr or Robert Mueller, it’s actually a trick question; it’s everyone on any flight with Don Jr ever, because it turns out that ‘my seat mate smells like Axe body spray and misplaced confidence’ is not a good enough reason to change seats.”

The host then showed news coverage of the release of one Cohen-Trump tape, in which Trump can be heard telling Cohen to pay off Karen McDougal in “cash”.

“Now, 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,” he continued, “features Trump and Cohen discussing a plan to keep McDougal’s story from becoming public, which is interesting because remember, Trump had previously denied any knowledge of the situation and also denied the affair itself”.



Another revelation of infidelity on Trump’s part, the payment could also constitute a campaign finance violation, Oliver said. He then noted another Cohen revelation from last week: that Trump was aware of the infamous meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower, where Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer to receive dirt on Hillary Clinton.

“Now, that is potentially huge and also somehow completely unsurprising, because deep down we all assumed that was the case anyway,” Oliver said. “Breaking news: the president causally knew about the 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 fucking name on it.”

