On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver discussed the numerous ways Republicans and conservative media have attempted to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation over the past year.

He began: “We thought we’d update you on the ongoing Trump administration scandals that we’ve been calling Stupid Watergate, a scandal potentially on the scale of Watergate but where everyone involved is dumb and terrible and bad at everything.

“Last month marked the one-year anniversary of the Mueller investigation,” Oliver said, showing news segments of Trump-faithful pundits like Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson referring to the inquiry as a “witch-hunt”.

“Yes, they’ve been derisively referring to the Mueller investigation as a witch-hunt, which is a little ironic because you just know if Giuliani, Hannity and Trump had been alive back when people burned witches, they would have front-row seats, toasting marshmallows while trying to conceal their boners,” the host said, adding that the so-called “witch-hunt” has thus far yielded 20 indictments and five guilty pleas. “If this is a witch-hunt, witches exist.”

The host went on to note that support for the investigation had fallen from 62% in July 2017 to 54% in April 2018.

“If you’re thinking, well, ‘I don’t watch Fox News, I tune all of that stuff out,’ it’s actually important that you know what’s been happening on it for reasons that, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, Rudy Giuliani explains best,” Oliver said.

“Because when he was recently asked why he was going around spouting unsubstantiated nonsense, he offered this explanation.”



In an interview, Giuliani explained that, because Trump’s fate will probably come down to the matter of impeachment, “our jury is the American people”.

“He’s related by blood to his first wife,” Oliver said, “but he is right.”



“It is the longstanding view of the justice department that you cannot indict a sitting president, so to the extent that Trump can be held accountable, it’s going to be through impeachment, where public opinion is key,” the host explained.

Oliver then summarized tactics used by Trump’s supporters to delegitimize the investigation, like redefining the terms of the inquiry itself. “It is important to remember Mueller wasn’t tasked with finding proof of collusion. In actuality he was tasked with looking into links and coordination between the Russian government and anyone associated with the Trump campaign, as well as any matter that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,” said Oliver. “That’s a pretty broad mandate. So saying the investigation has to shut down if there’s no collusion is like saying a game of Scrabble has to end because you fit all the letters in your mouth.

“There’s also whataboutism,” Oliver added, “the practice of shifting the debate to someone else’s wrongdoing.”

Oliver proceeded to share a clip from Sean Hannity’s show, in which the Fox News host wondered why people like Christopher Steele, the Clintons, Jim Comey and Susan Rice weren’t being prosecuted instead of Trump.

“That is a lot of name to throw up on the screen and just say, what about them?” Oliver quipped. “Hannity’s point is that other people did bad things so therefore Trump’s bad things don’t count. Let me be clear on this: whether or not someone else did something shitty has no bearing over whether you did something shitty. If that were true, every movie that got a bad review could simply say, what about From Justin to Kelly?”

Finally, Oliver explained how successfully the right has established its own counter-narrative to the special counsel’s inquiry “by framing it as part of a grand conspiracy to bring down Trump”.

“Night after night, Hannity paints a picture where the investigation itself is one gigantic scandal, with the Democrats, the FBI, the Deep State and the establishment Republicans teaming up to bring down Trump,” the host added, noting that Hannity is fond of saying that “Spygate” makes “Watergate look like stealing a Snickers bar”.



“None of this even addresses the most obvious question,” Oliver said. “If absolutely everyone from Hillary to the FBI to Trey Gowdy was in on a Deep State plan to sabotage Trump, how the fuck is he president right now?”

