John Oliver covered all the high “low” notes of Trump’s past week in office on Last Week Tonight — including his draconian “skinny budget” proposals.
The show saw Oliver dissect what was an eyebrow-raising week for the former reality TV star and real estate mogul, who he described as “consistently monstrous”.
It included insulting the British Intelligence Agency GCHQ, appearing with Germany’s leader Angela Merkel, and continuing to insist that Obama had “tapped” his wires.
Discussing the proposed budget, Oliver made particular note of the planned cuts for the EPA, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), saying all three were symbolic of Trump’s conservative-fueled disdain for any government programs that impeded corporate expansion and profits.
Oliver covered all the greatest hits of what we could expect with this new budget if passed, summing it up as he said: “If anything resembling this budget passes, many of Trump’s own voters will likely wind up getting burned and they are going to be angry.
“And Trump himself should know that, given that in [Trump’s book] The Art of The Deal he said this: ‘You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement. You can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press. And you can throw in a little hyperbole but if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.'”
Oliver ended the segment saying: “Oh, I think people are catching on. It’s taking longer than is perhaps ideal, but soon all of us will be fed up…right up to the tippy f****** top!”
Earlier in the segment, Oliver showed a clip of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer reading a disturbingly long list of departments which Trump wants to effectively cut.
Oliver said: “It is sort of fitting that the list of budget cuts scroll by like the end credits for America. Thanks for helping us out, Agriculture Department. Hope you find a gig with the next country that rises from our ashes.”
In a separate clip, Oliver showed Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney’s admittance on how he came up with the numbers, which were all culled from things that Trump said on the campaign trail.
Oliver was at a loss on how the president’s comments were actually monetized and translated into policy.
But he quipped that the reason for that was he didn’t speak “fluent toddler psychopath”.
Last Week Tonight airs Sundays at 11:00 PM ET/PT on HBO