John Oliver broke with the typical Last Week Tonight format to spend the majority of Sunday night’s episode on Brett Kavanaugh, who is both a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court and, as Oliver calls him, a “walking crushed beer can.”
In the wake of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony where she accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her in high school, Kavanaugh “came straight out of the gate weird,“ according to Oliver, showing a clip of Kavanaugh seeming to get teary-eyed while talking about high school workouts with his school’s quarterback. “I’m starting to think men might be too emotional for the Supreme Court,“ said Oliver. “He’d be really pretty if he smiled more.“
Kavanaugh who Oliver said got noticeably angry, claiming that he was the victim of a smear campaign including assertions that he is the type of a guy who would get in a “fight on a boat in Rhode Island.”
According to Oliver, Kavanaugh’s testimony was marked by dodging questions about whether he would support an FBI investigation, his opening statement was decidedly political, he interrupted senators, and “repeatedly wept at the concept of calendars.”
At the end of the week, according to Oliver, it came down to whether you believed the “the terrified psychology professor who blew up her entire life to relive her trauma on a national stage“ or “Judge Animal House who seemed to be sweatily making up drinking games before members of the Senate.“
After all this, Oliver can’t see a single good reason for conservatives to continue supporting Kavanaugh over an equally conservative replacement candidate who isn’t “an unhinged partisan with multiple allegations of sexual assault hanging over him.“ Oliver’s interpretation of the GOP’s continued support for Kavanaugh is that it’s not only a “f–k you to Democrats, but a f–k you to women.”
Oliver also notes that at the beginning of the week people were concerned the committee would not believe Ford’s accusations, but by the end of the week it seemed that “something darker had happened,” whereby the committee “believed her, but they just didn’t care.”
If Kavanaugh does get confirmed, Oliver is prepared with an apt doppelganger for Last Week Tonight’s Animal Supreme Court. In Oliver’s opinion, Kavanaugh doesn’t deserve to be represented by a dog like the rest of the Supreme Court justices, but by Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers new mascot, which Oliver describes as looking like a “carpet swatch tweaking on bath salts.”
