John Oliver Rips Susan Collins for Hoping Trump Learned a Lesson With Impeachment: ‘What Are You Talking About?’
John Oliver used the season premiere of Last Week Tonight to rip President Donald Trump over his impeachment and all the actions he has taken since acquittal.
Returning to the show after a three month break, Oliver started by railing against the “sham investigation” into Trump’s conduct from the Ukraine Scandal. Oliver also scoffed at moderate Republicans like Susan Collins (ME) who voted to acquit Trump in his Senate trial and then justified their decision by hoping that the experience of impeachment taught Trump a lesson.
“What are you talking about, Susan?” Oliver asked incredulously. “Of course he hasn’t learned his lesson! Trump never learns his lesson! This is a man whose first-born child was Donald Trump Jr., and he kept having children! There’s no lesson-learning capacity in the man.”
Oliver used that point to launch into a diatribe about how Trump involved himself in the Justice Department’s sentencing of his former adviser, Roger Stone. This was especially “appalling” to Oliver since he also noted that Attorney General Bill Barr seems to be directly intervening in criminal justice matters related to Trump and his allies.
“This is America. Your experience with the criminal justice system should not depend on how much the president likes you,” Oliver said. “Susan Collins may have actually been right about one thing: Trump did learn a lesson from his impeachment trial; specifically, I can get away with anything because nobody will hold me accountable.”
Eventually, Oliver acknowledged that Barr recently complained about how Trump’s tweets have put him in an awkward situation that make it look like he’s being influenced by the president. Barr pushed back on the notion that that was true, but Oliver was very skeptical, saying they, “weren’t so much ‘Don’t interfere with the Justice Department’ as they were ‘Don’t publicly interfere with the Justice Department because I’m already doing what you want.’”
