‘Pathetic!’ John Oliver Roasts Fox’s Jesse Watters for Pushing Trump’s Reflecting Pool ‘Sabotage Conspiracy’

John Oliver roasted Fox News host Jesse Watters Sunday for pushing President Donald Trump’s claims that vandalism, not botched construction, was behind problems plaguing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, dismissing the theory as “pathetic.”

On HBO’s Last Week Tonight, the comedian revisited the ongoing controversy surrounding Trump’s renovation of the iconic Washington landmark.

“Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool continues to be an absolute trainwreck,” Oliver said, rolling back a report from NBC’s Today show and pointing to reports that the pool has been “plagued by enormous pools of algae,” while “large chunks of blue sealant have been peeling off.”

Oliver said Trump had responded by shifting into “full blame deflection-mode,” referencing the president’s claims that an unidentified vandal deliberately slashed the pool’s liner and his social media attacks on what he called a “crazy pro-algae (likely paid) protestor.”

The comedian then rolled back a clip of Trump defending his liner theory when questioned by reporters.

“We have a, I think, 290, 300-foot slit right through it. Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind,” Trump said before insisting, “Yeah, yeah, we got proof. Well, let’s put it this way. When you have a 350, I think it’s 350, not 250, a 350-foot slit from one end to the other, you think that’s proof?”

“No! No, I don’t,” Oliver cracked. “So, over the course of a minute there, that slit grew from 290 to 300 to 350 feet, depending on how prone to exaggeration Trump felt at any given second.”

He continued to note that experts have said cutting through the liner would be difficult and that the damage was “much more likely” the result of rushed repairs.

Oliver then turned his attention to Fox News to show a clip of Watters pushing Trump’s “sabotage conspiracy” by airing grainy footage of two people reaching into the pool while speculating about possible wrongdoing.

“We don’t know who these people are,” Watters said in the segment. “But what are they doing with their hands in the pool? Are they cutting the lining? Are they peeling off the paint? We don’t know if they’re committing a crime. They’ll probably tell you they dropped their wedding ring.”

“Wait – is that the best you’ve got? God, that is pathetic,” Oliver shot back before pivoting into a personal jab at Watters: “As for, they’ll probably tell you they dropped their wedding ring. Yeah, maybe they did. Maybe those people at the reflecting pool dropped their ring after leaving their wife for a 25-year-old coworker. Jesse would know what that is like.”

As the audience grimaced at the gag, Oliver rounded again, this time on Watters’ past admission that his mother had failed to invite him to Thanksgiving dinner.

The host jabbed: “I do not blame his mom for that; she’s a child psychologist, and she tried her best. Sometimes you just get one that sucks.”

“It does now make much more sense that Jesse will willingly humiliate himself by pursuing the approval of a withholding parental figure that will simply never come and sadly he’ll now die starving for it while his mom spends Thanksgiving in a warm home surrounded by people that she loves,” he said.

Oliver concluded: “It’s basically A Christmas Carol if Scrooge had ignored all the ghosts even though one was literally his mom.”

Watch above via HBO.

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