Watch John Oliver Torch GOP Impeachment Talking Points From Fox Hosts Ingraham and Varney

It’s hard to understand. It’s boring. It didn’t actually happen — it was only attempted.

All of those anti-impeachment talking points have been trotted out, in some form, by conservative lawmakers and pundits in recent days. And all of them were thoroughly shut down by HBO’s John Oliver on Sunday night.

In a rollicking Last Week Tonight opener, the comic lit fire to the arguments against impeaching President Donald Trump. And, in the process, he got some shots in on a few Fox hosts.

Oliver started with a jab at Laura Ingraham — who argued, last week, that “attempted bribery isn’t in the Constitution.”

“She’s saying that because the deal didn’t go through, it didn’t matter,” Oliver said. “But a crime doesn’t stop being a crime if it doesn’t work. If you’re trying to blow up an airliner and your vest doesn’t go off, you don’t get to go, ‘Well, no harm, no foul,’ and then sit there watching ‘Detective Pikachu’ for the rest of the flight!”

Then, Oliver took on those — including Fox Business host Stuart Varney — who have been dismissing the impeachment proceedings as being insufficiently compelling.

“It was unutterably boring, wasn’t it?” Varney said last week. “And did you watch any of this stuff? I mean, with Richard Nixon there was a break-in. With Bill Clinton there was sex in the Oval Office. With Trump, it’s a phone call to Ukraine. What the devil is that all about?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry this gigantic abuse of power isn’t sexy enough for you, Stuart,” Oliver snarked. “Although I will say, if robbery and sex are what you want, the Russia scandal had hacked emails, and Trump did pay $130,000 to a porn star. Do either of those scandals turn your crank, Stu?!”

Finally, Oliver went after the idea that the scandal is too complex to understand.

“Where there’s no quid or pro, you can’t keep saying ‘quid pro quo,'” Washington Examiner columnist Charles Hurt said on Fox & Friends last week. “Even though, I don’t even know what that means, really. I don’t know what language “quid pro quo” is.

“It’s latin,” Fox’s Steve Doocy replied.

“Yes, it is Latin,” Oliver said. “And the only thing there more shocking than the stupidity is watching someone be accurately corrected by Steve Doocy, a man whose business card reads — and this is true — ‘an idiot.'”

Watch above, via HBO.

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