“We did not want to talk about the election at all this week. We so badly wanted to give everyone a break,” John Oliver apologized to viewers at the top of Sunday’s Last Week Tonight. The show had to dump a segment about pirates running for election in Iceland, he said regretfully, mourning the scrubbing of “some solid eye-patch jokes.”
“It is with a heavy heart we must begin with the 2016 election, or, as you may know it, The Sh*t-Filled Cornucopia That Just Keeps On Giving 2016,” Oliver began the show.
He blamed FBI director James Comey’s Friday announcement the bureau is reviewing its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State, after the discovery of new emails that appear to be pertinent to the case.
“And if this shitty development in a shitty campaign season were not already grim enough, there is also the matter of where this latest campaign problem came from,” Oliver complained, noting the emails were discovered while investigating allegations that Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner, sexted an under-aged girl.
“It seems Anthony Weiner is forcing the nation to re-litigate the entire email controversy, and putting Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency in serious danger,” Oliver marveled, calling this an “obviously… disgusting way for the emails case to come to light.”
On the bright side, Veep Joe Biden’s reaction, when informed of the Weiner connection during a televised interview was priceless. [Biden: “Oh, god.”]
Most frustrating, voters don’t know if this is a huge problem, Oliver said, since FBI director James Comey noted in his letter to Congress, the agency cannot yet assess whether the new material even is significant. Some sources are telling reporters that Clinton is not implicated in the new emails and did not even send them.
“So nine days out from the election, the FBI has delivered the equivalent of a mystery box and, like the box from the end of Se7en, it could contain anything from nothing to Gwyneth Paltrow’s head – although it almost definitely contains Anthony Weiner’s penis,” Oliver snarked.
And, the chance of getting this resolved before the election is zero.
“So, to recap, the grinding hell of this election has thrown in yet another twist with the election potentially hanging in the balance, all thanks to the fact Anthony Weiner allegedly sexted with a 15-year-old girl,” Oliver recapped.
“A month ago when Donald Trump tweeted that we should check out a sex tape of a former Miss Universe contestant, I said if you looked up you would see rock bottom,” Oliver recounted. “Well if you look up now you will see absolutely nothing… We have burrowed through, not just rock bottom, but through the core of the earth and we’ve come bursting out the other side, startling kangaroos. And we’re currently hurtling toward outer space where there is no up, down, light or darkness – just an endless void in which death comes as sweet, sweet relief. Please let this thing be over soon.”