Despite focusing his newest Last Week Tonight episode on myth-busting voter regulations, John Oliver was still able to discuss the pandemic news destined to become late-night fodder for the indefinite future: Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, which came after the president, for months, continually gave zero shits about the virus as a threat. “It was news that felt both shocking and utterly inevitable,†Oliver explained, recapping Trump’s busy week on the campaign trail before he tested positive. “What I do know is that, so far, the White House has handled this situation terribly. So many of the decisions that Trump and those around him made this week look absolutely appalling in hindsight, from his family refusing to wear masks at Tuesday’s debate, to failing to notify anyone on the Biden team that they may have been exposed, to the fact that the fundraiser he attended just before testing positive was a fucking buffet.â€
However, Oliver saved most of his ire for Amy Coney Barrett’s “utterly horrifying†SCOTUS nomination at the White House in late September, which has since emerged as a super-spreader event thanks to everybody reveling in maskless canoodling. “There is something utterly infuriating about watching them hugging each other when many in this country haven’t seen their families for months or have died alone in a hospital. And it’s not just that they’re putting themselves at risk. More importantly, it’s that they’re risking infecting others. The thing about a highly contagious virus is your recklessness could end up killing someone you never meet. And they’re still doing it,†Oliver said. “Republicans seem to be handling this outbreak the way they’ve handled the whole pandemic: with a mixture of denialism, hubris, and treating it more as a PR crisis than one of public health.†On a scale from Colbert to SNL, we’d put Oliver’s schadenfreude in the middle.