You knew John Oliver would bring up Donald Trump’s indictment by a grand jury, and he expected you to expect him to. The problem is, he doesn’t feel like we know enough about the actual charges to even talk about it.
Joking it had been a “quiet” week, Oliver started out Sunday’s episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight by noting that some of the biggest news of the past seven days had been the revelation that the Tyrannosaurus rex had lips, CBS’ daytime drama The Young and the Restless’ celebrating 50 years on the air and a photo of the pope wearing a puffy jacket going viral before it was revealed to be fake.
Oh, and a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Trump on charges involving payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter.
“Donald Trump became the first-ever former president to be indicted on criminal charges,” Oliver said, adding emphatically: “Look, I would talk more about the Trump indictment if we even knew what the exact charges were right now, but we don’t.”
Instead, he used his opening segment to address the protests in France — which he called “Europe’s high school bully” — over the recently raised retirement age. Citizens have taken to the streets by marching, striking, chanting and even setting fires to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular retirement reform, which raised France’s legal retirement age from 62 to 64. He pushed the bill through France’s parliament without a vote.
Oliver played footage from a news broadcast showing that even the firefighters have stopped working to put out the fires and instead joined sides with the protesters.
“It’s true,” Oliver said. “People are so pissed at what Macron’s been doing that firefighters have started siding with fire instead of him, and it’s honestly kind of jarring to see fires in Paris that were started by something other than their usual cause — the explosive heat generated by Ina and Jeffrey [Garten]’s relentless fucking at their Parisian apartment,” he joked of the couple who recently celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary.
Oliver went on to point out that a retirement age of 62 is still pretty low among Western nations.
“In Germany, the comparable retirement age is 65. In Italy, it’s 67. And in the U.S., the retirement age is NO,” he joked, showing a photo of an elderly man working at a Walmart. “So France is lucky to have the kind of bold social welfare policy that’s getting rarer nowadays, but that is probably why they are fighting so hard to protect it.”
Oliver also showed news footage of a couple enjoying wine at an outdoor cafe, completely ignoring a fire burning in the street just a few yards away, noting that moment was “quintessentially French.”
Said Oliver: “Wow, that is on brand. I think it is safe to say that after a nuclear holocaust, the only creatures left standing will be cockroaches and an outlandishly relaxed wine-sipping French couple entirely unfazed by the obliteration of society.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: Hollywood
