As we inch closer to the first presidential debate Monday night, John Oliver returned to form on Last Week Tonight to examine many of Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s scandals that have dominated headlines during the 2016 election. For him, one of them is “quantifiably worse.”
Over the next 20 minutes, Oliver explains the ethical scandals that have dogged both Clinton and Trump. Clinton has had a number over the years, most notably Benghazi, her email servers (for which the FBI declined to criminally prosecute her), and a legal yet “annoyingly handled” donation to the Clinton Foundation that Clinton herself didn’t have anything to do with. (Oliver even made up a scandal that sounded believable enough.)
But Trump’s ethical failings are much worse, according to Oliver, who pointed to how often he lies; Trump University; his shoddy business deals; the Trump Foundation spending funds (none donated by Trump himself) to settle Trump lawsuits, as revealed by the Washington Post; the Trump Foundation’s illegal donation to an attorney general’s reelection campaign; and how he still refuses to release his taxes.
“The point is, this campaign has been dominated by scandals, but it is dangerous to think there is an equal number on both sides,” he said. “And you can be irritated by some of Hillary’s—that is understandable—but you should then be fucking outraged by Trump’s.”
To bring things to a head, Oliver compared the two candidates’ ethical failings to raisins. Clinton is like a cookie that has more raisins than usual, but Trump has so many that Oliver can practically swim through them on his desk.
