Brett Kavanaugh: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

tonight this entire show is basically going to be one long recap of one very long week and and one event in particular meaning that sadly there is going to be no time to talk about trump insisting that the un was laughing with him and not at him which it absolutely wasn't nor is there gonna be time to delve into what was clearly the most fun story of the week this all the philadelphia flyers have a new mascot and fans are saying what the that's seven foot tall gritty pretty unveiled today in front of group of kids probably scarred for life yeah yeah those kids should be scarred for life gritty is horrific every single photo of him is appalling i mean look at this one that is a nightmare how about this one that is simply psychotic gritty looks like the end result of the orange mcdonald's fry guy hooking up with grimace and we've been over this a million times before on this show if you're a mcdonald's mascot you do not have sex with another mcdonald's mascot your genetics are too similar and their kids always turn out wings very very weird and incidentally it's not like gritty has any business being a hockey mascot apparently he hasn't really figured out how to navigate on the ice yet he fell multiple times in his debut last night the pittsburgh penguins tweeting lol okay to which gritty responded sleep with one eye open tonight bird holy gritty calm down they're just engaging in some inter-team banter and you've gone straight to i will murder you in your sleep and look there is absolutely nothing that i would love to do more tonight than than talk about gritty all night long from the fact that he's already done a kim kardashian style photo shoot to the fact that and this is true someone has already got an actual tattoo of him on their body interestingly that someone jimmy carter unfortunately though the fun we just had must now stop because instead we need to talk about brett kavanaugh supreme court nominee and walking crushed beer can now on thursday christine blasey ford who was accused kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in 1982 came before the senate judiciary committee to deliver some powerful testimony i am here today not because i want to be i am terrified i am here because i believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while brett kavanaugh and i were in high school right and she did just that describing in detail detail her recollection of how a drunk cavanaugh pinned her down tried to remove her clothing and put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream she insisted that this could not possibly be a case of mistaken identity because she was 100 certain that it was him and after her opening statement she then took questions which sometimes took an odd turn like when the prosecutor to whom the republicans had outsourced their responsibilities seized on a polygraph test that ford had passed did you pay for the polygraph yourself don't i don't i don't think so okay do you know who did pay for the polygraph not yet no i believe you said it hasn't been paid for yet is that correct let me put an end to this mystery her lawyers have paid for her polygraph as is routine wait whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa slow your roller as is routine don't you try and brush her question aside she just cracks this case wide open she found the missing piece of the puzzle specifically a puzzle that reads who cares now ford's testimony was brave and compelling and seemed to affect many on the committee including republican senator orrin hatch who chose to express his admiration in a far from ideal way have you found dr ford credible well it's too early to say i i don't i don't think she's incredible i think she's an attractive good witness but it's way early what do you mean very attractive sir oh in other words she's pleasing oh no no no no pleasing you should not use the word pleasing to describe a sexual assault survivor painfully recounting one of the worst moments of her life you honestly shouldn't really use it to describe anything maybe maybe watching milk mix into your coffee except you know what not even then because the moment you say watching this milk is pleasing you come off like a creepers waiting for everyone to leave the room so he can his coffee the point is by lunchtime on thursday it honestly seemed that kavanaugh's nomination could be finished even fox news was implying as much this was extremely emotional extremely raw and extremely credible and nobody could listen to her deliver those words and talk about the assault and the impact it had had on his life on her life and not have the her heart go your heart go out to her this is a disaster for the republicans that is fox news calling ford's testimony a disaster for the republicans and not like one of those puerto rico disasters you know this time one they might actually care about but then then came cavanaugh's testimony and it is worth looking at it in detail tonight because in every regard it could not have been more different from ford's for starters while she was remarkably composed in discussing traumatic details kavanaugh came straight out of the gate weird in his opening statement not just denying all her allegations but almost breaking down while attempting to paint a foxy image of his time in high school i worked out with other guys at tobin's house [Applause] he was the great quarterback on our football team and his dad ran workouts yeah he's crying at the memory of lifting weights at his friend tobin's house i hate to say it but i'm starting to think that men might be too emotional for the supreme court also also also he'd be he'd be really pretty if he just smiled more and it wasn't just memories of a high school quarterback that was making him tear up i've always had a lot of close female friends i remember talking almost every night it seemed to my friends amy or julie or kristen or karen or suzanne or maura or megan or nikki the list goes on okay that's not testimony though is it that is a plaintive spoken word cover of mambo number five i remember my friends angela pamela sandra and rita and as i continue you know they're getting sweeter [Applause] but when kavanaugh was not choking back tears he was starting to get noticeably angry arguing that he was the victim of a giant conspiracy this allegation was unleashed and publicly deployed over dr ford's wishes and then and then as no doubt was expected if not planned came a long series of false last-minute smears designed to scare me and drive me out of the process before any hearing occurred crazy stuff gangs illegitimate children fights on boats in rhode island i mean come on do i seem like exactly the type of person who would get into a fight on a boat in rhode island seriously you tell me when you picture a fight on a boat in rhode island do you just picture two of me yelling at each other at exactly this pitch and volume is that what you say that if you wanted my haircut you would tell your barber to give you the fight on a boat in rhode island well i would like to see you say that to my face on a boat in rhode island and that's all i have to shout about that you i'll see you on the water and remember remember what you've just seen was him reading from a prepared statement it got even stranger once he started taking questions did you consume alcohol during your high school years yes we drank beer uh my friends and i the boys and girls yes we drank beer i liked beer still like beer we drank beer the drinking age as i noted was 18 so the seniors were legal senior year in high school people were legal to drink and we yeah we drank beer and i said sometimes sometimes probably had too many beers and sometimes other people had too many beers we drank beer we like beer yeah i get that i do i um i get that loud and clear brett's but but the question isn't really do you like beer is it it's how much do you like it just like how the question in jeffrey dahmer's trial wasn't do you like people it was do you like people to a really problematic extent and when pressed on his drinking cavanaugh became either dismissive or outright hostile and it was at those moments you got a real sense of who this man actually is what do you consider to be too many beers i don't know uh you know we whatever the chart says i like beer i don't know if you like beer senator or not um what do you like to drink next one is senator what do you like judge you're saying there's never been a case where you drank so much that you didn't remember what happened the night before or part of what happened that's you're asking about yeah blackout i don't know have you could you answer the question judge i just so you have that's not happened is that your answer yeah and i'm curious if you have okay so first aside from being deeply disrespectful have you is just not the answer of an innocent person if you ask someone if they ever blew a dog and they go i don't know have you that person blew a dog he blew a dog and in all likelihood not just one either and that that surly tone was emblematic of kavanaugh's demeanor throughout the hearing not the tone of a man who hopes to one day have the honor of serving on the supreme court but the tone of someone who feels entitled to be on it and frankly can't believe that you're being such a dick about this and that actually does make some sense because this is a man who has had every imaginable advantage his elite high school and this is true has its own nine whole golf course now am i saying that someone who went to a school with its own golf course should not be on the supreme court yeah yeah i think i am yeah yeah honestly i didn't plan to when i started that sentence but here we are i'm going to stand by it but the cavalry didn't just rely on belligerence to refute ford's charges he brought evidence specifically a calendar from 1982 about which he was and i know this will shock you weirdly emotional why did i keep calendars my dad started keeping detailed calendars of his life in 1978. he did so as both a calendar and a diary christmas time we sit around and he regales the old stories old milestones old weddings old events from his calendars now look i i know that it may seem cruel to make fun of a man crying over his late father's calendars but what if i were to tell you that his father is still alive and was sitting right behind him that's him there and that is why i am now completely comfortable saying that every christmas we'd gather around and dad would regale us with old events from his calendar is the single weirdest thing i've ever heard anybody say and to make it to make it weirder remember kavanaugh just said that his dad started keeping calendars in 1978 when cavanaugh was 13 meaning he would have been 14 at the time his dad had even a single calendar to read to his children from and an adult man reading last year's calendar to his 14 year old son is literally the saddest christmas i can imagine other than being one of the innocent people who gets murdered in the movie die hard that is literally the only other example and and the truth is kavanaugh's calendar may not have actually helped him because while he told the panel he never attended a gathering like the one dr ford describes in her allegation in fact his calendar shows at least one similar event with at least two of the people ford named in her letter and kavanaugh misrepresenting the truth actually became something of a really troubling pattern for instance he repeatedly made this strong claim to poke holes in ford's story i just want to emphasize all four witnesses who are allegedly at the event have said it didn't happen including dr ford's long time friend ms kaiser except this 53 year old frat pledge is actually significantly mistaking the facts there because in reality three of those people merely said that they didn't recall the party as described and ford's friend ms kaiser did specifically say she believes ford's allegation and the fourth person there is kavanaugh himself so kavanaugh just wildly mischaracterized evidence and that is one thing a judge really should know not to do it's basically that and don't tuck your robes into your blue jeans because it's objectively a bad look then then there was the fact that for all of kavanaugh's talk of his wholesome teenage years spent respecting women for their friendships and doing sick reps in tobin's dad's house his high school yearbook tells a very different story for instance he and his bro friends brag about being renata alumni referring to a girl that they knew now kavanaugh claims that that was completely asexual and just clumsily intended to show affection and that she was one of us which is a little hard to believe given that a renata only just found out about it and said the insinuation is horrible hurtful and simply untrue and b if it was just affection for a friend where's the alumni society for amy or julie or kristen or karen or maura especially maura mora most of all now kavanaugh had similarly implausible explanations for other terms in the yearbook specifically those commonly associated with drinking or sex have you i don't know if it's buffed or boofed how do you pronounce that that refers to flatulence we were 16. let's look at uh beach week ralph club biggest contributor what does the word ralph mean in that that probably refers to uh throwing up i'm known to have a weak stomach and i always have devil's triangle drinking game the term devil's triangle is commonly known to refer to a threesome involving two men and one woman so i'm just not buying that unless all your drinking games were named after widely recognized sex acts oh doggy style drinking game uh you pour vodka in a bowl and you lap it up while wearing only a dog collar a fisting drinking game that's gripping a shiraz in each fist and toasting the progress of feminism 69 absolutely drinking game that's listening to brian adams hit song summer of 69 while uneventfully drinking a beer on the porch even c-span callers were not buying this whole drinking game defense go ahead carl hi i just wanted to echo a few things that another caller said which is that a devil's triangle is certainly not a drinking game it's an encounter with two men and a woman we'll go next to mary in bronxville new york i i like to imagine that that guy calls in every day to describe what a devil's triangle is and that was the only day he stood even a chance of getting all the way through his explanation look while it may seem unbelievably petty to give this much attention to our high schoolers yearbook you have to remember that to some extent many were watching this hearing to try and ascertain who was more trustworthy was it the terrified psychology professor who blew up her entire life to relive her trauma on a national stage or was it judge animal house who seemed to be sweatily making up drinking games before members of the senate and yet for some senators kavanagh's poor performance was completely immaterial as they had already made up their mind orrin hatch taking a break from being pleased made the broadcast that it was ridiculous to even ask questions about an event that took place such a long time ago this is a national disgrace the way you're being treated there's been no whisper of misconduct by him in the time he's been a judge what we have are uncorroborated unsubstantiated claims from his teenage years now that is clearly a shitty disingenuous argument though although i will give hatch credit for invoking the phrase teenage years with the voice of a 13 year old whose balls are literally dropping mid-sentence now as for lindsey graham he turned his performative disgust at the process up to 10. this is the most unethical sham since i've been in politics and if you really wanted to know the truth you sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy you're looking for a fair process you came to the wrong town at the wrong time my friend okay first of all lindsey graham sounds like the least intimidating sheriff in the entire wild west you turn back around and get back on your horse mr man because what you're looking at is the soft tender little baby face of justice you came to the wrong town at the wrong time my friends the wrong time pew pew pew baby face justice get on your horse ride but look second lindsey graham is not actually wrong there he looks like a doll that's not allowed to be within 50 feet of a playground but he is not technically wrong this process was deeply flawed but that is because he and the republican majority designed it that way if they wanted to avoid a he said she said situation they absolutely could have but instead they only called two people so we only heard what he said and what she said a much fairer process would have involved gathering evidence and hearing from others like kavanaugh's classmates in particular his high school friend mark judge who ford says was in the room during the alleged assault but that is not how republicans chose to set up the hearing and for all kavanaugh's emotional appeals about wanting his name cleared he was repeatedly asked about whether he supported an fbi investigation and he consistently dodged the question judge kavanaugh will you support an fbi investigation right now i i will do whatever the committee wants to personally do you think that's the best thing for us to do you want to answer look senator i've i i've said i wanted a hearing and i'd said i was welcome anything you'll welcome anything just say you will support an investigation you've been accused of a heinous crime that you insist you did not commit if i were kavanaugh i would be desperately trying to prove my innocence in every possible way fbi investigations polygraph tests sworn affidavits from not only mark judge but also all my other boys from g-town prep i'm i'm talking about tobin timmy squee pj kum rug tookes merck c dubs dirty pete fat andy spliff dog the horn dog bonowitz bona witch's older brother j money and dick you know you know character witnesses and and look at this point let's actually pull back and look at the picture of kavanaugh's character that we now have because even if you don't think he's guilty of sexual assault or even if you think that it's impossible to say whether he is because it happened in his teenage years even then there should be plenty in what we saw this week to cause you real concern because a key part of the job that he is up for is judgment and temperament and this week we saw kavanaugh talk over the top of senators dodge questions and conflate doesn't recall something happening with deny something happened which is again a important distinction for a judge not to mention he repeatedly wept at the concept of calendars and there was one more important moment that i would argue is disqualifying in and of itself because ideally a supreme court justice should make decisions independent of politics kavanaugh himself has stated the court must never be viewed as a partisan institution and he is right about that and yet in his opening statement a document he had time to draft and consider his tone was positively trumpian this whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit fueled with apparent pent-up anger about president trump and the 2016 election fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record revenge on behalf of the clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups now that is absolutely horrifying and it is worth taking a moment now to note the norm that has just been shattered because i know that we're all basically calloused to people talking that way now but we are supposed to have at least nine people left in america who do not talk that way and yet kavanaugh just all but came out and said that he's going to approach his entire tenure as one giant case of me versus the libtard cucks and this this brings me to the most basic question that remains why why this particular why is he the hill that conservatives are willing to die on and i do know that for some of kavanaugh's most ardent supporters this is a purely ideological issue senators may not say it out loud but this woman for kavanaugh did i hope he gets in personally um because i want abortion to stop even if he turns out he's guilty i think i'm still going to support him and i hope he gets in because this could be a good chance to overturn abortion okay so it's fine it's fine to appoint someone who has committed sexual assault to the supreme court as long as they will curtail abortion rights it's a stance that prioritizes human lives as long as you think life begins at conception stops right before a sexual assault and then starts right back up again as soon as that assault is over now obviously obviously i personally do not agree with that but even if ending legal abortion is your ultimate goal there are many conservative judges who could deliver that to you without all of kavanaugh's issues because purely as a judge there is nothing unique about kavanaugh nothing he's not uniquely qualified trump reportedly picked him from a list of 25 names provided by outside groups like the federalist society whose executive vice president explicitly pointed out he had no preference regarding the list is there a leading contender for you no there's not really not no it's the list is really good they're not in order you're just saying no no no you can throw a dart at that list and in my view you'd be fine wow he answered that question about supreme court justices like he was just asked which pickle in a jar is his favorite pickle i i don't know man they're all pickles it's a pickle jar so if it's in this jar it's a pickle but for some reason the republican leadership is continuing to push cavanaugh hard in fact on friday lindsey graham seemed to view kavanaugh with even more relish i've never felt better about him being on the bench than i do right now really you feel better now than before kavanaugh testified do you really mean that or are you afraid that if you don't say it cavanaugh will challenge you to a fight on a boat in rhode island because i do get that he seems like the type the point is after all of this i genuinely cannot see a single good reason for pushing kavanagh over a replacement candidate because you know deep down any judge they choose is almost certainly going to restrict abortion rights you don't need to choose an unhinged partisan with multiple accusations of sexual misconduct hanging over him so it feels like they're doing this just to deliver a you to democrats and even more directly a you to women because when this when this week began the biggest fear for many was that the committee would not believe christine blasey ford but by the time the week ended it seemed that something darker might have happened because it seemed their response was oh we believe you we just don't care and the tragic thing is she knew this was a possibility she said so explicitly during her testimony once he was selected and it seemed like he was popular and that it was a sure vote i was calculating daily the the risk benefit for me of coming forward and wondering whether i would just be jumping in front of a train that was headed to where it was headed anyway and that i would just be personally annihilated she knew publicly reliving the most traumatic event of her life could have absolutely no effect on anything and yet she spoke up anyway it is absolutely incredible the lengths that some people will go to for a free polygraph test and look look look here's the thing here's the thing i am i am not saying that this is a done deal just yet they were desperately pushing cavanaugh through on friday only for extraordinary pressure to force the reopening of the fbi investigation which by the way may well end up being so limited as to be essentially pointless but the fact is only continued pressure has even the slightest chance of stopping cavanaugh's confirmation and if he does as seems increasingly likely make his way to the court we should never forget how that happened or what he represents we certainly will not forget it on this show you may know that for years we've had an all dog supreme court with dogs playing the justices from samuel alito to ruth bader ginsburg right good dog good dog don't die uh good dog good dog sit sit and don't die now now now since 2017 it's actually been a mostly dog supreme court because neil gorsuch is represented on it by a lobster that's because his seat was stolen from merrick garland therefore like a lobster he does not belong there but kavanaugh kavanaugh if he is seated doesn't even deserve that treatment he deserves something that constantly reminds people who he is something hostile consistently up unsettling temperamentally unpleasant and that screams who the allowed this to happen so i pray that we will not have to use this but if we do i see no more fitting embodiment of kavanaugh than this [Music] yes that's right just as the actual supreme court should not have to deal with kavanaugh our animal supreme court should not have to deal with this mutated carpet swatch that appears to be tweaking on bar stops i truly hope it does not come to this and look there is still a chance that we can stop it so please call your senators tomorrow and tell them you do not want to be looking at this for the next 30 years get off the bench you're not even confirmed yet no i don't want to be here i don't want to be a you big weirdo get off that bench you entitled monster

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 14,161,699

Keywords: last week tonight brett kavanaugh, john oliver brett kavanaugh, brett kavanaugh, kavanaugh hearing, kavanaugh

Id: opi8X9hQ7q8

Length: 29min 12sec (1752 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 30 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/hurtsdonut_]

Logic v. Feels.

Let's settle this over a game of the devil's triangle. No boofing around.

[u/EmperorYork]

That polygraph joke towards the end was perfect.

[u/Karukash]

Lay off gritty! He’s a mistake! But he’s OUR mistake! -Native Philadelphian

[u/Sisiwakanamaru]

That Mambo No. 5 comment made me laugh so hard.

[u/its_a_metaphor_morty]

Mirror?

[u/Annber03]

Somebody needs to tell that kid who thinks Kavanaugh will "stop abortion" if he's confirmed that even if the GOP managed to make abortion completely illegal, women are still going to have them. It's just that they won't be having them in safe clinics with doctors who know what they're doing, is all.

Seriously, the GOP's intense obsession with the abortion issue is one of the most infuriating things ever. Aside from their complete inability to respect the fact that this is a very personal decision for a woman to make, and how creepy it is to try and control what we do with our bodies, if they really want the abortion rate to go down, there's far better ways to make that happen by supporting policies that have actually been proven to help with that issue.

[u/ShwarzesSchaf]

That Gritty callback at the end was so perfectly set up.

[u/moffattron9000]

Gritty deserves better than having to be Brett Kavanagh.

[u/SnarkyLurker]

Kavanaugh totally looks like the human embodiment of a fight on a boat in Rhode Island.