John Oliver returns to remind viewers that Trump's scandals are worse than Clinton's

Culture

Ahead of the first presidential debate Monday night, John Oliver returned from a brief hiatus to HBO's Last Week Tonight to compare the presidential candidates' respective scandals. Oliver prefaced that it's a tough election this year, referring to it as "the electoral equivalent of seeing someone puking so you start puking and then someone else is puking and pretty soon everyone is puking 2016." 

However, for any voters still on the fence, Oliver had a pretty straightforward conclusion: Donald Trump's scandals are far worse than Hillary Clinton's. 

Oliver started with Clinton — specifically, on the focus on her emails and the Clinton Foundation. In both cases, the host explains, the severity of the scandals were overblown. The FBI didn't deem Clinton's email scandal one that would support criminal charges, while the Clinton Foundation's most indicting donations — four from Russia — were vetted by several government agencies (plus, as Oliver points out, she wasn't involved in the decision). 

"We've spent several frustrating weeks trolling through all the innuendo and exaggerations surrounding [Hillary's] email and foundation scandals, and the worst thing you can say is: They both look bad, but the harder you look, the less you actually find," Oliver notes. "There's not nothing there; what is there is irritating rather than grossly nefarious. And this is where it's instructive to compare her to her opponent: Donald Trump, America's wealthiest hemorrhoid." 

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Oliver detailed the absurd excuses Trump has made for not releasing his tax returns, as well as a Washington Post report on the real estate mogul using money from the Trump Foundation to purchase portraits of himself and a signed football helmet from Tim Tebow (who was such a bad NFL quarterback he's now trying to play baseball). 

"The point is, this campaign has been dominated by scandals, but it is dangerous to think there is an equal number on both sides," Oliver adds. "You can be irritated by some of Hillary's — that is understandable — but you should then be fucking outraged by Trump's."

The best analogy to conclude which candidate is better suited for office, then, was with raisins in a cookie. Per Oliver, Clinton — like many politicians — has a few raisins, unveiling a cookie from underneath his desk. Trump's scandals, however, warrant more than a few more raisins: You'd need to shower yourself in them. So that's just what Oliver did. 

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Watch the full segment below.