Don’t Put Faith In Jared And Ivanka, Warns John Oliver

It took John Oliver his entire 22-minute time slot to dismiss the idea that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are somehow going to make the Trump nightmare go away. On the latest Last Week Tonight, the host likened Kushner and Trump to America’s William and Kate, “except in this case both of them are attractive,” but said that the idea that these two are somehow going to be a moderating influence on the president is kind of ridiculous. (Which, we know.) 

Using video evidence and common sense, Oliver makes the point that while Ivanka Trump says that she consistently disagrees with her father, she never gives specifics about the nature of those disagreements. “The assumption that many of us has, that she disagrees with him, isn’t actually based on much,” Oliver said. “Is it possible that she is doing nothing to moderate her father?” He points to a particularly damning interview with Gayle King, where Trump tells her that the impact she has “most people will not actually know about.” 

Oliver also mocked the sprawling portfolio of Herculean tasks that Kushner has been charged with by his father-in-law. Those include brokering peace in the Middle East, tackling the growing opioid crisis, and revamping the entire federal government, an unbelievable amount of responsibility for a person who has remained mostly silent throughout his time in the White House, Oliver points out. But he insists that he is not attacking the couple. 

“I don’t know enough about them to eviscerate them, just as you don’t know enough about them to justify putting any real hopes in them,” he said, before adding: “If they are the reason you are sleeping at night, you should probably still be awake.”