John Oliver opened his latest episode of Last Week Tonight with footage of Donald Trump’s partial demolition of the East Wing of the White House to make room for his $300m, 90,000sq ft gilded ballroom. “Those images are distressing, especially when you know it’s all to build a giant ballroom in a style best described as ‘Med Spa Versailles’,” he said. “And yet, the demolition of the White House, a metaphor that, if anything, is too on the nose, was just the tip of Trump’s iceberg this week.”
Oliver also noted Trump’s demand that the justice department pay him $230m as restitution for the legal cases it pursued against him when he left office in 2021 – a demand that would be rubber-stamped by two members of his own cabinet.
