Last Week Tonight host John Oliver ridiculed President-elect Donald Trump’s potential cabinet picks as “a deep bench of idiots, freaks and wannabe tough guys.”
Speaking about a CNN chart outlining possible Trump picks, the HBO host said, “It looks like a ‘choose your fighter’ screen where the only thing they’re fighting is the arc of the moral universe. It looks like an advent calendar where every circle opens up to a tiny piece of literal s***. It looks like a game board for Guess Who? Oops! All a**holes.”
Trump has already named campaign manager Susie Wiles to be his chief of staff and New York Representative Elise Stefanik to be his ambassador to the United Nations.
Oliver focused on the question marks under the names of Elon Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr.
“Even the chart itself is surprised that they’re there, and honestly, chart – Same,” he said.
The host mocked Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, as an “enemy to all animals, friend to all measles.”
“Trump plans to let him go wild on medicines, you know, really get in there and mix things up, like a worm in a frontal cortex,” Oliver said.
Musk has pitched himself as the possible leader of a government efficiency commission charged with cutting government spending. The billionaire has suggested that he could cut $2tn from the budget, but that it would mean “temporary hardship” for the public.
“Seeing a man worth $300 billion telling the country to endure hardship and live within their means fills me with a feeling that apparently I cannot say out loud for legal reasons,” Oliver told his audience.
“Ultimately I don’t see Musk going through the federal budget line by line because he’s just going to get bored and go back to something more his speed like, I don’t know, finding a place to do another big-boy jump,” he added.
CNN listed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as a possible US attorney general in a Trump cabinet. He’s under federal investigation for bribery and he has settled a state securities fraud case by paying $300,000 in restitution. He also agreed to hundreds of hours of community service and 15 hours of legal ethics training, The Daily Beast noted.
Paxton also refused to sign a letter expressing disapproval of violence ahead of the election. Oliver said being “horny for another insurrection” shouldn’t be one of the qualifications to be attorney general.
Meanwhile, Oliver blasted Kash Patel, cited by CNN as a possible CIA director, for being “so devoted to Trump” that “he even has a series of children’s books called The Plot Against The King” in which the king, Donald, goes up against “Hillary Queenton.”
Trump considered appointing Patel as deputy FBI director in his first term before the idea was crushed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, according to reports.
Oliver noted that Barr wouldn’t be there to stop it this time and outlined how Patel has said on Steve Bannon’s podcast that he would target the media.
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice,” Patel said.
“I don’t love the sound of that,” Oliver said, adding that the rundown of potential cabinet picks was “just scratching the surface of a deep bench of idiots, freaks, and wannabe tough guys eager to get into the White House and start breaking things. In January, things can get very bad very fast.”
