John Oliver and Stephen Colbert Wonder When Collusion With a Foreign Power Became a Partisan Issue
John Oliver’s show may be on a break for a couple of weeks, but that didn’t stop him from weighing in on the latest development in what Last Week Tonight has long been calling “Stupid Watergate”: the Trump-Russia scandal. On Wednesday, Oliver joined Stephen Colbert on The Late Show to talk about Donald Trump, Jr.’s self-published email chain, which revealed that he met with a “Russian government attorney” after being promised dirt about his father’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. But Oliver couldn’t decide whether the emails will even amount to anything, given our current political climate.
“This seems serious, but do we live in a world devoid of consequences now?” asked Oliver. “I forget where we are in human history. That’s the kind of mind-blowing part of it. You think, this seems like a seismic event, but it might be nothing.”
Colbert noted that the outrage on this story is coming disproportionately from the left. “I’m used to a world where we’re divided on things like abortion, or taxes, or government-controlled health care—polarizing issues,” he said. “Have we come to a nation where colluding with a hostile foreign power to manipulate our election is a left-right thing?”