On Sunday night, John Oliver delivered a blistering takedown of newly minted U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on his Emmy-winning HBO show Last Week Tonight, branding him a “truly disgusting” man with a penchant for racism and homophobia.
The following evening, Oliver found himself on the couch opposite Seth Meyers for a Late Night interview. And this time around, the comic aimed his ire at… well, Johnson again, albeit with a smattering of Donald Trump.
When Meyers remarked on the difference between Johnson and Trump, saying “Boris is only pretending to be dumb,” Oliver replied, “There are superficial similarities between Trump and Johnson, obviously, but yet, it is very tactical. You never think that Trump is playing chess mentally, or that he knows how to play chess.”
He added, “Johnson, throughout his whole life, has been very, very good at charming his way out of difficult situations—and it’s not going to work this time.”
After the host asked why that was, Oliver paused. “[Johnson] has, for the first time, a problem where his charm will not apply. Getting through Brexit in a hundred days, or just getting past the deadline for the withdrawal agreement, is going to be incredibly hard. It’s so risky. So, if the election of Trump was America shooting itself in the foot, the election of Boris Johnson is Britain watching that happen, thinking about the ramifications of it, and then shooting themselves in the dick. In a nutshell, that’s what happened.”
To close things out, the two comics discussed whether Oliver got anything of “nutritional value” out of the first round of Democratic debates.
“Not really,” Oliver offered. “It feels like the shoot-around before a basketball game.”