John Oliver is very confused.
The Last Week Tonight host tried to unpack the mathematical equations of Donald Trump’s Cabinet on Sunday, but was ultimately at a loss.
In an episode taped before shots were fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Oliver said, “It seems for the second time in one minute, I found myself responding to a high-level Trump official with, ‘That’s not how math works,’” he said, after rolling a clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. telling Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, that “Trump has a different way” of calculating percentages.
“There’s two ways of calculating percentage,” Kennedy also said in the clip from his Senate hearing last week. “If you have a 600 percent drug and you reduce it to 10, that’s a 600 percent reduction.”
The weird math was Kennedy’s attempt to come to Trump’s rescue after the president claimed his administration “secured gigantic discounts” on prescription drugs, “with price differences from four to five, and even 600 percent.”
Responded Oliver, “I’m sorry, what?!” The MAGA math became even stranger for the late-night host as he delved into FBI Director Kash Patel’s use of fractions to defend himself from allegations of intoxication while on the job.
Patel claimed in the clip Oliver rolled on the show that he’s worked “twice as many days as every director before me. What that means is, I’ve taken half as many days off as those before me. What that means is, I’ve taken a third less vacation than those before me.”
Joked Oliver, “Oh yes, the surefire sign that someone hasn’t been drinking—sudden uncontrolled belligerence... Even I know, if someone asks, have you been drunk or absent as FBI director, to start with, ‘No,’ rather than…vomiting out an incoherent string of fractions!”
The host also quipped, “Honestly, between RFK and Kash, it’s looking like Trump’s entire Cabinet needs to spend a little more time in remedial algebra and a little less time at a gym for just necks,” before concluding with a little math himself, as he took stock of the state of the country.
“Between between RFK, Kevin Warsh, and Kash Patel, and the steady threat of our nearly octogenarian president enveloping the entire world in another ‘biggie’ of a world war, it has been an absolute mess of a week in Washington—and for things to get even marginally better anytime soon, the level of stupidity in this administration would have to frankly be reduced by, if I may quote this, rapidly decaying portrait, at least 600 percent.”
