Responding to nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, John Oliver didn't mince words.
“We are at the end of a generational battle,” he said. “And the heartbreaking thing is that we lost. And that hurts.” Via the A.V. Club:
Oliver had some solutions. Shit-can Republicans from the presidency, Senate, and anywhere else the increasingly desperate right-wing minority is abandoning all pretense of honoring the concept of American democracy in order to cling to power. Statehood for D.C. and P.R. Abolish the Electoral College and the filibuster (both of which Oliver’s made strong cases for elsewhere.) Adding to the Supreme Court is risky, but, according to Oliver, might be the only way to get anything meaningful done. That said, term limits for those justices is certainly doable, so that—and just spitballing here—a shriveling conservative minority with no scruples whatsoever could steal three Supreme Court seats, thus ensuring their pinched, historically unpopular hate-and-greed positions hold Court in defiance of the actual will of the actual people.
Signing off, Oliver wasn’t playing, calling out Republican shamelessness (“First of all, fuck you, Kevin,” Oliver spat at GOP Senator Kevin McCarthy for whining about Democrats rigging an already rigged system), before restating, plainly, that these’s a whole lot of work to be done in an America whose carefully disguised innate bigotry has—thanks to Trump, McConnell, and their accomplices—been stripped bare. Daunting as hell, but at least leaving anyone still invested in any semblance of justice, fairness, and plain human decency a clear look at the sneering face of American institutional oppression.
Summing up a system meticulously constructed to protect the rule of the prejudiced, the opportunistically power-hungry, and the very, very white, Oliver noted, “That is not a mandate, and it’s not democracy. It’s a fucking travesty.”