Last Week Tonight with John Oliver talks Steve Mnuchin, NFL, corporate consolidation

On this week’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the show’s host really had to make up for lost time. After all, he was at the Emmys last week, and there were quite a few different stories that he had a chance to take on.

The NFL – You knew that he was going to bring up this, but the way he did so, bringing up the anger and hypocrisy by some in the news media over it, was incredibly priceless. Had this happened earlier in the week, maybe there would’ve been an even larger segment all about it.

Tom Price – Price has been at the center of controversy over his government spending, especially when it comes to booking private planes. Oliver took advantage of that, and delivered a good segment all about the various forms of transit he could’ve taken instead of a private plane.

Steve Mnuchin – This segment was effectively similar, with the main difference here being that Oliver had even more ammo in the form of his wife, who wore designer clothing and had a great time sharing pictures for a time on social media.

Corporate consolidation – This was the main segment tonight, and while it may not have been flashy given all of the headlines out there right now, it was absolutely valuable. Mergers are things that happen all across the board, and they happen so often that you don’t often think about them all that much.

The biggest industry that Oliver took on tonight was the airline industry, which made some sense when there are so few airlines out there. Think about all of the mergers that are out there between airlines, and how over time we’ve seen a rise in baggage fees. This was a fascinating segment in terms of information, in terms of antitrust laws, and in terms of seeing Oliver straight-up go after his own parent company Time Warner, who is in the midst of a merger with AT&T. While he could’ve done something more political tonight had he really wanted to, we appreciated him actually focusing on something that matters. Oliver actually does see the forest through the trees sometimes, while also giving you a segment that is all about Jim Kramer pressing a button full of fart noises.

Finally…

Beyond all of this, we do especially have to say that the takedown of Megyn Kelly was all sorts of genius, mostly in how we all tend to forget so quickly everything that she said during her tenure at Fox News.

What did you think about this week’s Last Week Tonight, and some of the various segments that we saw? Share below!

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