In this "Last Week Tonight" segment, which debuted on HBO Sunday night, John Oliver dives deep into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony from Thursday. While plenty of commentators have focused on various individual aspects of Kavanaugh's performance—the anger and the tearfulness, for starters—Oliver, in his nearly half-hour monologue, focuses on trying to take the overall measure of a man he calls "Judge Animal House."
As usual, Oliver is profanely funny (if you're watching this at work, you might want to wear headphones), particularly when talking about Kavanaugh's claim that his youthful mention in his high school yearbook of a "devil's triangle" (widely known to be a threesome between two men and a woman) was actually a reference to a "drinking game."
Speaking of alcohol, Oliver finds Kavanaugh's belligerent, elusive responses to questions on the topic to be the most troubling—and most telling: "When pressed on his drinking," Oliver says, "Kavanaugh either became dismissive or outright hostile. And it was at those moments that you got a real sense of who this man actually is." Cue a clip of Sen. Amy Klobuchar asking him if he ever drank so much he couldn't remember what happened, to which Kavanaugh, ducking the question, asks, "Have you?"
Oliver says "that surly tone was emblematic of Kavanaugh's demeanor throughout the hearing. Not the tone of a man who hopes to one day have the honor of serving on the Supreme Court, but the tone of someone who feels entitled to be on it, and frankly can't believe that you're being such a dick about this."
Spoiler alert: Stay tuned to the end of the segment for a special appearance by the Philadelphia Flyers' new mascot Gritty—or a guy in a Gritty-like costume, at least.
