john oliver budget

Screengrab via LastWeekTonight/YouTube

John Oliver demonstrates why Trump’s budget makes no sense

'Translating the noises that come out of Trump’s face into hard policy prescriptions is almost impossible.'

 

Michelle Jaworski

Layer 8

Posted on Mar 20, 2017   Updated on May 24, 2021, 8:17 pm CDT

Donald Trump’s federal budget proposal has received swift backlash since its release, as details revealed it would cut funding for the environment, the arts, and programs that aided low-income Americans. And while he knows bad cuts when he sees them, John Oliver is amazed by how Trump’s staff even came up with a budget in the first place.

According to Office of Budget and Management director Mick Mulvaney, his office used Trump’s own statements to figure out which areas he wanted to increase and decrease spending. Oliver’s attempts to make sense of the “toddler psychopath” failed tremendously, but he had a bigger point to make: the cuts will devastate the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which only make up a small fraction of the federal budget.

“But if anything resembling this budget passes, many of Trump’s own voters will likely wind up getting burnt, and they are going to be angry,” Oliver said.

Trump’s own words in The Art of the Deal hint at what could be coming. A con only works for so long, and people are catching on.

But Oliver also made time to cover the latest edition of Trump’s false claim of wiretapping, which has now escalated into ticking off some of the U.S.’s closest allies, with its claim that British intelligence helped Barack Obama spy on him. Press secretary Sean Spicer reportedly privately apologized after stating that Trump stood by that claim—but later denied that he apologized, saying that the Trump administration didn’t have any regrets. If anyone should have regrets, Oliver noted, it should be Spicer.

“You should regret everything: every life decision that brought you into this regretful job that you regretfully hold,” Oliver said. “At this point, you should really be more regret than man. A Regretitor if you will: half-man, half-regretful beast, cursed to roam the planet until one day you’re finally released from your prison by the inevitable firing you’ll receive in, oh let’s say, two-and-a-half weeks, shall we?”

H/T Huffington Post

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*First Published: Mar 20, 2017, 8:02 am CDT