
It’s Been a Busy Week
It’s not a great sign when John Oliver’s generally lighter-side opening segment focuses on a natural disaster‚ but that should tell you something about how things are going. It also doesn’t take into account the Waffle House Index, a very real thing that government officials use to determine the potential and actual severity of hurricanes and other storm-related weather events.
“Waffle House never closes” is an adage known all over the southern United States where the sticky, syrupy breakfast chain is concentrated, and that is not just, as Oliver notes, an indictment of a restaurant chain making its employees work until storm waters are literally lapping at their shins. It’s also a metric some disaster officials actually use to see whether or not a municipality is in for a big, aid-triggering effort. As Oliver puts it, “It is jarring to have something so important conveyed in terms of Waffle House. It’s like finding out NORAD relies on the OshKosh B’Gosh Nuclear Threat Level.”
But that worker-endangering corporate greed and its adoption by state officials as public policy is merely the tip of the French toast point for Oliver, who went deep on unearthed training videos from Waffle House, which are as labyrinthine as they are sort of adorable. Waffle House does not make use of traditional hand-scribbled orders or computer printouts to show line cooks what to make. Waffle House orders, as Oliver noted in mounting, hilarious alarm, involve a code made up of condiment packets and plate placement that seem designed by a hungry raccoon with OCD. If you can’t look at a label-side-up packet of mayonnaise, two naked American cheese slices, and a pair of pickle chips arranged just so on a white plate and know in your soul that you have to cook up a bacon sandwich with egg and cheese, then sorry son, you’re just not Waffle House material.
Responding to corporate training video showing and unseen Waffle House employee reassuringly telling prospective cooks, “Do not let that mayo packet confuse you,” Oliver exploded, “Sorry, if it’s cool with you I am going to let that mayo packet confuse me because I feel insane right now! I was confused when you said ‘two pickle slices in the number three position mean bacon sandwich.’ You could have said ‘Vince Vaughn at a christening on the Fourth of July means cheese omelette’ and it would have had the exact same effect on me because what the actual f**k am I looking at there?!” Don’t say Last Week Tonight isn’t all about hard-hitting exposés, people.
And, hey, tip your Waffle House staff. They’ve earned that and a whole lot more.
And Now This…

The Vanderbilt Commodores football squad beat Alabama last week. Sort of a big deal—unranked Vandy knocked off the number one team in the nation, a team to whom they’d consistently lost over 23 tries stretching over 40 years. So yay, Vanderbilt. What had John Oliver and company slightly stumped was Vanderbilt fans’ reaction to the upset win, where throngs of, we’re guessing completely sober sports enthusiasts tore down their own home goalpost, paraded it miles through downtown Nashville, and then hurled the unwieldy metal contraption into the Cumberland River.
Now you may say Brit Oliver has some nerve expressing disapproval or surprise at sports fans’ sometimes destructive celebrations, hailing as he does from the land of the flying football fan headbutt, but the montage of local news anchors reporting on this act of equipment hijacking and dunking were equally nonplussed. Reactions ranged from shrugs, to the shrug-adjacent statement, “Well, good for them I suppose,” to the more sensible reaction of one anchor who just wouldn’t let it go. “I mean this is theft, and destruction of property,” he noted, not having any of it, “There’s just a free-for-all to do what I want?”
Strangely, he was not comforted by his co-anchor’s explanation that Nashvillians routinely throw everything from cheeseburgers to furniture in the Cumberland, which does seem oddly specific. Anyway, Vanderbilt fans did cost their beloved alma mater $100,000 in fines for the stunt, so… go Vandy?
Our Main Story Tonight
Oh, would that everything could be Waffle House orders and drunken football shenanigans. Sadly, it’s election season, which in 2024 when Donald Trump is the GOP nominee means John Oliver was forced to prep his third “What if Trump wins?” quadrennial presidential election story in a row.
Actually, this year’s story is less about Trump winning—which would be a whole other nightmare for American democracy—but the more likely and pressing, “What if Trump loses and his MAGA minions enact the series of bullsh*t vote-challenging schemes they’ve been planning since the last time their Glorious Leader got his ass kicked and lied about it?” In his main story Sunday night, Oliver did his signature multi-pronged examination of how we got here, what’s in store should Trump lose, and what voters and actual Americans not beholden to a sundowning white supremacist would-be dictator can do about all that.
On the “how we got here front,” Oliver pointed to the oft-forgotten details surrounding the intentional chaos sown by Trump and his allies after Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Sure, there was that whole “incite your thuggish white supremacist followers to literally storm the battlements of democracy to stop the certification of Biden’s win and hang your Vice President for not going along with it” thing. But that one has sort of stuck in people’s minds for some reason.

No, Oliver was talking about 2020 GOP sideshows like recently disbarred Rudy Giuliani publicly accusing Will Smith’s late father of casting a vote for Biden, and the time that a group called the Cyber Ninjas demanded to hand-inspect Arizona ballots the shadowy clan of racist bumblef**ks claimed were actually fakes supplied by some nefarious Asian pro-Biden agents. Oh, the “ninjas” were looking for bamboo fibers in the ballots, because Asia, something Oliver called out as sounding suspiciously like, “the plot of a racist, straight-to-streaming political thriller where Steven Seagal saves President James Woods from wokeness.” Ah, fun, horrifying times.
But again, would that this election were all about mocking a drunken disgraced former lawyer and a gaggle of conspiracy wingnuts. As Oliver explained in what can only be described as a blaring klaxon wake-up call to anyone concerned with ensuring American democracy is a thing come November 5, Republicans didn’t sleep on finding ways to outdo 2020’s election “f**kery.” (Oliver’s word.)
There is the fact that Georgia has put three outspoken, Trump-aligned election deniers on its five-person election board. “Outspoken” also in the fact that Trump himself called out in-attendance lackeys Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King by name at one of his rallies, declaring them “pitbulls for democracy.” Oh, and if you were wondering, asked Oliver, the board member who called legal challenges to the trio’s obvious conflict of interest in overseeing a fair election (Jeffares publicly tweeted out his desire for a Trump administration job) a “lawfare lynching” was a white lady named Janice.
Georgia is just one battleground state (the Electoral College making such things way more important than they should be) where Trump loyalists on election boards are working behind the scenes to pre-f**k this year’s results. But, wow, is Georgia a doozy. As Oliver notes, new laws there demand a full hand count of ballots to take place on election night or the next day, something that’s literally impossible in many districts. And that any minor discrepancies in said counts by exhausted election workers would trigger laws that could throw out the votes from entire precincts based on deliberately vague definitions that board member King is shown defending by saying she didn’t think anyone would ask.
Then there are Trump and company’s spurious claims that massive numbers of undocumented immigrants are being signed up en masse by Democrats at the Department of Motor Vehicles among other places, with the express intent of throwing the election to Kamala Harris. As Oliver, taking one of his trademark deep, cleansing breaths, explained, this is obvious bullsh*t on so many levels. First, replying to Trump’s heated accusations that people fleeing oppression and violence to come to America for a better life are only doing so to vote, Oliver stated that the claim is not only “caked in racism,” but went on, “It’s like assuming someone would break into a bank just so they could free the pens from their chains.”
Of course, the internet and Fox News have ensured that all of Trump’s racist lies about Democrats recruiting non-white murderers, rapists, and serial killers (like his good friend Hannibal Lecter) to surreptitiously go through the arduous voter registration process just to spite him have metastasized in MAGA world’s collective brain.
Oliver showed Fox News figure Maria Bartiromo loudly blaring her scoop about a DMV in Texas setting up tents in the parking lot to register “illegals” and choke up the line of Texans looking to register their oversized pickups as proof of Democrats’ evil scheme. Oliver, armed with pesky facts, debunked the immediately-debunked Bartiromo screed by noting how the town she says this happened in doesn’t have a DMV, how local officials there said it was complete bullsh*t, and how this story—which ran in prime time on the network that had to pay three quarters of a billion dollars for lying about 2020 election fraud—was sourced to a social media post from “a friend of a friend’s wife.” All of which saw Oliver referring to Bartiromo’s nightly show as “FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD With Your Drunkest Aunt, Sundays at 10 on Fox Business.”
As for that “bombshell” video report from Heritage Foundation trolls at election fraud action squad the Oversight Project that your least-favorite, drunkest uncle has been forwarding you purporting to show that an entire Georgia housing project is a hotbed of illegally voting immigrants? Yeah, strap yourself in—it’s bullsh*t as well. (Also, as Oliver notes about the people proliferating such gotcha nonsense online, “‘people you know, love, or are related to’ are very different things.” Block away, everybody, and make your life better.) The video, which was shared by none other than Twitter twit and under-investigation election interference mogul Elon Musk, was summarily debunked by state officials who found none of the so-called suspects were registered to vote as the video claimed, with one subject noting that she claimed she was only so that the pushy racist white boy (my words) knocking on her door with a video crew “would leave her alone.” A lesson we should all learn.
And then there are the new laws in GOP-controlled states which allow random citizens to challenge voter registrations of thousands of people with little or no pretext. Sure, one such citizen voter watchdog admitted that their group looked specifically to challenge people with “ethnic names,” but that could mean anything. Oh wait, I’m being told… yep, it’s racism. Just racism.

Armed with A.I. tools to make rounding up names and addresses of such suspicious brown people easier, one election official noted that one woman named Nancy has been responsible for flooding his office with thousands of spurious challenges, leading a sympathetic Oliver to note, “You can hear the exhaustion in his voice there. ‘Nancy sends me something every day. And she’ll keep sending me things until I’m a husk of the husk I am now. And a gentle breeze carries me away to a beautiful place where there are no… more… Nancys…”
Of course, that’s the point of all these Republican-led vigilante actions against nonexistent (unless you’re a Trump voter) voter fraud: to sow chaos and potentially suppress actual voter turnout. Oliver notes how that poor guy’s point is that there are functional existing safeguards which root out the rare cases of deliberate voter fraud—and eliminate the bureaucratic snafus caused by Nancys the country over like the one that truck one irate voter from the rolls for being deceased, leaving the poor guy to rant to a reporter, “I am real, I am here, I am talking to you.”
And it’s not just the Citizen Nancys and more connected anti-democracy organizers like Cleta Mitchell (another of Trump’s planted election denier pitbulls) we have to worry about. It’s elected fascist-curious officials like Texas Attorney General and guy who should have been locked up years ago, Ken Paxton. It’s figures like Paxton who, acting on even flimsier rumors of voter fraud than Maria “Drunk Aunt” Bartiromo, raided the homes of Latino voting activists earlier this year, including one 84-year-old great-grandmother forced to wait outside in her nightgown while eight of Texas’ finest tossed her home searching for nonexistent evidence. (A federal judge shut down Paxton’s racist voter fraud snipe hunt this time at least.)
So what’s to do about this looming repeat plot to overthrow American democracy on behalf of a babbling sociopath former reality show clown, convicted felon, legally judged rapist, and all-around racist nutcase? Well, as Oliver suggested gingerly, you could vote. A landslide too overwhelming for even Trump’s army of sycophantic seditionists to challenge all the way to the deeply Trump-corrupted Supreme Court would solve a lot of problems.
To that end, Oliver steered voters to the websites www.usa.gov/voting-and-elections and, if you vote by mail and vote early (recommended so you can react to any GOP chicanery), you can track your vote at www.vote.org/ballot-tracker-tools/.
But the biggest tool in your election box this year is, as Oliver noted, your resilience against “the storm of toxic nonsense that Trump and his allies will try to stir up,” a perfect storm of lies, spurious legal challenges, and even political violence that Oliver warns will “be stupider than you can even imagine right now.”

If only all problems could be solved by carefully arranging food items on a Waffle House plate. At least Oliver unveiled his giant-sized version of one kid’s totally awesome “I Voted” sticker being handed out in Michigan. If voting Donald Trump into oblivion (and probably prison) doesn’t make you feel like a jacked werewolf ripping his shirt open, nothing will.
Cardus Endus

After a long and storied career in which he won [checks notes] all the awards and accolades, Rafael Nadal announced his retirement from the sport this week. He’ll still play for Spain in November’s Davis Cup, but then that’s ‘hasta la Rafa’ for the 38-year-old Spanish tennis legend. Here’s a montage of Nadal freaking commentators out.
Last Lines Tonight

“Which I guess makes sense since, like jazz, the idea of a hash brown bowl sounds fun, but when you actually experience it you think to yourself, ‘There is way too much going on here and I’m not sure I’m enjoying any of it.'”
on waffle house describing its hash brown bowls as “the jazz music of the breakfast scene”
“That is a plate with two loose pickle slices, a Kraft single and an unopened mayo packet. That is not a form of communication. It looks like dinner at the Fyre Festival.”
on The waffle house method
“First, let’s agree every rumble show looks like a high school A.V. club member interviewing the assistant principal after a school-wide heelies ban.”
ON election fraud fraud cleta Mitchell’s appearance alongside Daily Wire conspiracy bigot Ben Shapiro
“‘A national neighborhood watch?’ It’s not great the model they want to emulate is basically, ‘What if racial profiling was someone’s hobby?'”
on mitchell’s plan for vigilante voter watchers
“When Georgia looked back over 25 years of its elections, it found that of the 1,600 people who tried to register to vote and whose citizenship could not be verified, none of them had cast ballots. Plus, an analysis of the Heritage Foundation’s own database of 1,500 proven instances of voter fraud found just 68 documented cases of noncitizens voting going all the way back to the 1980’s, with just 10 involving people living in the country illegally. Ten people in the last four decades—that is statistically nothing. More people die from hippo attacks every year. Just something fun to think about when you’re fawning over pictures of Moo Deng. She could kill you, and would kill you, and happily.”
but what about hippo voters?
“A nightgown is one of the worst things to haul a grandma out in. Right after, obviously a coffin, duh. But then: a U Haul, an anaconda, and finally, a novelty t-shirt that says ‘I shaved my balls for this?'”
on Ken paxton’s anti-grandmother crusade
“You do need to define the word ‘reasonable.’ It’s a subjective term, like ‘funny,’ or ‘interesting.’ Those words mean something different to everyone. I personally prove that every Sunday night, I’m doing it right now.”
on a Trump-allied georgia election board member defenDing the board’s undefined rules for challenging election results