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John Oliver roasts Mike Johnson & his creepy internet monitoring app

John Oliver on the December 10, 2023, episode of Last Week Tonight
John Oliver on the December 10, 2023, episode of Last Week Tonight. Photo: Screenshot

Host John Oliver opened this week’s episode of Last Week Tonight with a monologue roasting House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for the latest in what is becoming a steady stream of disturbing revelations.

Since Johnson became speaker of the House in October, his anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs and extensive history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights have come under increased scrutiny alongside his key role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And, as Oliver put it, last week Johnson “continued to remind everyone that beneath his mild-mannered exterior lurks a far-right conservative.”

As the host noted, Johnson announced recently that he would make 44,000 hours of footage from the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol available to the general public but said that his office had blurred the faces of insurrectionists to protect them from “retaliation,” which included prosecution by law enforcement.

“If there was any hope Johnson might moderate his views now that he’s speaker, that is gone,” Oliver continued, adding that in the past week alone, the speaker sent out a fundraising email expressing alarm that high schoolers increasingly identify as LGBTQ+ and accepted an award from Christian Nationalist group the National Association of Christian Lawmakers at a gala where other speakers compared homosexuality to pedophilia. According to Media Matters, one TV evangelist who was scheduled to speak at the event has claimed that “homosexuality is three times worse than smoking.”

“The only thing a smoking habit and someone’s sexuality have in common is that they could both be strongly influenced by this picture of Joe Camel,” Oliver joked as an image of the brawny Camel Cigarettes mascot appeared onscreen.

John Oliver on the December 10, 2023, episode of Last Week Tonight
Screenshot John Oliver on the December 10, 2023, episode of Last Week Tonight.

“Because there was so little vetting before Johnson became speaker, we keep discovering new unsettling facts about him,” Oliver continued, noting that Johnson and his teenage son use an app called Covenant Eyes to monitor each other’s internet browsing for porn.

“If Mike Johnson’s son is watching this, I’m really sorry,” Oliver said. “Your dad seems like a lot. And if he is watching this online, then I guess Mike probably is, too. Hi Mike! You must’ve gotten that alert after we showed the picture of the camel.”

Oliver went on to roast the app itself for its unintentionally homoerotic ads and its oddly suggestive logo. “If you’re a company trying to stop people from constantly thinking about sex, maybe don’t make your logo look like a tantalizing hole,” he joked.

“Are we absolutely sure this is an anti-porn app? Because these two have definitely f–ked!” he said of two animated male characters in one of Covenant Eye’s ads.

John Oliver on the December 10, 2023, episode of Last Week Tonight
Screenshot John Oliver on the December 10, 2023, episode of Last Week Tonight.

Oliver then moved on to the recent revelation that Johnson wrote the forward to Scott McKay’s The Revivalist Manifesto, a book containing anti-LGBTQ+ insults, a defense of a racial slur, and support for fringe conspiracy theories like Pizzagate. While Johnson has recently denied reading the offensive passages of the book and claimed that he “strongly disagrees” with them, Oliver noted that Johnson promoted the book on his podcast last years, saying, “I obviously believe in the product, or I wouldn’t have written the foreword. So, I endorse the work.”  

“Yeah, it turns out his endorsement was pretty full-throated,” Oliver said. “Which incidentally is a Google image search strictly off limits to Mike and his son.”

“I’m sure that’s not the last upsetting revelation we’re gonna get about him, but it’s too late. He’s already speaker,” Oliver continued. “For all the fear of a second Trump term, it is worth remembering our current Speaker of the House is an anti-LGBT bigot who believes in more accountability for his son’s search history than he does for the people who tried to overthrow the government. But thankfully this isn’t insurrection footage. He can’t blur his views and hope no one notices because much like his son, we’re all unfortunately now watching him.”

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