John Oliver blasts Mike Johnson’s “ridiculous” decision to blur faces of Jan. 6 insurrectionists

John Oliver thinks it’s “ridiculous” that House Speaker Mike Johnson is adamant about blurring the faces of Jan. 6 participants as more footage from inside the Capitol will be publicly released soon. 

During a press conference last Tuesday, of the Jan. 6 footage, Johnson said, “We have to blur some faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ.”

“These people were part of an armed insurrection and also, there was merch! It wasn’t exactly a secret!,” the “Last Week Tonight” host noted during a recent episode. Oliver added that Johnson is “heavily implicated” in Jan. 6, namely by Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who described Johnson as “one of the intellectual architects of pushing back on the stolen election.”  

Oliver also shared a clip of ABC reporter Rachel Scott questioning Johnson’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, much to the dismay of his far-right colleagues. In the clip, Lauren Boebert and Virginia Foxx can be heard booing Scott and yelling “shut up” repeatedly.

“I hate to be that guy, but ‘Boo, shut up’ is not no,” Oliver joked.

Oliver eventually closed the episode on a bleak note: “It’s too late. He’s already speaker. For all of the fear of a second Trump term, it’s worth remembering our current speaker of the House is an anti-LGBT bigot, who believes in more accountability for his son’s search engine history than he does for the people who tried to overthrow the government.”