John Oliver Calls Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans 'Complete Lunatics'

John Oliver called Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans "two complete lunatics who've never blinked once in their lives" on Sunday night's episode of HBO's "Last Week Tonight." The line came during a segment on the November 3 midterm elections, when Oliver pointed to a picture of the pair taken from the new Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim documentary "You Can See Everything."

The quip landed mid-monologue about Republican candidates avoiding Donald Trump. Oliver has spent recent weeks focused on the midterms; last week he devoted most of his show to ties between MAGA midterm candidates and neo-Nazis. This Sunday, he turned to Trump's rallies, which he said have grown increasingly unhinged, and to the growing distance between most Republican midterm candidates and the former president, whose approval ratings remain low.

What did Trump say at his midterm convention?

Oliver played footage from Trump's recent midterm convention, where the former president led the crowd in a pledge that began: "I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can't even breathe." Trump followed with a warning: "You know what happens if you don't vote? You go to hell."

"OK, there is so much there, from asking them to repeat a sentence clearly too long for them to the line, 'Loves us so much he can't even breathe,'" Oliver said. "What in the Paramore lyrics is he even talking about there?! As for 'vote or you'll go to hell,' I'll say this: Huge, if true."

He then imagined Jeffrey Epstein arriving in hell and asking what had done him in. "And the Devil said, 'No — lack of civic engagement,'" Oliver joked.

How are Republicans handling Trump?

Trump has repeatedly suggested that a vote for Republicans in the midterms is a vote for him. A recent report in The New Yorker, cited by Oliver, found that "more than 99% of GOP ad spending is now going to spots that do not mention Trump."

Oliver also played a clip of Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate from Michigan, appearing on NBC News' "Meet the Press." When host Kristen Welker asked him, "Is a vote for you a vote for the Trump agenda?" Rogers replied, "I'm apologizing, I'm having some difficulty in my earpiece."

"Yeah, nice try, Mike, but that was pretty obvious!" Oliver said. "I haven't seen someone dodge a question that shamelessly since I spent three hours gasping aloud at two complete lunatics who've never blinked once in their lives." He then pointed to the image of Holmes, the convicted scam artist, and Evans from the Fielder-Oppenheim documentary.

What does the documentary mean for the show?

The film, it turns out, has become an obsession inside the "Last Week Tonight" offices. Oliver said the staff's fixation has begun to interfere with production of the program itself.

"If you want to talk about that movie, please contact anyone who works here," Oliver told his audience. "It's derailed our workflow to an unacceptable degree."

Holmes, the founder of Theranos, was convicted of fraud in 2022 and remains one of the most closely watched figures in American business scandal. With "You Can See Everything" now circulating on HBO — the same network that carries Oliver's show — the comedian's on-air endorsement of the film as compulsively watchable, delivered in the same breath as his midterm coverage, amounts to a plug few documentaries receive from a late-night host three weeks before a national election.