Oliver And Lewinsky Hail HBO Show As 'Punching Up' And 'Good Trouble'

Alex Christy | August 13, 2025
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HBO Last Week Tonight host John Oliver recently joined Monica Lewinsky for her Tuesday Reclaiming podcast, and together the two came to an agreement that LWT is the kind of “good trouble” that holds powerful people accountable despite all the evidence to the contrary.

After Lewinsky asked if Oliver was particularly active on social media and Oliver said no, Lewinsky added, “So, I mean, I think something I had to learn was you have to be really mindful if you clapback at people, of just, you know, if you've if you have a larger community or you have a public platform, that even though they can, you know, really have fucking pissed you off and said something horrible, that it's just kind of the, you know, the punishment’s not worth the crime, and so, when you can bring attention to something, right—”

While Oliver claimed to not be a big social media guy, he admitted to using his TV show in a contrary way, “You're totally right. That’s the same. I don't use social media in that way, but I definitely use the show in that way. And I probably make I think you might be a better person than me there, but I do think about it in terms of the clapbacks, but I do, you know, when making sure that, like, in that reductive sense of punching up… I do like to get in trouble.”

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