Stephen Colbert explains the Senate GOP's health-care woes, laughs at Trump's fake Time covers

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had pledged that Republicans would pass a bill to repeal and replace much of ObamaCare before the July 4 break, "and they have got to, because McConnell knows if they do not pass it now, there's a serious danger that someone might read it," Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show. But on Tuesday, he abruptly delayed the vote. "There are a lot of good reasons not to have the vote this week," Colbert said, finding just one: "McConnell would have lost, and that's it."

Republican senators started running for the exit after the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the bill on Monday, finding it would lead to 22 million fewer insured Americans. "Now to put that number into perspective, if you laid 22 million people end to end, it would reach Canada, where they could get health care," Colbert said. He played a clip of Kellyanne Conway arguing on Sunday that the bill's $800 billion in Medicaid cuts weren't actually cuts. "Yes, they're not cuts, it's just returning Medicaid to its original intention," he repeated. "It's like an arsonist saying, 'I didn't burn the house down, I just took the ground back to pre-house levels.'"

He went on to make an obvious joke about Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), poke fun at Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), and explain to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) why not having health insurance isn't "freedom," using Oreos as an example.

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Next, Colbert noted that while CNN was retracting a story about President Trump and Russia, and three reporters resigned, the network said the article wasn't necessarily wrong. "Yes, it's a fine story, they just forgot to call it 'Breaking News' and have a countdown clock," he joked. But while the subject of the retracted article, Anthony Scaramucci, has moved on, Trump has not, unloading on CNN in a series of "FAKE NEWS" tweets. Colbert read them gleefully. "There is one person who is guilty of fake news out there — it's Donald Trump," he said, noting the fake Time magazine cover of Trump that Trump has framed and put on the wall of at least five Trump resorts, including Mar-a-Lago. "Trump made his own Time magazine cover?" he asked in mock horror. "Oh my God, you know what that means? That can only mean he's acquired mall kiosk technology!" Watch below. Peter Weber