Stephen Colbert has a laugh at Trump claiming credit for the JFK document dump, John McCain's revenge

Stephen Colbert talks JFK, Vietnam
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Late Show With Stephen Colbert)

President Trump sat down for an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo over the weekend, and she "immediately held Trump's feet to the fire — to make sure they were nice and cozy," Stephen Colbert said on Monday's Late Show. "But Bartiromo wasn't the only one praising Trump — so was Trump." Specifically, Trump praised his use of Twitter. Also over the weekend, Trump "tweenounced" that he will release the JFK documents that have been stored under seal in the National Archives.

After running through some perfunctory conspiracy theorizing, Colbert noted that in fact, Congress ordered the documents released this month back in 1992. Most people believe that the documents should be unsealed, but since Lee Harvey Oswald took a mysterious trip to Mexico weeks before the JFK assassination, "some historians are concerned the documents could be damaging to U.S.-Mexico relations," Colbert said. "Oh, I think that ship has sailed." Some people also theorize that Trump took credit for a pre-scheduled event to distract from his latest fight with a Gold Star family, and Colbert imagined some other secrets Trump could drop when he runs into political hot water.

Colbert also checked in on the feud between Trump and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), starting with Trump's 2015 dig about captured war heroes. Trump, he reminded everyone, got five deferments from serving in Vietnam, one of them for bone spurs, then later joked that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases was his own personal Vietnam, a claim Colbert took to his logical conclusion. Two and a half years later, McCain got his revenge with a brutal swipe at Trump's bone spurs, and Colbert was impressed: "Damn, I really wish McCain was my high school science teacher, because he clearly does not give an F." Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.