Stephen Colbert forcefully smacks down Donald Trump for his 'birther' revisionism

On Friday, Donald Trump briefly and almost casually acknowledged that President Obama was born in the U.S., after years of aggressively questioning that fact. "Okay, that's what's called a firm grasp of the obvious," Stephen Colbert said, unimpressed, on Monday's Late Show. "Next I assume he's going to announce that water is wet, bears poop in the woods, and that Donald Trump is not qualified to be president." He was just warming up.

In his long and thorough takedown of Trump's claims that Hillary Clinton started the "birther" conspiracy and he "finished it, you know what I mean," Colbert was careful not to call Trump a liar — he had Trump say that several times, and an "unusable inanimate object" — but he used "whopper" and "load of crap" pretty freely. He dissected each "whopper" but got caught up on the "you know what I mean" one for a minute. "No one knows what you mean!" Colbert said. "Now, you might mean, if I were being charitable, that in 2011 you made Obama release his long-form birth certificate, thereby ending the controversy — but that's an even bigger load of horse manure than they just hosed out of my third guest tonight," a horse named Frederick the Great.

"Here's the deal," Colbert said: "You don't get to flog this issue for five years and then act like you're correcting everybody else. We're not crazy, we were there, we all saw you do it. Even the people who support you saw you do it — it's why they support you!" He reminded Trump of a $1 million NSFW offer he made to the GOP nominee back in his Colbert Report days, then noted that some people are saying that now Trump has admitted that Obama was born in the U.S., he owes the president $5 million. "You know, he's probably waiting on that check right now — you know, like most of your contractors," Colbert said. "You probably won't make good on this because the other other thing you lie about is giving money to charity," and The Washington Post estimates that $5 million from Trump would be more than he has given from his own pocket in the past 20 years combined. You can watch the fireworks below. Peter Weber

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up