Stephen Colbert reads 1 real, 3 fake letters from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump

Stephen Colbert reads fake letter from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump

(Image credit: Late Show)

"Hey, you know who's having a great Christmas?" Stephen Colbert asked on Wednesday's Late Show. "Donald Trump. He got what he wanted for Christmas — America — and he's regifting it to his buddies." He took a look at Trump's emerging Cabinet — including newly named adviser Stephen Miller — and tackled the new revelations about the phishing scam that Russian hackers used to steal Hillary Clinton campaign emails, passed on to WikiLeaks.

"I can't believe a trick this obvious took down the most sophisticated campaign in history," he said. "That would be like winning World War II by luring Hitler out of his bunker with a fake lady Hitler." But it gets crazier, Colbert said, because Clinton's tech support accidentally said the suspect link was legitimate, when he meant to write illegitimate. "The entire election hinged on a typo," he sighed. "It really legitimizes our democracy — I'm sorry, delegitimizes. That's a typo."

Trump has already picked out his first decorative addition to the Oval Office, Colbert noted, showing a copy of the 1987 letter Trump intends to hang on the wall in which Richard Nixon cites his wife's prediction "that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!" Colbert was impressed. "What pollster did Pat Nixon use? Nostradamus?" He said he had obtained from deep within the National Archives a trove of other letters Nixon wrote to Trump, and he got into Nixon character to read them. The letters are fake, but apparently Trump really was on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Watch below. Peter Weber

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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.