Stephen Colbert marvels at everything President Trump has undone in his first week
"You ever regret going on vacation?" Stephen Colbert asked at the beginning of his first Late Show of the Trump administration. "'Take the week off,' they said. 'America will still be here when you get back,' they said. 'How much could he do in a week?'" After President Trump's inauguration, everyone said wait and see, Colbert noted, and we didn't have to wait long: "The line moves really fast on this ride. Every day you just get right back on the roller coaster and start throwing up. You've got to give the guy credit — he can really get a lot of things undone. From ObamaCare to climate change to torture, he's already moved the country back to 2004. If this keeps up, pretty soon I'm going to launch The Colbert Report."
Trump is the "Usain Bolt of executive orders," Colbert said, and he focused on the order slamming the door on refugees for at least 120 days, when there are more refugees in the world than at any time since World War II. He pointed out that a Christian couple from Syria with visas was sent home — "That's like saying: Welcome to Trump's America, a shining city on a — psych!" — then touched on the 5-year-old Iranian boy detained and separated from his mother, "or as Kellyanne Conway calls it, alternative day care."
Colbert was nonplussed that Trump political strategist Stephen Bannon was given a permanent seat on the National Security Council, noting that the White House justified the decision by noting Bannon's naval experience. "Great, in the Navy — now we just need to add the construction worker, the leather man, and the Indian chief and hold the meetings at the YMCA," Colbert said. "Mike Pence is not going to like that part."
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"But that's not the thing that's most personally upsetting to me," Colbert said, showing that Bannon recently called Trump voters "the working class Hobbits." Colbert, a noted J.R.R. Tolkien expert, was having none of it. "You might be the dark media genius behind the biggest electoral upset in American history, you might be playing footsie with neo-Nazis, but now we're talking Tolkien," he said. "Steve Bannon, when it comes to Hobbits, maybe you should shut your mouth and listen for a while." He ended with a commercial for Trump's big Supreme Court announcement Tuesday night. "How many jobs can Steve Bannon have?" 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.
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