Stephen Colbert distills Trump's big tax plan down to four words

(Image credit: Late Show)

last updated 27 April 2017

The big news from Washington on Wednesday was President Trump's tax plan. "That plan? Never release Trump's taxes," Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show. "To explain the plan, Trump sent out his team of workin' class, blue collar former Goldman Sachs executives, Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin." The plan itself is just "one page of double-spaced bullet points with some hefty margins," Colbert said. "I'm going to say it's not really confidence-building when your tax reform plan is half as long as the instructions to set up a Vitamix."

One of the main bullet points is reducing the current seven tax brackets to three. "It's really going to simplify your office pool during Tax Madness," Colbert said. "Look at the brackets, it's poor versus middle class, and rich versus nobody, because they win."

He next reminded his viewers that Trump and Russia had a thing going on during the campaign, and laid out the new developments involving former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, fired for lying about this conversation with Russia's ambassador. "It turns out, that was just the tip of the corruption-berg," Colbert said. The House Government Oversight Committee reviewed a first batch of Flynn documents, and committee chairman Jason Chaffetz gave what Colbert termed a coy and "flaccid" condemnation of Flynn's apparently illegal failure to disclose payments from foreign governments. "Jason Chaffetz, please, just grow a pair and tell us what Flynn did, you gutless Charles Schultz rough draft," he said, to loud cheers.

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Colbert ended with a look at the red button Trump had installed on his Oval Office desk — to summon his butler. "Thank God, I was worried there," he said. "He's just turning the Oval Office into an 8-year-old's drawing of a dream treehouse: 'There'll be a button where I get a Coke wherever I want, a slide into a ball pit, and Bigfoot sleeps over and he teaches me karate.'" Not that there's anything wrong with that. "He should have some fun, a president deserves to be refreshed," Colbert said. "A butler bringing him his Coke, really living the dream. I believe we have a photograph of the butler?" On a related note, don't expect Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) to come on The Late Show anytime soon. 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.