Stephen Colbert explains why special counsel Robert Mueller is Trump's 'worst nightmare'

(Image credit: Late Show)

"You know, the word dumpster fire gets thrown around so casually these days," Stephen Colbert said on Thursday's Late Show, "but when a special counsel gets appointed to investigate your administration just four months in, that's a new high and low." The announcement caught everyone by surprise, including the White House, which got the news just 25 minutes before it became public, he noted. "Sean Spicer barely had time to dive in the hedges and cover himself with mud."

Ironically, the counsel was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whom Trump tried to blame for FBI Director James Comey's firing last week. "They tried to throw Rosenstein under the bus, forgetting that as deputy AG, he's actually the bus driver," Colbert said. And the man Rosenstein chose for the job, Robert Mueller, is "Donald Trump's worst nightmare: a competent adult who owes him nothing and who I'm guessing has not seen The Apprentice."

Up next, Colbert threw up his hands at new details about the meeting where Trump allegedly asked Comey for his loyalty and suggested he throw reporters in jail if they didn't give up their sources. Comey is super popular on Capitol Hill all of a sudden, he added, though House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz says he doesn't have Comey's new phone number — "somebody's being ghosted!" — and "many Republicans are ducking the scandal. In fact, apparently Republican lawmakers are answering fake phone calls to avoid commenting on Comey's Trump memo." Colbert acted out how that might go, and ended by interpreting Trump's graduation speech to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

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Dumpster-fire talk aside, impeachment is a long shot and, if it happens, a long ways off. If that bums you out, The Late Show wants to help you fantasize how it might go down, O.J.-style. 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.