Stephen Colbert said Monday that he watched the news over the weekend, then "to cheer up, I watched Ken Burns' Vietnam," about a "slightly less divisive time in America." He was talking about President Trump's feud with the NFL, which began Friday when the president encouraged NFL owners to fire "son of a bitch" players who kneel during the national anthem. "After all, the singing of the national anthem is a sacred time," Colbert said, "when red-blooded Americans stand up and run to the bathroom, because that's when the line is the shortest."
"'Son of a bitch,'" Colbert repeated. "That was unnecessary roughness. There should be a flag on that play, and I'm going to say, a Confederate flag." Trump insisted that his comments targeting only black athletes had nothing to do with race, but Colbert wasn't convinced. "Kneeling during the national anthem has everything to do with race — just like your presidency," he said. It has nothing to do with the American flag, however. "Saying that kneeling is a protest against the flag is like saying that Gandhi's hunger strikes were a protest against snacking," Colbert said. In fact, there are rules about how to act around a flag, he added, but it's clearly Trump violating them, not the NFL players.
"Believe it or not, Trump's war with the NFL this weekend wasn't the only fight with black athletes," Colbert said, pointing to Trump's other feud, with the NBA, disinviting the Golden State Warriors to the White House because Steph Curry was meh on attending. "But in this instance, Donald Trump is messing with forces he doesn't understand: LeBron James," Colbert said. And James wasn't the only one dunking on Trump on Twitter, he added, reading the "sickest" burn from the Chicago Bulls' Robin Lopez. "It's official," he concluded. "Donald Trump is now going to get fewer visits from basketball players than Kim Jong Un." Watch below. Peter Weber
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