Stephen Colbert grins his way through the news of Robert Mueller's Trump campaign indictments

Stephen Colbert declares indictment Monday Christmas in October

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Late Show With Stephen Colbert)

Monday was an outwardly calm but inwardly tumultuous day at the White House after President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a top aide turned themselves in after being indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a third campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, was revealed to be cooperating with Mueller's team. At The Late Show, Stephen Colbert was all smiles. "Now I know it's almost Halloween, but it feels more like Christmas," he said, trying out a series of Trump-Russia collusion Christmas carols.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was less impressed, telling reporters that the "real story" was Hillary Clinton's ties to Russia. "My God, of course," Colbert said. "Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia to lose the election! But we never saw it because we were playing checkers while she was playing 3-dimensional lose the election." He gleefully played the "fake news" card on the Trump campaign's repeated insistence that it had no knowledge of any attempts to coordinate with Russia, citing the "Papadopo-damning" details of the guilty plea from Papadopoulos.

Trump knew this was coming, and Colbert read through Trump's weekend of "panic tweeting," sighing: "There is something just so reassuringly presidential about screaming 'DO SOMETHING!' into the void."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

"All the networks scrambled to cover the latest from the Mueller investigation," Colbert said, "except, of course, for the president's roadside petting zoo over at Fox & Friends." He did agree with Trump's Fox friends on one point, though: "Google, you don't put cheese below the burger — it's a cheeseburger, not a burger cheese." But overall, the only network in the world Monday more "focused on fluff is the one I started to boost the president's ego, Real News Tonight."

The Late Show also showed coverage of the indictment on another imaginary network, the Obvious Metaphor Network. Watch below. Peter Weber

Explore More

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.