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.
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.
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
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclubSpeed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's illsSpeed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, StalloneSpeed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's viewSpeed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
-
Charlamagne Tha God irks Trump with Epstein talkSpeed Read The radio host said the Jeffrey Epstein scandal could help 'traditional conservatives' take back the Republican Party
-
CBS cancels Colbert's 'Late Show'Speed Read 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' is ending next year
-
Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposesspeed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle
-
New Mexico to investigate death of Gene Hackman, wifespeed read The Oscar-winning actor and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their home with no signs of foul play
