Speed Reads

Late Night Tackles the Trump Administration

Stephen Colbert bids a wry farewell to Hope Hicks, wonders that Jeff Sessions is hanging on

On Tuesday, President Trump's White House communications director, Hope Hicks, told House investigators that she sometimes tells "white lies" for Trump. "Well, duh — telling lies to white people is what got Trump elected," Stephen Colbert joked on Wednesday's Late Show. "And now, totally unrelated to the fact that she told Congress that she lies for the president, Hicks has announced that she would be resigning as White House communications director." She won't be leaving right away — "she has to train up her replacement liar," Colbert said — and he imagined Hicks moving into an apartment with her predecessors Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci, with appropriately colorful made-up dialogue.

Colbert laughed at the statement Hicks put out — "the communications director has 'no words,' and the president is hoping she'll have 'no words' for Robert Mueller" — and then made the inevitable pun: "So it's farewell to Ms. Hicks. Now, in every sense of the word, this administration is truly hopeless."

If Hicks is leaving, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is hanging on, despite Trump continuing to insult and attack him, most recently on Twitter Wednesday. "What are you doing?" Colbert asked. "Mr. President, don't be passive-aggressive — just pick up the phone and call Jeff Sessions. America's like a kid caught between two angry parents: 'Well, you tell your mother if she spent more time investigating Obama and less time worrying about me, maybe we would go to Disney World!'" Trump also slammed Sessions on Fox News, and since he apparently isn't speaking with Sessions, Colbert gave the attorney general (or an edible approximation thereof) some time to vent his feelings. Watch below. Peter Weber