Late Night Tackles Trump versus Mueller
Stephen Colbert finds the most shocking thing in Trump's tweet-gloating on Andrew McCabe's firing
"Are you guys enjoying March Madness?" Stephen Colbert asked on Monday's Late Show. "Speaking of madness, Donald Trump. We're on the brink of another crisis? Because it really feels like Donald Trump is gearing up to fire" Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The first clue was when Trump lawyer John Dowd released a statement calling for Mueller's investigation to be scrapped, writing in purple comic sans font. "Now that sounds inappropriate until you remember that the Declaration of Independence was originally written in wingdings," Colbert joked. But Trump tweet-attacking Comey by name really raised the stakes, prompting even some Republicans to express mild alarm.
Like Sen. Lindsey Grahm (R-S.C.), who said Trump firing Mueller would be "the beginning of the end of his presidency." "Wait, it's not even the beginning of the end of his presidency?" Colbert protested. "I thought we were at least at the middle of the beginning of the end! I should have gone to the bathroom when Reince Priebus left — now I gotta hold it till the midterms." Trump is clearly in a firing mood, he added, pointing to the sacking of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, two days before his retirement, putting his $60,000-a-year pension at risk. "$60,000 — that's, like, half a porn star payment," Colbert said.
Now, McCabe was being investigated by the FBI inspector general, "so to avoid looking like he's trying to shut down the Russia investigation, all Trump had to do was not dance on McCabe's grave," Colbert said, reading the inevitable grave-dancing tweet. "Let that tweet sink in for a second: This is the sitting president of the United States gloating about firing a respected career FBI official and smearing another FBI official whose firing led to the appointment of the special counsel — and none of that shocks me as much as the fact that he spelled 'sanctimonious' correctly." And Trump's Twitter fingers were just getting started. Watch below. Peter Weber