Late Night Tackles President Trump
Stephen Colbert was intrigued by one particular leak from James Comey's new Trump book
Right before Stephen Colbert taped his Late Show monologue on Thursday, the first excerpts from former FBI Director James Comey's new book started leaking, and one passage caught Colbert's eye — Comey's claim that President Trump was obsessed with the salacious parts of the Russia dossier, worried that there was "even a 1 percent chance" Melania Trump might believe the rumors. "Yes, it would bother him, because she'd be off by about 99 percent," Colbert joked. "Oh, come on! Sanctimonious much, James Comey? Not everyone's lucky enough to be in one of those rare, fairy tale marriages with a 100 percent no-hooker-pee-pee guarantee!"
That brought Trump to the latest "catch and kill" story about the National Enquirer. On Thursday afternoon, a former doorman at Trump Tower confirmed the unsubstantiated, caught-and-killed story that he "was instructed not to criticize President Trump's former housekeeper due to a prior relationship she had with President Trump which produced a child," Colbert read. "Okay, it's official: There is now a housekeeper I feel worse for than the one at that Russian hotel."
The Late Show imagined what other secrets the Trump Tower doorman might be keeping.
Trump reportedly still wants to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but Stephen Bannon actually has a plan to save Trump from Mueller, and Colbert walked through some steps: Fire lawyer Ty Cobb, then exert executive privilege "immediately and retroactively" on everything handed over to Mueller's team. "Fair enough," Colbert offered, "as long as America gets to change our vote retroactively."
Colbert wrapped up with a Washington Post report on how the White House is coping with an impulsive and emboldened Trump, sympathizing with the West Wing aide who went through the new morning routine — "Oh, my God, Trump Tower is on fire. Oh, my God, they raided Michael Cohen's office. Oh, my God, we're going to bomb Syria" — then singing a new, Trump-centric version of "My Way." Watch below. Peter Weber