Late Night Tackles Trump and Immigration
Stephen Colbert has some words for the people defending Trump's child-separation policy. Seth Meyers has questions.
President Trump's new policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border is still dominating the news, and "there are two ways to look at this story: Either you can be horrified, or you can work for Donald Trump," Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show. He started with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who opted out of Monday's press briefing, handing the show to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen because she didn't want to field questions about splitting apart families. Colbert wasn't sympathetic: "Sarah, you think you don't want to talk about child separation policy? Try doing it on a comedy show. 'Oh, you must love the Trump administration, Stephen — the sadness just writes itself.'"
"Your administration owns locking up children," Colbert told Sanders. "But if kids in cages is too much for you to defend, there is one option: You could resign. This is the White House, not an abandoned Walmart — you're allowed to leave." Still, he added, "there are some people who have no reservations about publicly defending Trump's monstrous policy — for instance, the monster in chief." He annotated and fact-checked his way through Trump's speech to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, ending with Trump's embrace of the American flag: "Oh say, can you see — that was not consensual. If only those colors could run."
"Of course, Trump isn't the only one defending the indefensible," Colbert said, sadly mocking Fox News host Laura Ingraham's "summer camp" analogy. "The point is, you can't hide from the horror," he said. "Our president is everywhere, literally." Even in the clouds.
Seth Meyers, unimpressed with the Trump team's response to anything, held his own White House press briefing on Tuesday's Late Night, and his "question" to Sanders about Germany was particularly cutting. Watch below. Peter Weber