The midterms are just a week away, "and this year, the campaigns have been dominated by fear and just really terrible, heartbreaking events," Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show. "That's why for Halloween, instead of decorating my house with witches and goblins, I just hung up newspapers."
"Now, our fearmonger-in-chief, the Great Pumpkin," he said, "he knows how to stoke the fear, he knows how to appeal to the Latino-phobic, his Hispanickers, if you will. So this morning, Trump revealed that he was planning an executive order to end birthright citizenship." The idea that people born in the U.S. are American is enshrined in the 14th Amendment, "and it's been reaffirmed multiple times by the Supreme Court over the last 150 years," Colbert said. "But Trump says that his executive order has more legal authority than the 14th Amendment. What do you call a man, a leader of a country, who thinks that what he dictates is more important than the Constitution?" He eventually came up with the d-word he was looking for.
Colbert quickly fact-checked Trump's claims about birthright citizenship, then pivoted to the migrant caravan Trump has been hyping for weeks, noting that he "brought some interesting adjectives to the table" Monday night in a Fox News interview. He ran with Trump's description of the caravan's "young, strong" men, adding that "the most cunning part" of the scare campaign is that "these healthy young men — these strong, young men — are also incredibly sick."
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"To combat one of the things he wants you to be afraid of, Trump has announced a plan to deploy 5,200 troops to the southern border," Colbert said, noting the Pentagon's "powerful name for this mission: Operation Faithful Patriot." He had a slightly ruder alternate name.
Jimmy Fallon went another direction on the idea of Trump as a fearmonger, and you can watch his turn as "Count Trumpula" on The Tonight Show below. Peter Weber
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