Stephen Colbert noticed that Trump has added 'extortion' to his pre-election fearmongering

Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah on Trump and immigration

(Image credit: Screenshots/YouTube/The Daily Show, The Late Show)

last updated 1 November 2018

"Leading up to the election, [President] Trump's a little nervous, so he's tried everything to scare his base into voting for Republicans, and today he spoke about a threat to the one thing most precious to him: money," Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show. Trump is warning that if Democrats are elected, the markets will go down. Economists and market analysts say that's not what's going on, but what Trump's doing, "I think that's called extortion," Colbert said, switching into Trump voice: "Look, I'm just gonna say, real nice economy you got here, I'd hate to see something happen to it. I'm just saying, I've stuffed the Dow with oily rags and my son Eric loves to play with matches."

From a comedy standpoint, the best part of Trump's economic fearmongering is that he bases his expertise in macroeconomics on his hosting a reality show, Colbert said. But his vow on Twitter that birthright citizenship "will be ended one way or another" had a darker edge. "Is he threatening babies?" he asked. Trump's newest round of caravan fearmongering, meanwhile, includes tweets to the caravanning migrants. Colbert was bemused: "Does he think the folks in the caravan are reading his tweets?"

The Daily Show's Trevor Noah had a beef with Trump and Fox News calling the migrants "illegal," when they aren't even near the U.S. and asylum is a legal process. But he didn't let other media companies off the hook. "Fox makes it an antagonistic thing, but I've noticed other news networks in America specifically seem to focus on what the caravan means to America, and less on what the caravan means to the people in the caravan," Noah said. He recounted that when things were really bad in Zimbabwe, he and other South Africans knew what refugees were escaping because the South African press covered the Zimbabwean crisis from the Zimbabwean perspective. Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.