"You know how Donald Trump keeps on saying he's going to make America great again?" Stephen Colbert asked on Tuesday's Late Show. "Turns out the 'great' might be short for 'Great Depression,' because today the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 799.36 points — well, at least it wasn't 800," he joked. "It might have been Trump's fault, because it was," fueled by his fake news about a trade deal with China, Colbert said. "In fact, it was such a blatant lie, even Fox News, even the Fox & Friends weren't buying it."
"But what really made Wall Street S&P its pants is when Trump today admitted the deal isn't done," Colbert said, reading Trump's extended tweet storm, ending with his pronouncement that even if he can't reach a deal with China, it's no big deal because "I am a Tariff Man." Colbert then turned to "happier news," which for The Late Show means Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Trump and Russia. He focused on Michael Cohen's plea deals, in which, like a gambler with a nothing hand, he reportedly agreed to tell everything without a formal deal to escape jail time.
The Late Show also pilloried Trump's "Tariff Man" sobriquet with a 1950-style super hero parody. There's a surprise ending. Watch below. Peter Weber
The Week
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