Monday was Day 24 of the government shutdown, "which is a new record," Stephen Colbert noted on The Late Show. "It's one of those sad records, like slowest 100-yard dash or most pizza rolls consumed in a minute — records which are also both held by Donald Trump." He explained how Trump's tweeted shutdown-negotiations overture to Democrats "sounds like the world's worst phone-sex hotline," and is bound to be as successful. "Clearly, Trump has painted himself into a corner," he said "which isn't easy when your office is oval."
Colbert suggested that the stress of the shutdown is getting to Trump, reading and annotating the president's tweets refuting reports of "chaos" in the White House because "there's almost nobody" home but him, then Trump's justification for shutting down the government to get his border wall. "He's right, elections do have consequences," Colbert said, "and she's called the speaker of the House."
"Trump was so angry about The Washington Post's Russia bombshell that he tweeted about their owner," Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Colbert said. The Trump-friendly National Enquirer has focused on texts between Bezos — who is getting a divorce — and his girlfriend, and Trump rubbed that in with a tweet about "Jeff Bozo." Colbert was amused: "A man with an orange face and cotton-candy hair is comparing someone else to a clown. You know the old saying: Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw giant shoes." Still, Bezos' soon-to-be ex-wife, MacKenzie, stands to get up to $69 billion in the divorce settlement, and that gave Colbert an idea. It involves costumes, roses, and Alexa.
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The Late Show also found some fake notes Trump's translator took during his extraordinarily secretive talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as reported in the Post. You can watch that below. Peter Weber
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