Late Night Tackles President Trump
Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah suggest U.S. intelligence chiefs might be better schooled that Trump
House and Senate negotiators met Wednesday to negotiate a shutdown-averting deal on border security, so naturally President Trump lobbed a tweet into the "delicate, complex negotiation," like a heckler interrupting a bomb squad, Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show. "Luckily there is a hero riding in to save the day," Jared Kushner and his sidekicks, the billionaire Koch brothers.
"Another group that disagrees with Trump about border security is our nation's intelligence chiefs," who testified before the Senate on Tuesday about their annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, Colbert said. "One thing missing from their report? Any evidence that would support building a wall on the southwestern border." The U.S. intelligence leaders also contradicted Trump on Iran, North Korea, and ISIS. Colbert read and annotated Trump's tweeted pushback.
The U.S. intelligence chiefs also had some warnings about Russia, on the same day the Financial Times reported that Trump met with Vladimir Putin for about 15 minutes in Buenos Aires — a meeting U.S. intelligence learned about from Russia. "At what point is Putin just going to cut out the middle man and give the State of the Union?" Colbert asked.
This must be especially infuriating for Trump because "after cleaning house and firing his enemies, Trump's intelligence community is now led completely by people he handpicked," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. Trump is understandably mad that "his own intelligence officials said that everything he believes is bulls--t," but the North Korea assessment is especially "heartbreaking," he said. "Trump is running around on the streets saying he loves Kim and how much they're in love, and now his intelligence team is telling the whole world that Kim's not that into him." Anyway, America, "you have to make a choice," Noah said. "Are you going to believe the heads of the CIA, the FBI, and director of national intelligence, or the guy who doesn't believe in 'Global Waming'?" Watch below. Peter Weber