Monday's Late Show started with a wistful farewell to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
"This weekend, we received some troubling news: Our president is not a Russian asset," Stephen Colbert said. "Now I say troubling news because if Trump is not working with the Russians, then what the hell is wrong with him? If they don't have anything on him then why does he keep saying nice things about Vladimir Putin?"
After two years, Mueller turned in his final report, and according to Attorney General Robert Barr's summary, there's insufficient evidence to charge Trump with Russian collusion. "This is, shall we say, anticlimactic," Colbert said. "It's worse than the finale of Lost. I mean, what about the smoke monster — was it real or not? And if not, why have so many members of Trump's campaign pleaded guilty to lying about meeting with the smoke monster? I don't understand. Why couldn't this have been like the ending of Seinfeld? Still disappointing, but at least they're all in jail."
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"So there it is: Mueller is an honorable man," Colbert said, and even if he left open the possibility of obstruction of justice, "he has said that Donald Trump is not a foreign asset — which is good news. But even if Trump was falsely accused, he only has himself to blame. Because he lies so much, you just don't know what to believe. ... The rest of Trump's presidency is going to be like a big bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough: He's going to promise you it's the finest chocolate chips in the world. But I promise you, if you swallow that, you're going to be eating some rat poop — which technically may not be a crime, but it's going to leave a bad taste in your mouth."
Still, Colbert said, "fair is fair," so he crossed "collusion" off his "list of reasons Trump is unfit to be president," and Mueller off the list of active Trump investigations, and, well, you can see what's left on those lists below. Peter Weber
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