Stephen Colbert is 'passionately not sure' how to feel about Rod Rosenstein's exit, trolls the NRA

Stephen Colbert bids Rosenstein a confused goodbye

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/The Late Show)

last updated 1 May 2019

After two long years as deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein has submitted his resignation letter and will be a free man by May 11. "I am passionately not sure how I feel about this," Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show. On the one hand, Rosenstein appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and he also once contemplated trying to remove President Trump via the 25th amendment and secretly record him while wearing a wire, Colbert said, though "he later discovered an easier way to get Trump to say something incriminating on tape: Point a camera at him."

"On the other hand," Colbert said, Rosenstein and "Trump's pal William Barr" jointly "decided that Mueller decided that the president did not obstruct justice, even though Mueller never said that," and "in his resignation letter, Rosenstein was surprisingly complimentary to the man he once wanted to secretly record." He speculated on what kind of "courtesy and humor" Trump displayed in their "personal conversations," because "Trump may have been nice to Rosenstein in private, but in public, he was kind of a d--k."

Colbert turned to Trump's proposed changes to asylum laws, including charging asylum-seekers to seek humanitarian refuge. "It makes sense that evangelicals support this man," he said, citing fake scripture. "This is just another way Trump is making America exceptional, because charging a fee for asylum claims would put the United States in the clear minority of countries. You see, these fees are employed by only the most brutal regimes, like Iran and Delta Air Lines."

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The Late Show also produced a mock National Rifle Association PSA that pokes fun at the NRA's new imperative to defend its tax-exempt status after allegations of grift and financial mismanagement. 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.