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)

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."

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Peter Weber, The Week US

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.