As promised, Stephen Colbert went live with Late Show with Stephen Colbert after Trump's big ultra-nationalist Congressional address. While some are calling the speech Trump's most presidential moment yet because he was able to successfully read words off a teleprompter without beating an immigrant to death on national television, Colbert was less-than-impressed, and set about adding some much-needed footnotes to Trump's verbal malarkey.
"Now technically this was not a State Of The Union, because I think in this timeline the Confederacy won," Colbert began the segment. After noting that Pence and Ryan were wearing the same outfit ("Buy one, get two free suit and tie combo"), Colbert shredded clips of Trump's speech with the biting wit that has propelled him to the top of late night shows over the last month. "Yes, a new task force in every government agency. We're gonna reduce government by adding people to the government," Colbert said. "It's like how the key to not getting hungover is just to never stop drinking."
"Yes, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is just one of the trans the administration is withdrawing support from," Colbert continued. He found that Trump is speaking more and more like The Incredible Hulk, mocked Kellyanne Conway as a nonessential government worker, reminded everyone of Trump's predilection for not paying contractors, and honestly acknowledged "the circumstances we inherited:" "Honestly, I don’t know what we inherited. You inherited like, $100 million. OK, let’s be honest. Something like that, ballpark."
Next up, Colbert covered the Democrats' response to the speech, and/or accidentally aired a commercial for Metamucil. As Colbert summarized, "People who believe that Donald Trump is an existential threat to this nation, to the experiment of democracy, to Western civilization itself, take heart, because for their powerful rebuttal, the Democrats showed a rerun of The Andy Griffith Show."
And in his first interview segment, he spoke to former Obama press secretary Josh Earnest about fake news ("This whole idea of fake news is not a new thing. It's something Republicans have been engaged in, one Republican in particular, has been very focused on for a long time.") and whether he has any sympathy for Sean Spicer.
"Did you ever feel the way he looks?" Colbert asked. "The short answer to your question is yes," Earnest said. "There's supposed to be friction and tension between the White House press corps and the White House. The day that there is not friction and tension between the White House press corps and the White House is the day that the press corps has stopped doing their job."
