Three late-night talk show hosts who repeatedly ripped into Donald Trump during the Mueller investigation stuck to their schticks Monday night, the first opportunity they had to address the Special Counsel's findings that the president did not collude with Russia during the 2016 election.
“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert jokingly addressed the “troubling news” that the president “is not a Russian asset.”
“I say ‘troubling news ‘because if Trump isn’t working with the Russians, then what the hell is wrong with him?” Colbert asked. “If they don’t have anything on him, then why does he keep saying nice things about Vladimir Putin?”
Colbert referred to the conclusion of the Mueller probe as “anticlimactic,” comparing it to children being told that Santa Claus brought “mostly nothing” for Christmas.
“This is worse than the finale of ‘LOST,’” Colbert told his audience. “Why couldn’t have this been like the ending of ‘Seinfeld.’ Still disappointing, but at least they’re all in jail.”
The “Late Show” host rejected calls from Trump supporters to apologize for being wrong about Trump-Russia collusion, offering this message for the president:
“Mr. President, if you’re watching, and I know you are, I’m sorry that you’re a terrible president,” Colbert said.
Later on in his monologue, the CBS star conceded that Trump “was right” when he consistently claimed there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia, but then insisted the president “only has himself to blame” for being falsely accused.
“He lies so much, you just don’t what to believe. He even lies about things that he doesn’t need to lie about. For instance, we now know that Trump wrote the memo for Don. Jr., wrote it on Air Force One saying that the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians where they were offering Hillary Clinton’s emails was actually about adoption. That lie is an obstruction about collusion,” Colbert continued. “But Barr says that Mueller says that he’s not sure that’s a crime, but we do know that that is a lie. He lies so much, you never know when he’s telling the truth. It’s just safer to assume that he’s always lying.”
“Daily Show” host Trevor Noah admitted to his audience that it was a “little disappointing,” also invoking a Christmas comparison, but going a step further, joking that the children come down the stairs to see “Santa’s dead body” on Christmas morning.
He also slammed Robert Mueller for not coming to a conclusion on whether President Trump obstructed justice, yelling “That’s not an answer!”
The Comedy Central star urged Democrats to apologize for being wrong about collusion, as well as Republicans for attacking Mueller for the last two years. He too offered a backhanded mea culpa.
“Here at ‘The Daily Show,’ we also need to apologize. I don’t want to, but we have to,” Noah said begrudgingly. “So Mr. President, we’re sorry that we called you a Russia pee-loving pumpkin-headed colludasaurus.”
Noah added that this was not only a “big win” for Trump but for America as well for knowing that the president “isn’t a traitor.”
Meanwhile, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” host Jimmy Kimmel declared that it was a “rare weekend of good news” for President Trump.
“Now the process of tearing our country even further apart can finally begin,” Kimmel joked.
Kimmel mocked Trump for tweeting that the Mueller Report was a complete exoneration despite Mueller’s statement that his report “does not exonerate” the president.
“It’s kind of funny though - half of our country is upset that our president didn’t collude with Russia,” Kimmel told his audience. “We should probably be happy about that, shouldn’t we? And deep down, didn’t we know that Trump probably didn’t collude because he could never pull that off?
“Putin wanted him in there and did what he had to do," Kimmel later added. "Basically, Trump got into the White House the same way Lori Loughlin got her kid into USC."