Stephen Colbert Has Advice for Trump After Controversial Putin Press Conference
by EG
On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night, Colbert addressed the controversial press conference held by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. Amid criticism that Trump chose to side with Putin rather than his own intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the cyberwar investigation, Colbert cautioned Trump to notice that Putin didn't exactly say he didn't have compromising info about the president. Read on for details.
Via Deadline.
Stephen Colbert devoted his entire opening monologue to President Donald Trump’s Helsinki presser with Vladimir Putin – a performance “so weird, so disturbing it’s really upset people across the partisan divide in ways I have not seen in years,” Colbert said.
Trump’s behavior unnerved a lot of people but especially former CIA director John Brennan, Colbert noted. Brennan tweeted that Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki “rises to & exceeds the threshold of high crimes & misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous, adding “not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”
Meanwhile, after Trump’s presser, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats “wiped the tread marks off his face” and issued a statement reiterating the intel community’s consensus that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and continue to interfere.
If you need more evidence how extraordinary was his reaction to Trump’s performance, Coats’ statement wasn’t cleared by the White House, Colbert said. “Even more shocking, it wasn’t cleared by the Kremlin.”
Sen. John McCain, meanwhile, issued a statement saying the “damage inflicted by President Trump’s naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.”
So Colbert got out the calculator that’s been a fixture since his Colbert Report days and used his knuckles to calculate it for McCain, coming up with “treason.”
Putin got asked directly if he had compromising info on Trump (aka Pee Pee Tape). Responding with a laugh, Putin said Trump was so unimportant when he was a real estate developer “nobody informed me when he was in Moscow.” The Russian ruler told reporters the recent St. Petersburg Economic Forum was attended by more than 500 American businessmen. “Do you think we tried to collect compromising material on each and every one of them?”
“Yeah, I do!” Colbert responded.
Get the rest of the story at Deadline.
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