Stephen Colbert and “The Late Show” returned Wednesday from an extended Thanksgiving vacation, and at the start of the show Colbert caught the audience up on the latest impeachment-related happenings — and also imagined some weird hypothetical Trump criminality.
Earlier in the day, the House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing in the ongoing impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump. And in one of the day’s most notable moments, UNC professor Michael Gerhardt testified about Trump’s conduct that “If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable.”
Colbert rolled a clip of Gerhardt’s statement, after which he slipped into his Trump impression. “Thank God, ’cause I can’t wait to tell you everything else that I’ve done,” Colbert-Trump said. “I’ll give you a hint, alright? This will whet your appetite. It involves ‘Shark Week,’ a weed whacker, and all the left-handed people of Denmark.”
Also on Wednesday, the House Intelligence Committee released its report that will serve as the basis for any articles of impeachment the Judiciary Committee writes. Colbert noted that even before that, the GOP issued its own report that insisted Trump did nothing wrong when he withheld aid from Ukraine in order to pressure the country’s president into investigating his political opponents, because “Trump was acting on ‘genuine and reasonable’ skepticism of Ukraine.”
“Yes, because the two words everyone uses to describe Donald Trump are ‘genuine and reasonable,’” Colbert joked. “Right after ‘athletic’ and ‘monogamous.’”
Watch the clip below:
TONIGHT: We're back with brand new shows and Congress is back with more impeachment hearings! #LSSC pic.twitter.com/tMvad4UzWf
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) December 5, 2019