On Friday night’s episode of “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert avoided the topic of the school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, opting instead for lighter fare, including jokes about Saturday’s royal wedding, that video of Bill Gates talking about President Donald Trump, and Trump’s staff totally ruining the “Yanny or Laurel” debate.
We’ll start with the second thing.
“Meanwhile, back in America,” Colbert said after slinging some royal wedding zingers. “I’ve never thought that Donald Trump is the sharpest tool in the shed. But I have to admit, I’ve always thought he’s a tool.”
That joke was met with nearly 15 seconds of cheers and applause. Colbert eventually moved on after cracking a joke about how many “tool users” must be in the audience.
“Today, we got another glimpse of what the president is like in private from actual billionaire Bill Gates,” Colbert said, pulling up footage of Gates on stage talking about the first time he met Trump in 2016. “It was weird from the start,” Gates said in the video.
The first of several clip of Gates, essentially, made fun of Trump for being not so bright.
“When I walked in, his first sentence kind of threw me off. He said, ‘Trump hears that you don’t like what Trump is doing.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, but you’re Trump,’ ” Gates said in the clip.
“Bill Gates doesn’t know Trump talks about himself in the third person? Colbert is shocked,” Colbert joked. “And later, Gates tried to give the President-elect Trump some advice.”
Next Gates clip: “Anyway, so I saw him in Trump Tower, and I said, ‘Hey, science and innovation is a great thing. You should be a leader who drives innovation. You know, pick things you want to do that are big. HIV vaccine, you could accelerate that. Be associated with innovations. He wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV.”
“That’s an easy mistake,” Colbert chimed in. “We all remember that famous scene in ‘Philadelphia’ where Tom Hanks is told he has an irregular pap smear. Beautiful. And I can’t help but notice that he’s talking to the biggest nerd in the world about sexually transmitted disease? What does Trump talk to the porn stars about? ‘Hey, Stormy, get in here. Why can’t I open Adobe Reader? I’m afraid I have HPV in my PDF.’
“So dumb. So dumb. So dumb!” Colbert continued. “Gates actually met with Trump twice to discuss his science initiatives, and Trump asked if HIV and HPV were the same thing both times. ‘Also, have you heard about this HGTV? I heard you can catch it from open-concept kitchens.’ But that’s not the only basic science question Trump asked Gates.”
Another Gates clip: “He asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill effects of vaccines. And I said, ‘No, that’s a dead end, that’d be a bad thing, don’t do that.”
“Well, at least Gates knows that you have to talk to Trump like you’re talking to Frankenstein,” Colbert joked. ” ‘Fire, bad! Vaccine, good!’ Gates also told the story of when his daughter met Trump.
The last two Gates clips featured anecdotes that were somehow even more Trumpian than the previous ones.
First: “He knew my daughter Jennifer because Trump has this horse show thing down in Florida. In fact, he went up and talked to Jen and was being super nice. And then, like 20 minutes later, he flew in on a helicopter to the same place. So, clearly he had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter.”
In the final clip, Trump got creepy. “It was actually kind of scary how well he knew — how much he knew about my daughter’s appearance,” Gates said.
“What’s weird about that?” Colbert asked. ” ‘Hey Bill, your daughter is hot. Not Ivanka-hot, but you know.’ ”
You can watch this portion of Colbert’s monologue in the video embedded at the top of this post. And if you wanna see the part where Colbert rips Trump and his people for ruining “Yanny or Laurel,” check out the embed below.