One of the more hot-button issues in media this summer has been CNN’s hiring of former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a regular contributor despite the fact that he is still receiving severance payments from the campaign. On “The Late Show” Wednesday night, host Stephen Colbert pressed CNN’s Anderson Cooper on the issue.
“So y’all are paying him, and Trump is paying him, but he’s on your show doing analysis for a man he still gets cash from,” Colbert prompted.
“Pretty much, yeah,” Cooper responded, squirming a little. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.”
Colbert also asked the question most people are probably wondering: What the hell is a “campaign surrogate” anyway? “The candidate can’t be everywhere, so they have people out there speaking for them,” Cooper said.
As for the candidate himself, the host of “Anderson Cooper 360” opined a little on the supposed “pivot” Trump appears to be making in recent speeches. “I think the alleged outreach to African-American voters is a really interesting thing,” Cooper said. “I mean, he’s doing it in front of overwhelmingly white audiences; he’s yet to actually go to an African-American church.”
As for Colbert’s feelings on the candidate, the “Late Show” host got off a good riff likening Trump to a very particular kind of gift: “There’s a little bit, it seems, of ‘Elect me, see what happens! I’m a present — Christmas morning is Election Day. Open me up: Maybe I’m full of toys, maybe I’m full of turds. Let’s find out. Don’t shake me.’”