It’s been a relatively quiet week in the world of Donald Trump, but “quiet” for Trump isn’t actually all that quiet by normal standards. The last few days of jokes at his expense by late-night hosts tells me that the big Trump stories of the moment that aren’t going anywhere no matter what Trump does at this point with the Michael Cohen situation and the sex stuff.
Colbert talked about both of those things in his “Late Show” monologue Thursday night, and for this post, I’m choosing to focus on the sex stuff because it’s ultimately less depressing — it’s as close to comic relief as any Trump-related story can be these days. Also, Colbert’s uncertain enthusiasm for the story is genuinely amusing.
As part of his discussion of Karen McDougal being freed from her NDA and being legally allowed to say whatever she wants about her affair with Trump, Colbert interrupted his monologue to bring us a new segment, dubbed “What Have We Become?”
“The women that Cohen worked so hard to keep quiet are now getting out of their agreements, like former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claims to have had a ten-month affair with Donald Trump, has just settled a lawsuit with the owner of the National Enquirer to keep her from publicly discussing the relationship. Great! Now she can finally tell us more stories about Donald Trump doing sex? Yay? Which leads me to my new segment, ‘Stephen Colbert’s What Have We Become?’ ” Colbert said, as a graphic appeared on screen with the segment title and a bunch of question marks.
“Tonight on ‘What Have We Become?’ — if I had told you five years ago that we would be champing at the bit to get stories about Donald trump’s naked, sweaty body wreaking havoc on a hotel duvet, you would have said, ‘No way! Now let’s watch ‘Sharknado.’ They’re only going to make one of these!’ Yes, back then it was a time of primal innocence, and we took it for granted!” Colbert said.
“Now all of America lives behind the beaded curtain at a video store. And it don’t smell so good. All that being said, give me them stanky, stanky anecdotes! I’m a super freak, and it feels good to be bad!”
You can watch all of Colbert’s monologue from Thursday’s episode of “The Late Show” in the videos embedded below. The part that I described above is in the second video.