The madness of Donald Trump’s afternoon solo press conference yesterday left late night shows scrambling to rewrite scripts, with Seth Meyers calling the 75 minute tirade “batsh*t crazy,” Trevor Noah referring to the president as “Hurricane Trump,” and Kimmel comparing the whole thing to Charlie Sheen’s tiger-blood winning meltdown.
Likewise, over on The Late Show Stephen Colbert had his own take, devoting his entire 11 minute monologue to the president’s unhinged “ranting and raving.” Since the show tapes in the early afternoon, the press conference literally just wrapped up before Colbert took to the stage, so it’s likely that most of those in attendance were just hearing about it for the first time.
“Wow, I am glad you could be here on this historic evening,” Colbert said to his audience. “Because Donald Trump held his first solo press conference as president — he’s had them with the world leaders, he’s gone out there with the twin podiums with the world leaders — but this was just him, by himself. Evidently he didn’t even bring his meds with him. It was just him, alone.”
He went on to compare the reactions of the media, with CNN calling it “unhinged” and even Trump’s precious Fox News invoking Ace Ventura in the network’s reaction. From there he rolled the tape of Trump, who contentiously started the press conference by declaring of the country he wants to make “great” again: “To be honest, I inherited a mess. It’s a mess.”
“No,” Colbert shot back, “You inherited a fortune, we elected a mess.” There’s plenty more to be gleaned from Colbert’s monologue, but that in itself might be the most quintessential summary of Thursday’s events.
