Aside from Donald Trump randomly insulting LeBron James’ intelligence late Friday night while “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was airing, it was a relatively quiet day for politics in Trump’s America.
And so Colbert was light on the political discussion Friday night — Trump’s name was actually not even mentioned until midway through Colbert’s interview with Rob Reiner, and a video of Colbert working out with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg neatly sidesteps any political talk.
Even so, “The Late Show” did kick off with one of its standard political sketches. In this case, it was a parody of A-ha’s video for “Take on Me,” featuring none other than Donald Trump’s old campaign manager Paul Manafort.
For those unfamiliar with the original 1985 video, it involves a young woman being kinda seduced by a man, played by A-ha lead singer Morten Harket, in a black-and-white comic book. The woman is reading the book at a diner and is becoming entranced by the pencil-drawn man until, shockingly, he actually reaches out of the book and pulls the woman into it, where they have an adventure.
In Colbert’s version of the video, Paul Manafort’s courtroom sketches from his trial this week substitute for the man in the comic book. The young woman stares longingly at him, as always, but when Manafort reaches out of the book to take her hand, he gets slapped with handcuffs.
You can watch the “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” version of the video up at the top of this post. And, for comparison, we’ve placed a-Ha’s original video for “Take On Me” below.