Late-night hosts all had one thing on their minds Monday night, and it was how Rudy Giuliani said a whole bunch of stuff about Donald Trump and Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels between Wednesday and Saturday, and then tried to pretend he hadn’t said any of those things while speaking to George Stephanopoulos on “The Week.” Stephen Colbert, like his compatriots, spent a huge chunk of “The Late Show” trying to sort through the interview.
It was a tough task and one that left Colbert speechless when Giuliani tried to blow off the idea that Trump even knew Daniels.
“Trump’s new lawyer and bat boy’s grandfather has been everywhere, saying everything, in no particular order. First, he told Sean Hannity that Trump, despite repeated denials, had in fact reimbursed Michael Cohen the $130,000 Cohen paid to Stormy Daniels. Trump backed that up on Twitter and then had a tweet ‘regweet’ and claimed Giuliani just had a momentary oopsy-a-truthie,” Colbert said.
The “Late Show” played the clip of Trump playing off the whole thing as nothing, stating: “He started yesterday. He’ll get his facts straight.”
“That’s just Rudy using a classic legal strategy. Step one: go on every TV show known to man. Step two: learn the facts of your case,” Colbert joked, as he was getting to that fateful Stephanopoulos interview.
“On Sunday, Giuliani sat down with George Stephanopoulos to explain that when he said that Trump had reimbursed Cohen, he didn’t know what he was talking about.”
For the sake of clarity, since it’s very tough to casually sum up anything Giuliani said in that interview, here’s the transcript of the clip “The Late Show” played next:
Giuliani: “This is more rumor than it is anything else.”
Stephanopoulos: “But that’s what you said. You said that to BuzzFeed.”
Giuliani: “But here’s the– but here’s the– well, yes, I mean that– that’s one of the possibilities and one of the rumors. The reality is– ”
Stephanopoulos: “You stated it as fact.”
Giuliani: “Well, maybe I did. but I– right now, I’m at the point where I’m learning, and I can only– I can’t prove that. I can just say it’s rumor. I don’t know how you separate fact and opinion.”
Then Colbert came back with quite a zinger.
“He’s right. no, it can be very hard to separate fact and opinion. For instance, it’s my opinion that he is clearly lying, but that’s also a fact,” Colbert said. “Rudy was so all over the place that Stephanopoulos couldn’t even confirm that Trump and Stormy Daniels knew each other.”
And this is where we arrive at the part that left Colbert speechless. During the interview, Stephanopoulos asserted that “The president does acknowledge meeting Stormy Daniels, correct?” And Giuliani was very evasive on that point even after Stephanopoulos brought up the picture of Trump and Daniels together.
And that’s when Giuliani said: “Well, it depends on kind of what you mean by ‘met her,’ right?”
“Okay, um,” Colbert finally said after a silence that lasted about nine seconds. “This is awkward. Rudy, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they exchange a special hug, and that makes a baby. And right after the woman has that baby, the man has an adult film actress spank him with a financial magazine. And that’s what we mean by ‘met.’ That’s what ‘met’ means. Go ask your father. Go ask your father.
“Because, remember, Trump had this affair less than four months after Melania gave birth to their son,” Colbert continued, at which point the audience booed. “No, no, no, don’t boo. This is very common. It’s all covered in the prenatal handbook: ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting Your Husband to Sleep With a Porn Star.’ ”
You can watch Colbert’s monologue from Monday’s episode of “The Late Show” in the video embedded at the top of this post.