After a week of criticizing Donald Trump on “The Late Show” for siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin rather than the U.S., Stephen Colbert turned his sights on a different aspect of the Russia election hacking scandal: accused spy Maria Butina.
On Friday’s “The Late Show,” Colbert mocked Trump for comments he made about his meeting with Putin in Helsinki, including Trump’s invitation to Putin to the White House for another meeting.
“This week could not end soon enough, because all week Donald Trump has been insulting our allies in NATO and cozying up to Russia,” Colbert said. “It’s like that old saying, the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy because friends are for the weak.”
“And then yesterday, he invited Vladimir Putin to the White House. We have a copy of the invitation,” Colbert continued. “Please choose chicken, fish or the launch codes,” Colbert read from a mock blue and gold invitation.
Colbert segued into the latest news in the Trump-Russia scandal, which was the arrest of Butina, an accused Russian spy who is believed to have gotten close to conservatives in the National Rifle Association, among others.
“By now it is an established fact that Russian military officers hacked DNC servers to help get Donald Trump elected, but this was no one-pronged strategy,” Colbert joked. “They also pronged the NRA with their spy Maria Butina.”
“Prosecutors asked that Butina be detained ahead of her trial,” he went on. “They say she’s a flight risk because of her history of deceptive conduct, the strong evidence of guilt, and her extensive foreign connections — oh my God, Donald Trump is also a flight risk. Check the airport for a white man, 6-foot-3, wig made of moldy hay. If you see him fleeing the country … let him go.”
Colbert went on to detail news reports of court filings that said Butina had seduced Paul Erickson, a power player in conservative politics, who she may have convinced to aid her in her efforts as a Russian agent.
“Erickson wasn’t Butina’s only co-conspirator,” Colbert concluded. “Her boss back in the Motherland was Russian oligarch and Patton-Oswalt-of-the-Eastern-Bloc, Alexander Torshin. The FBI revealed that on election night, Butina wrote Torshin to say, ‘I’m going to sleep. It’s 3 a.m. here. I am ready for further orders.’ By the way, ‘I am ready for further orders’ is also the theme of Trump’s next meeting with Vladimir Putin.”
Watch the video above.