If you had a hard time following Donald Trump’s press conference by that helicopter Thursday, Stephen Colbert is here to totally (not really) break it all down for you into (not easily) understandable pieces.
On Thursday’s “Late Show,” Colbert picked apart Trump’s ramblings, which came after his former attorney Michael Cohen pled guilty to lying to Congress.
“That’s a serious offense,” Colbert said. “He could end up in jail … or on the Supreme Court.”
Colbert explained Cohen pled guilty to telling Congress the Moscow Trump Tower project ended in January of 2016 when plans for the deal were still in the works as of June 2016.
“Why would Cohen lie about that?” Colbert asked. “Well, he didn’t want people to think Trump was in bed with the Russians. Because nobody wants to be in that Russian bed. It’s got pee-pee in it.”
The news about Cohen prompted Trump to tell reporters huddled around his helicopter that his former fixer is “lying” about the order of events here.
“And it’s terrible because this time I’m not paying him to lie,” Colbert said, doing his best Trump impression. “It’s pro bono. Before, I was paying him to say I never boned all those pros.”
Colbert then played the long response Trump gave to reporters regarding the Moscow Trump Tower deal Thursday, pausing multiple times to try to make sense of it: “There you have it. Simple, non-panicked explanation. It’s all explained in his best-selling book, ‘The Art of the Deal That Didn’t Happen. It Was No Deal. We Had a Position to Possibly Do a Deal and Everybody Knew About It. I Decided Not to Do It. There Would Have Been Nothing Wrong if I Did Do It.’”
The CBS late-night host also tried to decide, based on “subtle” clues, which former-aide-turned-states-evidence that Trump is going to pardon: Cohen or Paul Manafort? (To Colbert, the answer is very clear.)
Watch the video above.