Stephen Colbert broke down the series of wild events that went down at the White House on Thursday during President Donald Trump’s reveal of his new Medicare weight loss drug deal.
“Trump gathered with the leaders of major pharmaceutical companies to announce a deal to lower the price of popular weight loss drugs,” Colbert said during Thursday’s “The Late Show” opening monologue. “This is huge news, but in a few months, it’ll be dramatically smaller news.”
Already kicking off his gags, Colbert began with Trump sharing the names of his staffers who are apparently taking the weight loss medication and/or other prescriptions.
“Holy HIPPA violations, Batman,” Colbert joked. “Can you do that? I don’t think you can do that. You can’t just rattle off prescriptions your staff is on. ‘Walter? Walter? Is he here? Walter, how’s the herpes doing?’”
Next up, he took aim at Dr. Mehmet Oz., Trump’s administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Colbert math-checked the popular TV doctor after he said that Americans will lose an estimated “135 billion pounds by the midterms.”
“Now, I’m not a doctor, or the Wizard of Oz, but that … I got to say that seems like a lot pounds,” Colbert said before having his production pull up the actual calculation based on the U.S. population. “Let’s break down those numbers: 135 million pounds divided by approximately 343 million Americans means on average we’ll each be losing 393 pounds per American. Wow, I’m going to wear a two-piece next summer. I’m guessing Dr. Oz lost some weight after pulling those numbers out of his ass.”
Watch the opening monologue below:
Before moving on to his next wild Oval Office occurrence, Colbert braced his audience, letting them know that the man involved is OK. That’s when he played a clip of a White House guest fainting as David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly, was speaking. Everyone immediately tried to help him, except one person, Colbert pointed out.
“Honestly, it was good to see everybody rush to help him,” Colbert said. “Well, almost everybody.”
That’s when production put up a photo showing Trump standing still while the man was lying on the floor.
“This viral photo from after the fainting,” Colbert said. “Look at that. They got his legs up and everything. That picture is worth a thousand words — none of which I can say on CBS.”
