After an unbelievably hectic week in the world of politics, Friday was, bless our hearts, a relatively quiet day. And so on Friday night’s episode of “The Late Show,” host Stephen Colbert took the opportunity to circle back and deal with something important that may have gotten lost in the madness of the week: the continuing mass exodus from President Donald Trump’s White House, which has seen a 43 percent turnover rate in just under 14 months.
“I gotta tell you, as much as you’re excited for the weekend, and I’m sure you are,” Colbert said to cheers from the audience as he opened his monologue, “no one in this world is looking forward to this weekend more than the people working in the White House. Assuming anyone still works there, because they’re having some trouble hanging on to staff. It’s this damn tight job market.”
Colbert reminded everyone that Trump’s chief economic adviser “and man identifying Donald Trump in court,” Gary Cohn, quit this week after the president made it clear he was going to issue import tariffs on steel and aluminum, even though nobody really thought that was a good idea.
Within seconds, every major figure who has left or been fired from the Trump White House — plus those who are rumored to be on the way out — popped up as superimposed cutouts over the frame, almost completely obscuring Colbert himself.
“We’re two departures from the White House turning into that creepy abandoned house in the neighborhood,” Colbert continued before switching to an impression of a kid relaying a “Sandlot”-style story about the consequences of going near said creepy house. “Stay away from old man Trump’s house! They say if your baseball lands in his yard, he’ll come out and make you his chief economic adviser!”
“The Late Show” later showed a clip of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders answering a question about the unprecedented turnover among key White House staff, saying that, actually, turnover isn’t unusual at all.
“It’s not abnormal to have turnover, no. It’s abnormal to have this much turnover,” Colbert said. “It’s the difference between ‘I kept a lock of your hair’ and ‘I keep a shoe box of your hair.’”
You can watch this segment of Friday’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” in the video embedded at the top of this post or on YouTube.